Christine Mullan is the chief nerd in the Knoxville Police Department’s six-person Criminal Analysis Unit (CAU). It’s a small specialty team, but a very large part of the KPD’s crime-prevention initiatives, where officers are assigned, where and when crimes occur, and it is even involved in evaluating high-accident traffic intersections.
And be clear about this – the unit’s biggest cheerleader is Police Chief Paul Noel.
Here are the chief’s thoughts about Mullan and the unit: “Christine and the entire Crime Analysis Unit are a critical piece of everything we are doing. We are striving to be a department that makes data-informed decisions to manage all aspects of our department, positively impact crime and put our officers in the right place at the right time. Christine is helping to lead those efforts, and I am grateful for her daily work.”
Mullan is an 18-year KPD veteran who was hired into the CAU as a mapping specialist in 2006. In November 2021 she was promoted to the unit’s chief supervisory position. She earned a bachelor’s degree in criminal justice from Bellevue University and an associate degree from Pellissippi State Community College in geographic information systems (computerized mapping).
KPD criminal analyst Christine Mullan (center) honored as the 2023 Civilian Employee of the Year by Mayor Indya Kincannon and Police Chief Paul Noel
If you know the accent, it takes about a second to know that Mullan is either from Ireland or Northern Ireland – and it’s the latter. She came to the United States 25 years ago from her small hometown of Portaferry, in the southeastern part of the country. Her parents still live there. Her father is retired from the Merchant Marine and she is one of five children.
It’s true – she is a KPD civilian employee – no uniform, wears no badge, carries neither a weapon, a taser nor a nightstick. She does not drive a patrol car or patrol a beat. But inside the halls of KPD, she’s an Our Town Hero, a two-time honoree as the KPD Civilian Employee of the Year – in 2023 and in 2014. Much of what KPD officers and detectives do depends in part on Mullan and her unit as the CAU works daily in a support role in the department. “The officers and detectives are the most important, especially the field operations officers who are the face of the department,” she said.
The CAU is heavily involved in several noteworthy initiatives. In particular, Mullan has played an instrumental role in KPD’s participation in the Department of Justice’s National Public Safety Partnership (PSP), collecting data and preparing presentations at PSP meetings. It also plays a key role in the ongoing development of violence reduction and mitigation strategies. Mullan has taken several trips to outside law enforcement agencies, including Los Angeles, Oakland and Baltimore to learn about their “Compstat” (computer statistics) programs and shooting review meetings to help guide strategies here.
Mullan has also been instrumental in the ongoing development of the KPD Real-Time Information Center, assisting in the process of researching and developing best practices.
She says each member of the unit has their “niche.” This is the team:
- Christine Mullan – Lead Analyst
- Sandra Hicks – Traffic
- Amy Johnson – Crime Data
- Calvin Cox – Intelligence
- Samantha DeTavernier – Persons Crimes
- Emma Kelly – Property Crimes
“In our unit everyone has to be self-motivated. We always have an opportunity to dig deeper into these cases and identify the trends. There is always something to do,” Mullan said. “This is a very high tempo work environment. It’s always busy and everyone here has a high degree of natural curiosity.”
Team members also enjoy being on a KPD specialty team – Mullan has been on the Search & Rescue team for 12 years and Cox is a teammate there, while DeTavernier is on the Drone team.
Looking back, the historic unrest between the Catholics and the Protestants in Northern Ireland makes Mullan wonder about her law enforcement career. “As a Catholic in Northern Ireland, I would have never imagined myself working in a police department anywhere because not many Catholics worked in the police barracks at home.”
But, she quickly adds: “I love it here and I love my job. You’re not going to make a fortune in this work but I’m not doing it for the money. Our team enjoys this work and it’s a lot of fun around here.”
And never think the Irish are far away from their favorite pub. In fact, Mullan’s favorite pub is her dining room when she hosts a weekly Friday Pub Night, complete with a kegerator in her garage that dispenses “Wall Beer” through a tap in the dining room wall. A kegerator, a blend of the words keg and refrigerator, is designed or altered to store and dispense beer.
In 2022 she was heavily involved when Chief Noel created a new Central District patrol area. “We broke down the map and the statistics to see where the new beats needed to be based on what crimes were happening and where and when,” she explained. “That was very important for 911 dispatch.” Her work on this was a big part of her honor last year.
Every week her team is part of the Compstat meeting with the KPD Command Staff. They review statistics from the previous week … the crimes, locations, and whether their work impacted the crimes using measures and metrics.
The first thing she does at work is study daily reports from the previous 24 hours, looking for specific crimes, checking the names of those arrested, looking for patterns. Each analyst also reviews these reports daily. One morning she noticed that a suspect in an armed robbery was described as having a “pock-marked face.” That rang a bell. “I remembered this little detail from some previous reports and started digging. I found it. Same guy we identified in a 2017 robbery and it turns out he was involved in eight robberies. He was arrested.”
Sometimes, all it takes is a nerd.
Tom King has been the editor of newspapers in Texas and California and also worked in Tennessee and Georgia. If you have someone you think we should consider featuring, please email him at the link with his name or text him at 865-659-3562.