Mayor Bill Haslam, Actor David Keith, Knoxville Police Chief Sterling Owen IV, Knox County Sheriff JJ Jones, FBI Special Agent in Charge Richard Lambert, and PROTECT Executive Director Grier Weeks announced Wednesday at Ashley Nicole Playground that PROTECT, a national pro-child and anti-crime organization, is locating its national headquarters to Knoxville.
The National Association to Protect Children, or PROTECT, is a nonpartisan, pro-child, anti-crime membership association founded in 2002 and dedicated exclusively to the issue of child protection.
It has members in all 50 states, and does most of its work in the state legislatures, from New York to California and Illinois to Arkansas.
It was instrumental in Congress recently passing a law that requires the Attorney General to submit to Congress a National Strategy for Child Exploitation Prevention and Intervention.