KNOXVILLE — Twenty-seven of the roughly 143 Flock Safety license-plate cameras Knox County Sheriff’s Office began wrapping in privacy cloth this week, ahead of an Oct. 7 removal deadline, were installed by the Knoxville Police Department, not the county, WATE reported — meaning a county removal order now covers hardware the county never owned.
KPD confirmed the arrangement without disputing it. The 27 units were installed under a since-lapsed 2019 mutual-aid data-sharing agreement and were never transferred to county ownership on paper, though they have fed the county’s network for years. "Those 27 units are operationally the county’s problem now," department spokesman Warren Tice said, adding the phrasing had been "cleared with legal before anyone asked," a distinction he described as important to the department’s paperwork rather than to the cameras themselves.
The wrinkle reached Knox County’s Vendor Displeasure Matrix, the vendor-accountability rubric procurement coordinator Brenda Loy has expanded twice since spring. Loy said she is adding a seventh tier, "Jurisdictionally Exempt," reserved for equipment installed by an agency Commission has no authority to direct anywhere. "It sits above Compliance, Pending and below the tier we don’t say out loud," Loy said, declining to name which existing camera vendor currently occupies that unspoken slot.
The county’s own contractor, Fabricare Wholesale of Maryville, delivered the privacy shields Tuesday: 143 sleeves of weatherproof polyester twill, the same material sold for patio-furniture covers, cut to camera-housing spec at $34 apiece. The invoice lists the KPD-installed units under the same line item as the rest, with no distinction by ownership — the shields, unlike the cameras, cover the jurisdictional question completely.
Commission ordered the county’s roughly 140 cameras removed within 30 days on Sept. 1; Flock Safety told the county last week the actual removal work won’t finish until Oct. 7. The cameras, city- and county-owned alike, continue recording underneath the cloth.