Mayor Jacobs unhappy state monitors movement of Tennesseans

Knox County's mayor said Thursday he has doubts about the recently-issued stay at home order.

Shortly before his daily press briefing, Governor Bill Lee announced he was issuing a stay at home order to curb the impact of COVID-19 across the state.

Knox County Mayor Glenn Jacobs said later that day that he "applauded" the governor for making a decision in what he believed to be was in the state's best interests.

"However, I cannot applaud any government monitoring the movements of its people and mandating virtually everything," he said on a Facebook live.

Jacobs went on to acknowledge the seriousness of the virus, but added, "we'll face an economic crisis, with millions of people out of work and no way to earn a living, many of them due to mandated government shutdowns."

He pointed to the "looming mental health crisis." Jacobs announced this week that there have been 12 suicides in the region within the last two weeks, eight of them in Knox County.

He went on to say that the state faces a "political crisis as our state and nation must determine a way to walk back from the damage currently being done to our system of free government."

Jacobs said Knox County would comply with the order.