- (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.

- Strategies to address crime in Memphis tonight on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Bill Gibbons, president of the Memphis Crime Commission.

Thanks for being here again, Bill.

- Sure.

- Along with Buddy Chapman, Executive Director of CrimeStoppers.

Thanks for being here.

- Glad to be here.

- And Julie Baker, who covers criminal justice for us at the Daily Memphian.

So we're obviously in this, crime is a big topic right now.

There's a lot of focus on it.

We've had you on in the past, Bill, you've been, you know, working on these issues.

You were the Shelby County DA for many years.

You were head of the Tennessee Department of Public Safety.

Buddy here was a former police director.

So you all have, have come at this from your points of view both in your prior roles and in your current roles.

And we talk a lot about crime on the show, and there's a lot of long-term things that people talk about.

They talk about mentoring.

They talk about early childhood interventions.

They talk about families.

And we can talk about those things today.

I'm not taking those off the table, but there is a kind of immediacy that people are feeling right now that from you know, go back to Reverend Arturo Williams to the jump in juvenile crime, to the Eliza Fletcher kidnapping to the Tyre Nichols, you know, tragic, terrible incident.

So from your seat, Bill, I'll start with you.

What can you tell people that can be done soon that has an immediate impact on crime?

- Well, a couple of things.

So first of all, we pretty much know, Eric, what works.

We're very familiar with best practices that have been proven to work in other cities.

Some of those approaches are what I would call people-placed: targeting certain people.

Other approaches are more geographic or place-oriented.

Let me mention a couple of examples of things that we're trying to get underway in the city of Memphis.

First of all, in terms of people-placed approaches Mayor Strickland is putting a lot of effort into what's called focused deterrence.

That involves targeting certain well-known bad actors, most of whom are either on probation or parole.

So the city of Memphis is working very closely with the Department of Correction to identify those individuals.

And it's kind of a carrot and stick approach.

They're called in to a meeting and given two messages.

Number one, we want to help you move in the right direction and there are agencies here to help you in terms of job opportunities, education, housing, and so on.

On the other hand, if you don't want to change your behavior and you want to continue to go down the path of violence, we're gonna do everything we can to hold you accountable.

So it's kind of a carrot and stick approach.

It's worked in other cities.

The city of Memphis is trying to get that under underway but the key is to implement it correctly, to scale it up, and to sustain it over time.

A second approach that has been proven to work in other cities is violence intervention.

Trying to head off those acts of retaliatory violence which makes up a lot of our violent crime problem, especially ag assaults.

And ag assaults, of course can turn into a murder within a split second.

All you have to do is be a good aim.

- Aggravated assault, just for the people - Yes, aggravated assault.

And the city of Memphis is putting a lot of effort into that.

Putting a lot of funding into a group called the 901 Block Squad.

They now have about 50 street level interveners trying to intervene that kind of retaliatory violence.

Based on the figures that I've seen, they are averaging over 1,000 interventions per month.

I do think that's one reason that we have our aggravated assault figures going down some.

I think the 901 Block Squad is having some success.

A third effort that we're trying to get underway is what I would call intensive supervision, intensive services, and we're trying to apply that to violent juvenile offenders.

Last year we had around 500 juveniles charged with violent crime in Shelby County.

The state of Tennessee does not have adequate secure beds.

So most of those violent juvenile offenders are going to be in the community under community supervision.

Right now, we don't have that kind of intensive supervision that we need.

The city of Memphis and the Shelby County Sheriff's Office together have applied for $6 million in state funds to get that under underway, relying on Youth Villages to provide those services.

So those are examples of things that have been proven to work in other communities.

We just need to get them underway here, scale them up, and sustain them over time.

- Buddy, again, I mentioned you were a former Police Director here in Memphis and you wrote a column for us recently in the aftermath of the horrible Tyre Nichols incident and the videos and so on.

How much, Mayor Strickland has talked about and I believe you as well on the show Bill, have talked about the need to get more police, but we really for the seven years that Mayor Strickland has been mayor, we've been at around 2000, 1950, we get up to maybe 2,100 for all kinds of reasons that we can talk about, you know, another time.

