For me, accountability in the Sean Williams case has four parts: tell the truth about what happened, hold people responsible where the evidence warrants it, change the systems and culture that allowed failures to occur, and independently verify that those changes are working.
Paying settlements is not accountability by itself. Neither is adding training or simply saying that things are different now. The public should be able to see what went wrong, what changed, who is responsible for sustaining those changes, and whether those changes are working.
Most importantly, victims who walk into the Johnson City Police Department today should receive the professional response they should have received all along.
So what does true accountability require, and who is responsible for making it happen?
1. Tell the truth: Transparency about what happened
City Commission: practice full transparency. The Commission must publish every investigative report, audit, finding, corrective-action plan, and other relevant record that can legally be released. That includes the fullest legally available information about the TBI and FBI investigations. When the City cannot release something, it must explain specifically why. Residents should not have to piece together the truth through lawsuits and news reports.
I called for this public accounting in 2025. I also asked the Commission to hold a town hall where residents could ask questions and receive answers through actual dialogue, rather than being limited to three-minute public comments. That still matters.
State and federal authorities: disclose what they legally can about their investigations. District Attorney Steve Finney reported that the TBI conducted a thorough investigation and found no credible evidence to support allegations of criminal corruption. He also said FBI officials told him their investigation had concluded without substantiating corruption, bribery, or other criminal misconduct.
Those conclusions matter. However, the public has seen far less of the underlying investigations than of the independent Daigle audit. The TBI, FBI, prosecutors, and City should release any findings and records permitted by law. Residents deserve to understand not only the conclusions, but also how investigators reached them.
2. Hold people and institutions accountable
City Commission and City Manager: publicly account for every Daigle finding. The Daigle audit identified eight areas of concern. They included inadequate supervision, deficient case documentation, problems with closing cases, insufficient investigation of misconduct complaints, inadequate training, policies that fell short of professional standards, and gender bias in sexual-assault investigations.
The City must maintain a public corrective-action matrix. It must identify each finding, the action taken, the person responsible, whether an independent party has verified the correction, and any items that remain unfinished.
JCPD leadership and the City Manager: establish real supervisory accountability. Daigle found that supervision failed to ensure that investigations were full, fair, and complete. Supervisors must regularly review open and closed cases, cases in which victims stopped participating, recorded interviews, and feedback from victims and advocates.
When personnel fail to follow established procedures, leadership must document corrective action. Another training session cannot always be the answer.
JCPD Internal Affairs and City leadership: investigate misconduct complaints. Daigle specifically called for JCPD to promptly investigate all misconduct complaints, including anonymous ones. Employees also need credible ways to raise concerns without fearing retaliation. A healthy organization identifies problems early instead of allowing them to grow into crises.
District Attorney, TBI, and FBI: act if new evidence emerges. A City Commissioner cannot direct a criminal investigation or prosecution, and I would never pretend otherwise. Those decisions belong to the appropriate state and federal authorities. Finney has said that he will refer additional evidence to the TBI and reconsider his decision if new information emerges. The City must cooperate fully with any investigation and preserve and provide relevant records.
3. Change the systems and culture that failed victims
True accountability in the Sean Williams case also requires preventing these failures from happening again.
JCPD leadership: make reforms permanent. The department must institutionalize victim-centered, trauma-informed sexual-assault investigations. That includes appropriate evidence collection, interviews of witnesses and suspects, victim advocates, specialized investigators, proper case documentation, and supervisory review. These reforms respond directly to failures identified by Daigle.
JCPD: change the culture around sexual-assault victims. This may be the most important long-term challenge. Daigle found that investigative shortcomings appeared to stem partly from misconceptions and stereotypes about women and sexual-assault victims. The audit specifically identified gender-based stereotypes and bias.
Policies matter, but organizational culture determines how people apply those policies every day. Changing that culture requires clear expectations from leadership, ongoing trauma-informed and bias training, careful selection and supervision of investigators, and consequences for personnel who violate professional standards.
City Commission and JCPD: rebuild relationships with victims and community organizations. Accountability cannot happen entirely inside City Hall. Victim advocates and organizations that work with survivors should have an ongoing role in evaluating how the system works in practice. Residents also deserve meaningful opportunities to ask questions, raise concerns, and hear directly from City leadership beyond three-minute public comments.
4. Independently verify that the changes are working
City Commission: require independent oversight. We cannot simply accept assurances that reforms are working. The settlement already establishes an important mechanism through ongoing monitoring and audits of sexual-assault investigations. I consider that a floor, not a ceiling.
Serious complaints and incidents must receive credible, independent review. The Commission must also receive regular public reports on compliance, corrective actions, and outcomes.
City Commission and JCPD: publish meaningful performance measures. Residents should be able to see whether reforms produce results. JCPD must publicly report appropriate aggregate measures of complaints, internal investigations, sexual assault cases, case dispositions, training, staffing, response times, and other meaningful indicators, while protecting victims’ privacy.
As I have said in my public-safety platform, we should measure what matters and improve what we measure.
Accountability in the Sean Williams case also means fiscal accountability
The consequences of these failures were also financial.
Johnson City approved a $28 million settlement and later another $2.64 million settlement involving child victims. Those payments had a substantial impact on City reserves.
I have repeatedly argued that residents deserve a transparent plan for rebuilding those reserves. Taxpayers cannot always be on the hook to pay for past failures through higher taxes. We must receive a clear accounting of what happened, how City finances will recover, and how we will reduce the risk of another failure of this magnitude.
Accountability is not scapegoating, and it is not anti-police
We must also be precise about what accountability means. True accountability requires holding individuals responsible where the evidence supports it. It also requires confronting institutional failures even when conduct does not meet the legal standard for criminal prosecution.
The Daigle report documented serious shortcomings in how JCPD handled sexual-assault investigations. Separately, the TBI investigation did not substantiate allegations of criminal corruption, according to District Attorney Finney, who also reported that the FBI investigation concluded without substantiating criminal misconduct.
Both facts matter. We should neither dismiss documented institutional failures by declaring that “nothing happened” nor accuse people of crimes that investigators have not established.
And accountability should not be confused with being anti-police. Johnson City needs an effective, professional police department. As our city grows, JCPD needs appropriate staffing, equipment, training, leadership, and resources to keep people safe. Holding law enforcement to high standards and equipping officers with the tools to meet them go together.
Ultimately, accountability in the Sean Williams case means more than settling lawsuits or closing investigations. It means telling the truth about what went wrong, correcting the failures we have identified, supporting victims, changing the culture that contributed to those failures, and proving to the public that the reforms work.
That is how we begin to rebuild trust. And that is how we make sure this never happens again.
