In fall 1968 UT Safety and Security (now UT Police) formed a cadre of over 30 UT employees to serve as part-time auxiliary security officers who could be activated when needed in such instances as campus unrest (or in 1974, streaking). Paid time and a half for their auxiliary work, the auxiliary officers received training and were furnished uniforms by UT Safety and Security, and they carried firearms. They assisted with crowd control and traffic management during home football games.
Following a football game on November 8, 1975, David Latham, an auxiliary policeman helping with traffic control (and an employee of the Physical Plant Department), fired through the rear window of a car driven by Knoxville businessman Ken Faulkner, who was driving to a fraternity house on University Drive—a street closed to traffic other than fraternity house residents during football traffic control. The .38-caliber bullet passed through the car without hitting Faulkner and his passenger and shattered the front windshield. Latham was suspended both from the auxiliary force and his Physical Plant Paint Shop job. Col. Arthur Whitehead, head of UT Security, announced on November 12 that auxiliary officers would no longer routinely carry firearms but would be armed only when the head of security deemed it necessary.