Knoxville Mayor Madeline Rogero and Chief David Rausch today named Donna Patty and Suzanne Mantooth the 2016 Co-Employees of the Year for the Knoxville Police Department.

 Ms. Patty has been with KPD since December 1990 while Ms. Mantooth has been with the department since March 1994.  Ms. Patty, the TIBRS Editor and Ms. Mantooth, the Assistant TIBRS Editor, are responsible for seeing that all of the department’s reports are submitted to the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) in an accurate and timely manner.  

Donna and Suzanne read every crime report and arrest report that is created by our officers, which exceeds 30,000 reports a year.  The reports must be read to ensure that the information contained in the narrative coincides with the type of report documented. When it does not, they work with the officer and their supervisor to not only correct the issue, but to train them in the correct reporting procedure.

The TIBRS report must be submitted by the 10th of each month and must contain an error rate of less than four percent.  Three consecutive months of submissions with an error rate of more than four percent will result in the decertification of the department.  Decertification would also result in the loss of grant funding of which some would be permanent.   

In January 2016, the various records management and field based reporting vendors were notified by TBI that several rules for TIBRS submissions were changing.  The new rules took effect July 01, 2016.  Unfortunately, this was not a smooth transition for departments throughout the state.  KPD’s error rate went from less than one-percent to over fifty-eight percent.  Due to Donna and Suzanne’s tireless work the issues were corrected and the error rate dropped to 0.10%.  Due to their work and professional relationship with the TBI, all Tennessee agencies that had high error rates due to the imposed changes were given the opportunity to resubmit their reports.  

We thank Donna and Suzanne for their tireless efforts and congratulate them on a job well done.

Click here to view a listing of KPD award winners.