Divisions and Services
Divisions and Functional Areas
The Sheriff is the chief law enforcement official in the county and is responsible for all county law enforcement efforts within those boundaries. It has been the tradition of sheriffs to not merely enforce law, a more stringent idea that follows the word of law almost exclusively, but to be more flexible and to police, an idea that entertains public opinion and creates healthy community engagements. Though on the surface it may seem that all law enforcement services are the same, they really are not and it takes specialized training within each discipline to work at an effective level in order to truly police the community.
Sheriff's throughout the world have varying degrees of the amounts of services that they provide to their communities. Here in Knox County the Sheriff is responsible for several functional areas that are referred to as divisions; divisions are the breakout of certain disciplines of the Sheriff's law enforcement powers. Not all the services are provided throughout the county but they are available to any person within the county upon request. Due to the amount of work within a division, some divisions are further broken down into functional areas. These functional areas are described within the divisions page.
The current divisions are: