- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Community conversations about crime in Memphis, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

Over the course of the summer, The Daily Memphian commissioned a series of community conversations, focus groups of sorts, in five different areas, five different neighborhoods, or groups of neighborhoods in the city, about 75 participants, who were to talk about crime.

Talk about their perceptions of crime, how crime has impacted their lives, solutions of crime, and root causes of crime.

And I'm very pleased tonight to have the two people who ran those conversations, Beverly Robertson and Howard Robertson.

Thank you guys for being here.

- Thank you, thank you.

- We appreciate being here.

- Absolutely, along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Why don't we start, the report itself is a really comprehensive report of the folks you talked to in these different 90-minute or so conversations.

A couple things, we promised the folks that they'd have anonymity, and that that was important, so they could be very open, and you know, there's some quotes from them and there's some references, and you can talk about the kind of people who were there, but they were anonymous.

And that was to get unfiltered answers.

We folks at The Daily Memphian had some names, you all had some names, the people who hosted had names.

So talk about the five neighborhoods, talk about the process of who were there, and then we'll get into some of the recommendations, conclusions, and perceptions.

- Okay, all right.

So the people who were, well first of all, let's talk about the neighborhoods that were covered.

We were in Soulsville, south Memphis.

We were in Hickory Hill, east Memphis, Orange Mound, downtown, midtown.

We were in Whitehaven airport area, Westwood, and we were in Frayser, Raleigh, kinda north Memphis.

And so the individuals that attended the sessions were really interesting.

There were some business leaders, some real grassroots folks, even some activists, some young people were in the meetings.

So it was really a broad cross section of people that either lived or worked in the area, and had the ability to be able to get to those meetings.

And that's why the meetings were so great and there was so much robust conversation, because it was a mix and a diversity of people who attended, in the real sense of the word.

They were white, they were black, they were from other cultures.

And so it was really a great opportunity for us to hear from all kinds of Memphians on this subject.

- Average of 15 per session, and that was a good number because it wasn't too many, and everybody would get to talk.

And they were very, very forthcoming and passionate, obviously, about the topic, and it went very, very well.

- So before we get Bill to ask questions, and again, I should say to folks, you can get the full report on The Daily Mempian site, just search for community conversations, or Howard Robertson, Beverly Robertson.

But under community conversations, you'll get it.

Key takeaways, I'll start with you Beverly, at a high level, and then we'll dig into things.

- Well, there was clearly validation that police presence is everything in neighborhoods, and that we need police, clearly.

I was expecting some divergence on that, but there was a lot of alignment across communities, across cultures, diverse segments of the population.

I think what was really surprising about this, when you asked the question about whose responsibility is it to address crime?

Yeah, you got some of the normal answers.

The mayor, the elected officials, the MPD, but most importantly, every focus group had people, the majority of folks, owning the fact that the community is responsible, and we need to own the problem, and we've gotta do something about the problem.

And I'll let Howard talk a little bit about the three P's that came out of it, because I thought that was really important too, you know, and so Howard.

- Three P's that came out and we deemed them the three P's.

I mean, they didn't call them that.

We're in the marketing business, so we do stuff like that.

But it began with personal responsibility, parental responsibility, and poverty was the third P. And these are the leading, as they say, these are the leading things that impact crime the most.

And I mean, the key takeaway for me was the passion of the people and the participation.

They were happy to be there, to have been asked to participate.

And they were very, very passionate in their ideas and their thoughts.

And the other thing was, they love their city.

Whether they were originally from here or not, wherever they were from, they love Memphis, and they're loyal to Memphis.

Nobody talked about getting up, picking up and moving.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- And at the outset of each one of these conversations, I believe you did a show of hands and said, "How many of you have have been impacted "specifically by crime?

"How many of you have been a victim of crime, or know someone who's been a victim of crime?"

- Violent crime.

- Violent crime, right.

And it looked to me like, in the responses, that in areas where that was a very high percentage of each group, that you tended to see people saying, "We need to put out this fire right now.

We need to deal with it now."

The long range stuff is fine, but the more victims of violent crime are people who knew someone who had been affected by violent crime, the more that those groups tended to say, "Do what you have to do and put this out now," am I correct on that?

- You are really correct, and as we noted, I actually thought that there were some areas that would have been stronger, would've had a stronger opinion, because in those areas there is a higher propensity for crime.

But I was also interested, and it was very interesting to find out that one area in particular was very, very passionate about getting the police in the area, doing things with organizations, creating recreational opportunities, holding parents accountable for the actions of their children.

And in fact, across the board, everybody thought that there has got to be a better way to hold parents accountable for the actions of their children.

And I thought that was very significant.

But I will agree that those people who are most affected by crime were really strong in their opinions of making sure that something is done immediately about it.

- Right, and I think the other thing that I noted in that though, was that it wasn't an either/or proposition.

That it seemed to be that what we're talking about is how the balance is struck between them.

Because as you both know, and as we've seen in our reporting, citywide we tend to go from one thing to the other.

If something really bad happens, we say, "Well, where are the police?"

And if the police are accused of doing something wrong, we tend to say, "Well, we need to work on this.

We need to work on this," which tends to be a longer-term fix on it.

But you know, did you have any groups who said it's either/or?

- No, we had people that were, I was very, very impressed with the clarity of thought, and the substance.

They understand that there is no singular simple solution.

This is a complex problem.

Crime in our city is a complex problem, and they're not looking to a single person or a single thing to serve as a solution in this.

They know that this is a complex, and it requires a comprehensive, complex solution, and they offered ideas.

- When you talk about things like parental responsibility, the first thing that comes to mind are the vast number of nonprofit programs that are out there.

What was the perception of those programs?

Things like, everything from family counseling, wraparound services, to also violence intervention.

I mean, do people think these things work?

- More and better.

- I- - More and better, they say.

- Well, more and better, but I think that they also think that they're not really accountable.

Those organizations sometimes are not accountable.

And there's the notion that they may be counting outputs and not outcomes.

So you're counting the number of people you serve, but what happens to those people?

You know, do you track them, is there any data behind it?

What are the metrics that help us to understand how your organization has changed what the outcomes are?

And I think that's it.

So there are a lot of nonprofits that have addressed poverty, but we're as poor as we were 50 years ago.

And so you have to ask yourself, who holds the organizations accountable?

Obviously the funders in some way do, but I think accountability is important for those organizations just as it's important for the school system and MPD, and other folks that impact the whole issue of crime.

- And Howard, to your point, you had some grassroots peoples in these focus groups, some of whom have seen small-scale programs work.

But the problem is to scale them up beyond that, or if scaling that up is the answer to this.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

And they know, again, it's a big, broad problem, especially the parental responsibility piece.

They talked about, and you know, when we were coming up, there was a thing called home training, and things that you got before you walked out the door, before you left home, and a lotta people said that's not happening anymore.

And the level of parenting has deteriorated tremendously.

So there needs to be some kind of reinforcement, and somebody needs to step in and help with that, and that's a pervasive problem.

- I'll say too, the results, it was striking to me, the results were roughly, were very much in line with a scientific survey we did of people in Memphis, and in Shelby County out of Memphis, back in March or April.

My sense of time is not great.

But it found a kind of all-of-the-above response.

It wasn't an either/or thing.

It was that people wanted more police, but they also wanted more interventions.

They wanted, you know, more parental, you know, people taking responsibility, but they also understood there was a role for the city and county and the courts, and so on.

And that was a really interesting one, 'cause the demographics of it, as did these focus groups, were in line with Memphis and the scientific survey.

But you know, the comprehensive survey was in line with the demographics.

One of the things that was not surprising, but striking in that survey, and it came out in your focus groups, was guns.

Overwhelmingly people want, both in the city and in the county outside the city, more restriction on guns, more permitting, more, it was a little less outside in the county, but not dramatically so, I mean maybe 10 points less.

Talk about how people talked about guns.

- Yeah, people really, who are looking at the news, they understand that juveniles are committing crimes more frequently, and usually those crimes are committed to find guns.

These kids are- - They break into cars- - Breaking in cars.

- Absolutely.

- The carjacking- - Absolutely.

- All of that is centered around guns, and they brandish those guns publicly, and there is nothing that happens to those folks.

And by the way, even if something happens around a gun issue and you take a young person to juvenile court, they often are released, because there's no place to house them.

So the criminal justice system is also a variable that needs to be effectively assessed, addressed, and actions need to be executed now.

- And what they had, the biggest, they're frustrated.

They're frustrated, they're upset, they're angry, and it's the lack of controls.

You know, everybody should not, in their opinion, be able to just go out and get a gun.

They are not pleased with that at all.

They are not pleased with elected officials for allowing this, who proposed this and allowed for this to happen, because it's decimating their communities.

- I wanna also come to the, what might be, it did surprise me when the survey came back this way.

The strong support across demographics, across the city, for more police.

I mean, lots of people would come on the show, or we would interview them for The Daily Memphian, who wanted more police, but then there are people saying, "No, we don't want that."

But overwhelmingly people want more police.

It was even striking, and it belies like the, you think about the national political conversation about police and politicians, and perceptions of police.

We had four candidates for mayor, black men, Democrats, all of whom wanted more police.

Van Turner, probably of the top four, the more liberal end of that, and ran that way.

One of the first things he did when he came on for his one-on-one interview to run for mayor, is I asked something about crime, and he took it immediately to police, and he said, "We need more police."

That's not what people think when, if you watch TV, you would think that liberals don't want cops, and the conservatives do, right?

There's that kind of simplification in the national cable news landscape.

Again that played out with police.

And you said at the top of the show, elaborate on that, about how the perceptions of the police, the role of the police, because obviously we're coming off a time of, you know, it's almost one year since Tyre Nichols, and that horrific tragedy.

I mean, police are a complicated notion and a complicated profession.

What'd you hear?

- Well, we heard several things.

One, that police need to build relationships with the communities that they serve.

That if they built stronger relationships, then they would be privy to information that they couldn't get otherwise, because they would trust you, if you had a relationship with them.

The second thing that I think was said over and over again, is that police give us a sense of security and comfort.

You know, if there is something going on in my neighborhood and we don't know what to do about it, if we had enough police, it would make us feel much more secure.

So I think it's an issue of security.

And then the other side of that is, so if you don't have police and you wanna, you know, put some actions in place that eliminates a portion of police, who's gonna take care of us?

I'm concerned about myself, my children, my neighborhood.

Who's going to really be out enforcing the law?

- And we've gotta avoid extremities.

We've got to avoid extremities.

So nobody, I challenge you to go to any, especially predominantly black communities, and ask around and see if they want less police presence.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no.

They want police, but they want good policemen.

They want good cops, okay?

They want cops that care about them.

They don't want cops coming in, shooting and beating and killing people.

- Of course.

- But police always, that's who you look to when something goes down, when something happens, who do you call?

And that's what, I mean, that has not gone away.

They want police presence.

They just want good representative, the best, you know, they want Memphis' finest.

- Yeah, yeah, nine minutes left here.

- You talked about at the top of this, that you didn't hear people saying, "Crime's so bad, we're gonna put the house up for sale, and we are gonna leave."

And I think you both know as well as I do, and Eric, you've certainly seen it too, that that's a big part of the Memphis narrative, of people saying, "I'm fed up with this, "I'm gonna put the house up for sale and move out to the suburbs," or, "I'm gonna leave the county," or something like that.

Were you expecting that you were gonna get that?

- I was, I actually thought- - I was.

- That in some of the groups, like I thought the east Memphis group, you know, because a lot of people who talked to me about that say that, "Well, my neighbors said," and that's where they live, in east Memphis.

So I actually did expect to hear at least one of the groups, somebody in one of the groups, express that.

Nobody expressed it.

In fact, in the east Memphis group, one guy was talking about how he wasn't from Memphis, but he loved Memphis and he was committed to doing it.

He didn't like the crime and we need to address it.

But you did not hear that in any of the groups.

- What do you think that means about where we are today?

Because I venture to say 10 years ago, 15 years ago, you probably would've heard that.

And let's be clear, crime didn't just become a major issue in this community in the last decade.

It's been there for a while.

I mean, for another story I was writing, I went back to some coverage that I did in the early 2000s, maybe late '90s, on this whole thing.

And I was writing about the, quote unquote, crime problem then.

So is this a sea change, in your view?

- I think so, I think this is a change.

I think more people are more urbanites, more people are in the city now, in the central core of the city, downtown, than ever before.

Ten years ago, if you had asked the same question, yeah, there would've been a lot more people talking about moving out to Collierville, or moving out to Germantown, or moving to the 'burbs.

But, but, now people are very, very much about the urban core of the city.

Love it, especially young people, particularly young people.

And they're not gonna be driven out.

And other thing you gotta remember, Memphians and people even that have, are newly-minted Memphians, are a special breed.

I mean, they call it "grit 'n' grind" for a reason.

So you're not gonna just, they're not just gonna pick up and punk out and move, you know?

They're gonna stay where they are, and help solve the problem, and fight back.

- There were a lot of talk about, what I'll broadly describe as, of issues around sort of public safety, feeling safe, that were, are more almost environmental issues and experiential issues.

And the two that really come to mind is blight, people talked about blight.

If I live in a neighborhood that's blighted and there's rundown houses, then I feel on edge and I don't feel safe.

If there's not good lighting, was a thing a lot of people brought up, and the roads.

The roads and the, even separate from the incidents of, maybe you see people chasing each other, it's just people driving really fast.

People, you know, coming up to a stoplight and going forward and just, you know, 'cause it was clear, or it's clear enough.

Talk about how people talked about those, again, those experiential things of feeling unsafe, because it's dark, there's blight, the roads seem outta control.

- You know, lighting is such a critical part of feeling safe in any community.

Now when you drive down a lotta streets in Memphis, they just feel dark, they feel dingy.

It feels like a place where somebody who wanted to commit a crime could hide and not be seen.

So lighting was big.

But one of the big issues about this whole public safety piece and crime was really about how people feel about environmental issues that impact their community.

They really, for whether it's in the air, underground, they are very, very concerned and consider that a major part of me feeling safe in my own community, in my own house.

And then in terms of the speeding, you know, it is so dangerous to be on the expressways of Memphis, Tennessee, and I don't think all of the people who are speeding are necessarily juveniles at all.

I think a lot of the speeding is adults driving really fast, running after each other.

And what I've noticed is one car comes and zooms by you, and then three more decide to zoom to catch up with them.

So there seems to be a need for us to really deal with it.

And at one point I noticed that there were more folks from the state that were in here helping Memphis Police Department, and I now the members of the Sheriff's Department out.

So I think they're galvanizing resources to be able to address some of that.

- Let me add to that real quickly.

The clarity of thought that I was, and the depth of their thinking and responses, I was very, very impressed with.

And when it came to public safety, I was impressed with the fact that they added on environmental issues, disinvestment in their communities, a lack of resources as a public safety issue, and blight.

- Yeah, Bill?

- So you talked about the criminal justice system, and we do all kinds of stories that will explain how the criminal justice system works.

And I'm not sure, when I'm outside of the offices and talking to people who don't do this for a living, I'm not sure that they know how complex those procedures are, and I'm not sure that they really care.

I think in some cases they see the explanation as an excuse that, "Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'm sure you're right.

The system works that way, but the system ain't working."

I mean, did you and- - Oh, that was discussed at length.

And there are a lot of things that go into that.

It's bail, bails are set too low, and people can take care of them and get out.

You got judges, people don't believe, and these are their comments, don't believe that the judges are doing their part.

They're not seeing enough cases, day by day.

I think the juvenile court system, people believe that there oughta be solutions.

And I think the biggest issue is, there was a time when all of this stuff ran like clockwork.

What happened?

They don't understand what happened.

And nobody's ever communicated that.

What's the difference between now and 5, 10 years ago?

What has happened to make the system dysfunctional now?

But they're really clear that it needs to be fixed immediately, assessed and actions.

And what I hear coming from the criminal justice system and what they've heard is, "We need more money, we need more money, we need more money."

I think people not sure what they're doing with the money that they currently have, and nobody has a comprehensive communication campaign to communicate to the public about what's going on there.

- Howard, thoughts on that?

- Thoughts on that?

She's exactly right, I mean they- - That's why y'all been married for so long, right?

- That right, absolutely.

- You have that answer right there.

[chuckling] I'm sorry.

- What she said.

[all laughing] - Are there though, are there though, too many parts in the criminal justice system?

I mean, consider in 2022, the same voters who reelected Floyd Bonner as sheriff, and he had only token opposition, but those same voters who elected him with a very strong law and order message, saying don't handcuff the police, also elected Steve Mulroy as the District Attorney General and Tarik Sugarmon as the juvenile court judge, two candidates who campaigned on reforming the criminal justice system, so- - I think we're gonna give Bill the last word, [group laughing] on this one, which doesn't usually happen when we have guests.

But Beverly, Howard, thank you so much for being here.

Really appreciate your work.

- Thank you.

- And again, you can go to The Daily Memphian site, search for community conversations, and you'll get this full report.

It's very interesting.

We've got Paul Young coming up.

We'll talk to him about these issues.

We've got Jim Strickland coming up, we've got Doug McGowan coming up, and we'll definitely talk to him about lighting.

Thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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