Every day, it seems, someone’s career, marriage or public life is harmed, hammered or wrecked, because they thought their texts would be seen only by the person receiving them. But you write it, you own it. And now this has appeared in Knoxville in the publicly-shared texts of Police Chief Paul Noeland a female subordinate.
There’s a lot of this going around. There are a stunning number of stories of teachers sending inappropriate texts and photos to students – and the teacher winds up suspended, fired, arrested or prosecuted. A recent event: a 25-year-old Kentucky teacher accused of grooming a 14-year-old middle school student.
The latest public scrutiny of former National Institute of Health Director Dr. Anthony Fauci included previously unseen
texts on the potential for miscarriages among pregnant women who were administered the COVID-19 vaccine.
A reporter was somehow included on the receivers list of Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s war plans for U.S. bombing in Yemen.
Jay Jones, in 2025 the Democratic Party candidate for Virginia attorney general, saw his campaign nearly derailed by 2022 text messages, writing in a text that Republican House Todd Gilbert getting “two bullets to the head,” and about Gilbert’s children dying. Jones apologized – when it became public - and won anyway.
Each time such news surfaces, the question is “How could they be so stupid?”
Yes, how? With so much evidence of so much textual destruction occurring, how can someone prominent in the public domain be so careless, so unaware, so … stupid … to put their lives on the (figurative) line by texting something potentially embarrassing that the whole world might eventually see?
Knoxville Police Chief Paul Noel got caught up in a maelstrom of controversy over texts to a female subordinate. Mayor Indya Kincannon – under the city charter the only person who can discipline the chief - suspended the top cop for 30 days without pay, and he must undergo counseling and leadership training.
The News Sentinel reported the chief’s infractions: “The mayor's office commissioned an independent investigation of Noel's messages to patrol officer Jasmine Reed, and it identifies five standards in KPD's code of conduct that Noel violated: code of ethics, general responsibilities, unbecoming conduct, sexual misconduct and general misconduct. Violations of three of the standards are fireable offenses.”
There are various publicly released reasons why Kincannon didn’t fire Noel, among them: he did nothing illegal, nothing happened apart from texts, both parties cooperated in the investigation, and other reasons. Unsaid is that finding and naming a new police chief would be a huge challenge in the about 16 months remaining in Kincannon’s term.
Perhaps the most prominent reason she didn’t take stronger action is that Noel, by all the numbers, has been an excellent police chief since June 2022, when he took the reins of a problem-plagued department. A Nov. 12, 2021, story announcing then-Police Chief Eve Thomas’s retirement, in which Kincannon and Thomas said nice things about each other, also referenced a “skyrocketing homicide rate and crippling internal investigations.”
Three years later, on Noel’s watch, crime is down. Way down. His strategy involved analytics: determining through research where the most crime was taking place and putting resources toward dealing with it where it was happening, not only waiting to react. It’s more complicated than that, but in any case, KPD figures show that in 2026’s first quarter there were no murders, possibly for the first time since 1988, and compared to 2025 non-fatal shootings plummeted 82%, burglaries and breaking-and-entering fell 35%, car burglaries were down 64%, vehicle thefts dropped 42%.
A reason for Kincannon to keep Noel on is found in history. When during the Civil War President Abraham Lincoln was pressured to fire Gen. Ulysses S. Grant, Lincoln reportedly answered, “I can’t spare this man; he fights.”
Kincannon may be thinking, “I can’t spare this man; he fights crime.”
Mayors are judged in large measure on public safety during their tenure. Noel has accomplished important things for the city and Kincannon: crime is down, the department’s internal strife has calmed – and, most importantly, the police department isn’t in the news all the time because of controversy. Until recently, anyway. Noel wrote it, he owns it.
But evidence shows that Knoxville residents and businesses have benefited from Noel sitting in the chief’s chair. Here’s hoping he can reestablish trust, and that there are no other surprises dripping into the cup that would cause it to overflow. The stigma will stick with him for a while, but he’s proven he can do the job. Now he can prove he should stay in the job.
All factors considered, losing him, in a manner of speaking, would be a crime.
George Korda is a political analyst for WATE-TV, hosts “State Your Case” 5-7 p.m. Sundays on WOKI-FM Newstalk 98.7 and is president of Korda Communications, a public relations and communications consulting firm.
This article originally appeared on Knoxville News Sentinel: With texts, you write it, you own it | Opinion
