It’s Christmas Week, a great time to introduce you to a young, new officer for the Knoxville Police Department (KPD) – Savannah Ray. A few weeks ago Santa arrived early for a group of kids at the Montgomery Village Boys & Girls Club in South Knoxville.
It was Savannah. While patrolling her beat, she stopped to watch a group of kids playing with an old, deflated football at Montgomery Village. Her heart kicked in and she was off to Walmart. When she returned, she had a bunch of new footballs and hula hoops. For the kids, it was special, as it was for her.
Savannah Ray
“One of my favorite things is going to the Boys & Girls Club there,” this 25-year-old officer says. “I love working with and being with the kids there. We (KPD) serve them and their community. And I’d rather see these kids being outside and enjoying playing instead of playing video games inside.”
Her plan was to keep her Santa job quiet. “She bought the footballs and hula hoops of her own volition using her own money, and we would never have found out about it if not for a call that one of our supervisors received from someone at Montgomery Village,” says Scott Erland, KPD’s public information officer.
And there’s also this – when it works with her schedule, she spends time reading to youngsters at the club. “As much as I can I like to hang out with the kids there, play some tag football and basketball after school with them,” Ray said. “And talk with them and get to know them and let them get to know me.”
In these troubling times for law enforcement, an officer like Ray and what she does makes a big difference.
Just as she is new to the KPD, she’s new to Knoxville. She came here in 2019 with her now ex-husband. Ray is a native of the flatlands of Abilene, Kansas, who was reared in a poor family full of domestic abuse. “When I was young there were two police officers who really saved me and my brothers during our family problems. I don’t know their names, but what they did, their real concern for us, made me want to be a cop,” she says. “It wasn’t just one time. They kept coming back to see if we were OK.”
But on the way here she took a detour to Raleigh, North Carolina, for a try at a career she thought could make her real money – welding. She enrolled at Wake Technical Community College to learn the welding trade and had a few internships. She soon realized welding was not the career she wanted. Then came the move to Knoxville, the divorce and a job search. She worked in the restaurant industry for a while and then decided to apply to the KPD in 2019.
“My grandfather was a sheriff in Kansas and I think I knew down deep I wanted to be a cop,” she said. After graduating from high school in 2014, she earned a degree in Criminal Justice from Bethany College in West Virginia.
Ray was in KPD’s 2020-B recruit academy and took her oath of office in February 2021. She is currently assigned to patrol in the East District and patrols one of the south Knoxville beats, which includes Montgomery Village.
“There are a lot of great people in Montgomery Village and a lot of history there. I love the place and the people and it’s special for me to spend time getting to know them,” Ray said. “It’s a slow process of building relationships but it’s also one of the most rewarding things we can do.”
This young officer has also fallen in love with Knoxville, East Tennessee and the mountains. “In Kansas there are miles and miles of flat country and the mountains here are so beautiful. So are the people. WeSav get more respect and love from them than people here may think.”
Away from the beat, she has two passions. One is reading. She tries to read 100 books a year. The other is Shadow, her 7-year-old Blue Pitbull. When it’s warm, she says, they walk the greenways in town and the trails in the Great Smoky Mountains National Park.
“I really do love this job. For me, it’s a calling, like being a nurse or a teacher. It didn’t take me long to realize that. We’re all here to help people and it is my true calling.”
Erland made a video of Officer Ray while she was in the KPD Academy in training. It gives you a good idea about who she is and why she is here.
Tom King has served at newspapers in Georgia, Tennessee, Texas and California and was the editor of two newspapers. Suggest future stories at tking535@gmail.com or call him at 865-659-3562.