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Message from the Chief

On behalf of the men and women of the University of Tennessee Police Department, welcome to our website and thank you for visiting. We are proud of our department and are committed to providing professional law enforcement services to the UT community. The purpose of this website is to provide quick, easy to find information about general safety as well as resources.

The University of Tennessee, Knoxville, is a relatively safe campus; however, we are just like every other campus in the nation and are not immune to criminal activity. Without question, the majority of crime in our community is theft, which is a crime of opportunity.

On any given day there are more than 30,000 people who traverse the campus and several thousand more in the contiguous communities. We work closely with local law enforcement to minimize criminal activity and the opportunity for it to occur; however, safety is a shared responsibility, and we enlist our community members to assist us by taking responsibility for their personal safety.

We offer a variety of crime prevention and community education programs. Although the entire department is engaged in prevention activities, the Community Relations Unit (CRU) serves as the point of contact and orchestrates the majority of these programs. Please take a moment to visit the Educational Programming page and determine which program(s) may be best for you or your group.

Thank you again for visiting our site. It is a pleasure and honor to serve the UT community, and again, we invite you to join us in the pursuit of maintaining a safe campus. Feel free to contact me if you have any questions or comments.

Sean Patterson
Chief of Police