But from your seat, how much does the abhorrent acts of those police officers hurt policing and the effectiveness of policing, whether that's morale, whether that's recruitment, whether that's cops not sure what to do, what does that kind of terrible incident do to the broader force?

- Well, let me start out by saying that I I agree with everything that Bill just said.

- That's the first time he's ever said that.

- Well, well, we have offices next door to each other, so we confer.

But I look at it from a slightly different point of view and that is that everybody talks about the police, what the police should do, how they're staffed, how many they've got.

I think everyone needs to take a step back and realize that crime is a community problem, not a police problem.

Police are strictly reactionary.

Police, something happens and they react to it.

They react more quickly if they're fully staffed.

They react more slowly if they're not.

So the staffing issue does come in, but in the context of what you're talking about this incident with Tyre is that it's terrible because we rely on the community to trust the police.

We rely on the community to tell us what's going on.

That's what we do at CrimeStoppers.

Somebody knows everything.

It's not the first thing that happens in this city that someone doesn't know it, and if it's illegal or horrible or whatever and we get the call, we pass it on to the police department.

And so this diminishes the confidence that the community has in the police department.

It's terrible from several points of view because it's a very--I at one point in a different life, I lectured all over the country when I was working.

I was police director and I was working with the International Association of Chiefs of Police.

And the thing about it is, is that what is known and what this operation was, zero tolerance is a a real double-edged sword because if you do zero tolerance, you're not just going to scoop up the criminals.

You're gonna scoop up members of the community, you're gonna scoop, and we have to realize that the community as a whole while they want something bad done to the criminals, they don't want it done to themselves.

And so therefore these operations should be very limited in scope, both in terms of what they're gonna do where they're gonna do it, and should be very, very closely supervised.

I think this particular thing, it was the wrong people chosen to do it inadequate supervision, and just plain a thing that doesn't work.

In other words, you can't have, you can't, if you expect to address crime by the police department being meaner than the criminals, you'll lose that battle.

- Yeah.

Let me bring in Julia.

- Buddy, there are community activists who are calling for the end of several specialized units like the Organized Crime Unit and the Multi-Agency Gang Unit.

You know, with your experience as a former police director can you tell me, is this a good idea or no?

- Oh, it's a terrible idea.

Both of those organizations serve a very valid purpose.

And they don't have the--as I say, the problem is the zero tolerance approach to crime.

It's very difficult to do that and not be zero tolerance towards everybody as a whole.

The next step up from zero tolerance enforcement is martial law.

Well, none of us want martial law.

If you had martial law, you wouldn't have any crime.

Matter of fact, when we had the police strike, we had zero crime.

But I had a National Guard officer on every corner in the city of Memphis and therefore, nobody was out and we had a curfew.

So it's, I go back to the point that, what I've preached for years is that a community will have as much crime as it is willing to tolerate.

And that's not a police problem.

Now the police, as I said can be better funded, better staffed, better whatever and they might be able to do a better job but they're still reactionary.

But no, that's a terrible idea.

Organized Crime, very, very valuable, valuable organization.

- Are we, you know, with the emergence of technology like cell phones, sky cop cameras, body cop cameras are we seeing more instances of police brutality?

- Well, I can't say that one way or the other.

I go back to Eric's question.

This is terrible for the good police officers because they get the rap for what the bad ones do.

And as I say, you can't have a bunch of cowboys in police work.

You've got to have steady individuals who who say it very quietly but mean what they say and address the issue.

Police brutality, once again, you will have as much police brutality as the administration of a police agency is willing to tolerate.

So it sounds like I'm talking about toleration a lot but really that's truly where it rests.

- Let me come to one of the things, you you mentioned juvenile crime and violent juvenile offenders and not enough secure beds.

So people, we've done the stories that, I mean certainly Jim Strickland has talked, you know often in his weekly email and his, you know public statements about "the revolving door".

And at a time other people talk about, well look these are kids, you know, these kids need they need intervention, they need care.

They may need monitoring, but just throwing away, putting them in jail and throwing away the key is not going to help anyone.

One of the things you wrote, I think it was last summer, you know, for us, a column, you wrote a couple columns but one was about the inadequacy and we'll try not to get too wonky, but it's very interesting and it was a very enlightening take on the inadequacy of the laws in terms of what the state enables you as a former DA, Steve Mulroy, current DA, and he's talked about this as well, with particularly violent juvenile offenders.

