Tuscaloosa’s Struggle With Homicides Highlights Knoxville’s Success

Law enforcement leaders in Knoxville report that after seeing a record-high number of murders in 2020, five years of compassionate, proactive policing have brought that statistic plummeting down to historically low rates.

The conversation was perhaps the most surprising to take place during last week's Chamber of Commerce of West Alabama Benchmarking Trip to Knoxville, Tennessee, a two-day whirlwind of meetings and panels with local leaders across as many sectors as possible.

More than five dozen ambassadors from the Tuscaloosa area were on the trip, and last Tuesday, they met with four leaders from police agencies in and around Knoxville.

"I'm happy to report that our murders are down 65 percent year-over-year," said David Powell, the assistant chief of the Knoxville Police Department. "The biggest complaint we get now is traffic. You know, people speeding, going too fast."

Nonfatal shootings are also way down, along with most other crime stats in Knoxville.

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Trending in Different Directions

Our local agencies share many commonalities with their Tennessee counterparts, including strong interagency cooperation between the city and University police departments, as well as a recent push to increase police pay and benefits to address the dwindling recruitment and retention of officers.

On the issue of violent crime, however, there's a vast divide. As previously reported, the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit investigated a record-high 29 homicides last year, with all but five taking place in Tuscaloosa city limits - though that number includes a pair of police killings and at least one case which may have been self-defense.

Meanwhile, Knoxville boasted their fourth consecutive reduction in homicides last year.

Just in 2025, there have been nine homicides in the city of Tuscaloosa, plus one in Northport and another in Cottondale. In Knoxville, a city of 200,000 people in a county of 500,000, city police said they have only investigated five so far this year.

So what's the trick? Especially considering that in 2020, Knoxville experienced their own record-high homicide numbers, with 38 in city limits and 45 total in Knox County.

TLC Zones for Compassionate, Proactive Policing

The answer, Chief Powell said, was not making more arrests, or more aggressive enforcement, or longer prison sentences - it was proactive improvement of the most crime-plagued areas in Knoxville. 

"Our place-based strategy zones - the mayor calls them the 'TLC Zones,'" Powell said. "We chose three or four of the most crime-ridden, gun-violent places in our neighborhoods and called them place-based zones."

After identifying the first zone, Knoxville flooded it with police officers, but also provided access to resources for addressing problems that can historically lead to higher crime rates.

“We partnered with city administration, we partnered with public works, and we went into these communities and we said, 'Hey, we're here to change what's going on. We're here to change and make your life better, make your home a better place," Powell said. "We looked at lighting, we looked at trash on the streets. We brought public service in to clean up, put new lights in, and we sent officers in there to do walking patrols - not to write tickets, but to collaborate and build relationships with those community members. The first one we chose was the most violent, had the most gun violence in the whole city. We went 13 months without one shooting in there when we did that.”

Seeing the strategy work, Knoxville branched out and identified more 'TLC Zones' - one in the east, west and central regions of the city. Similar results followed, and violent crime rates have continued to fall.

"I can be in the community, and I don't have to write you a ticket to enforce the laws. It's just communicating with you and saying, 'Hey, we're here. We want to help. Not only us as a police department, but the city as well.'  That’s what we credit for the murder reduction," Powell said. "Before [Chief Paul Noel] got here in 2021, we were at 38, 39 murders. This past year, we were down to 18 or 19. We fell every year. And that 65 percent reduction we mentioned is down from last year's 19 murders. So last year, at this time, we were sitting at 14 to 15, and we're at five today so far this year.”

Five so far this year - about half as many as we have experienced in much-smaller Tuscaloosa.

DOWNWARD TRENDS EVERYWHERE BUT HOMICIDES

One important note is that crime is down in Tuscaloosa across almost all categories, and the decline is particularly notable when examining five years of data.

Burglaries, robberies, vehicle thefts, and break-ins are all occurring about half as often as they did in 2020, according to TPD data. Still, the Tuscaloosa Violent Crimes Unit reports investigating 24 killings within the city in 2024 - an all-time high, as far as modern reporting can show.

"Our burglaries, in 2019, were 714. In all of last year, we had 323. That's a 54 percent reduction. Robberies in 2019 were 197. Last year, there were 60. Vehicle theft in 2019 was 454, last year was 210," said Tuscaloosa Police Chief Brent Blankley in a Monday interview with the Thread. "Every element that we're looking at here has decreased by at least half over the past five years. But murders did not - we had a high murder count last year, and that's something that we didn't like to see."

It is also important to note that the VCU is among the most effective investigative teams in the region, maybe the country. Their almost perfect close rate is unheard of - the latest FBI data released shows about 60 percent of all homicides are cleared by arrest or other means. For the VCU, that number is very close to 100 percent.

Blankley said after a serious shooting or a confirmed homicide, TPD officers, Northport Police, UAPD and Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's deputies working for the VCU all flood the zone and get to work, whereas other departments might send one or two detectives to sort out a scene.

"We bring out a whole team, and these guys and girls, they start working," Blankley said. "Typically, they don't go home till somebody's in jail or they have a warrant. I've known them to work two days straight on some crimes."

So make no mistake - homicides don't go unsolved here, and anyone who commits a violent crime can expect to answer for it.

CAUSES OF THE SPIKE, AND SOLUTIONS FOR IT

Blankley said it's hard to pinpoint one cause for the high number of homicides in the city last year, and things are already trending better in 2025 - though Tuscaloosa has seen nine homicides in the city this year, he said that's down from 12 at the same time in '24.

Part of the surge seemed to be a spike in domestic violence cases - romantic partners, exes, or family members killing people they knew well.

"Last year, it seems like there were a lot more domestic issues where people who were close or intimate had issues that led to those murders," Blankley said. "They weren't random or anything like that. There was a relationship there."

That's hard to prevent - 1,000 patrol officers on the street would likely not be able to prevent a crime of passion unfolding behind closed doors in someone's apartment.

Even so, Chief Blankley said TPD is trying, especially in cases where another crime of violence might be a precursor to a killing.

"I'm not going to say [these homicides] are not preventable, because when you see a trend with domestic violence, you usually see where you have that first and second arrest," Blankley said. "We can't be in every home, so when we do go on those first, second, and third calls, we try to inform the victim that this is not going to get better, it's a cycle, and it's going to get worse. We give them resources to get out, but we also understand it's very hard to get out."

Blankley also said TPD and the city of Tuscaloosa work proactively to improve the city, making it a safer and more beautiful place to live. It may not be as intensive as a TLC Zone in Knoxville, but Blankley said efforts included adding enhanced lighting and security cameras in public parks and roads, employing a full-time community police chief in Severn "Sebo" Sanders, putting a fresh focus on de-escalating mental health crises, and more.

TPD employs seven full-time mental health officers and 25 other employees who are certified for crisis intervention, the department says.

There are also targeted efforts underway all the time, utilizing the broken windows theory and teaming up with City Hall to address blight where they see it, Blankley said.

Lastly, the chief noted that even in the wake of such a difficult year, people should not be scared to live in or visit Tuscaloosa.

"One murder is too many, but these were not random acts in the city, where people would need to fear that when they're walking around, something's going to happen to them," Blankley said. "Tuscaloosa is a very safe city."

For ongoing coverage of crime & courts in West Alabama and for at least one more story from the Benchmarking Trip to Knoxville, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.