It's kind of a one or two sort of decision on whether you're gonna treat him as an adult or let him go.

Right?

And there's a different approach that you and others have advocated for.

- Right.

And before I get to that I want to get back to one thing Julia said.

I would really place the Multi-Agency Gang Unit in a separate category.

It was created as an investigative unit, not a street-level enforcement unit.

And it is composed of multiple agencies, not just the Memphis Police Department.

It is overseen by a board of directors, usually chaired by the District Attorney.

So it's, it's a little different from the Organized Crime Unit or the SCORPION Unit that now doesn't exist.

So just wanted to clarify that a little bit.

- SCORPION, in the sense that SCORPION was-- - It was a street level enforcement unit.

- Showing, in your term, zero tolerance.

- Yeah, yeah, and OCU is basically an enforcement unit.

Multi-Agency Gang Unit is essentially an investigative unit.

So it's little different.

- If I could address the juvenile issue because I feel- - Let me get Bill.

- Oh, excuse me.

- Just because from the DA court point of view and then we'll come back to you from your point of view.

So no, because the youth crime is a huge issue, right?

It's up dramatically.

The car thefts, the aggravated, the murders, some of the high profile killings.

It's, it's really horrific.

- Well, let's focus on the violent juvenile crime.

Again, last year we had a little over 500 juveniles charged with serious violent crimes.

In my mind there are really kind of three approaches that we need to use.

Number one: the state of Tennessee does need more secure beds.

Wilder now has about 35 beds available.

There's another facility in East Tennessee that has about 25.

Then the Department of Children's Services actually contracts with a private entity in Texas to house another 20 or 25.

You add all that up and that's less than 100 beds for the entire state.

And again, we have 500 or so per year, just coming out of Shelby County.

So the state needs to invest in more secure beds.

Frankly, Wilder needs to be replaced with a better facility than Wilder is, with all the the problems that it has.

So that's number one.

Number two: even if we have more secure beds, just looking at the numbers, still a large percentage of violent juvenile offenders are going to be supervised in the community.

So we need that kind of intensive supervision and services that a group like Youth Villages can provide.

That involves funding.

The Crime Commission Board has urged the state to one: provide more secure beds and to provide the funding for intensive supervision.

The third answer is something you kind of alluded to, and that is to eliminate this arbitrary limit or ceiling of an offender's 19th birthday, regardless of whether that offender is being supervised in the community or in a secure facility.

Once that offender, under current state law, reaches age 19, he's cut loose.

And we need to simply eliminate that arbitrary limit.

Senator Brent Taylor and Representative Mark White have legislation pending to do exactly that.

It's kind of interesting.

Lieutenant Governor McNally, Speaker of the Senate has signed on as a co-sponsor.

Speaker Sexton in the House has not signed on as a co-sponsor, but has indicated that he's very comfortable with that approach.

So we'll see what happens.

But I think that's part of the solution, too.

- I'll let you come in on juvenile crime.

- Well, I was gonna say, not only are they cut loose at 19, but the record is sealed.

And what I was gonna say is that to me, of everything that we face, the career criminal is not at the top of the list.

The top of the list is the juveniles, because they are so unbelievably dangerous.

If you just take a carjacking committed by a juvenile that's just that far from a homicide, that's as close to a homicide as what he's talking about, whether the guy's got a good aim or not.

So it's something I know I tell people from out of town, the issue of the juvenile that gets arrested for car theft, goes to juvenile court, gets out and steals a car to get home.

That sounds bizarre, but it happens.

And so I think, but once again I get back around to the community.

Crime, be it adult or juvenile, is a community problem.

And I do think in the community, particularly in the African-American community, there is a tendency: they did it because... well there are all sorts of becauses.

You can come up with a because for anything and so therefore the African-American community has got to step in and start looking at these kids and not making excuses for them.

Bill's exactly right.

This business of only having two options on a juvenile offender is insane because you throw them in the adult system, you just got a career criminal in the making and you turn them loose at 19 with no record, that's just as bad.

- Let me bring in Julia again.

- I wanna go back to that revolving door.

You know, Mayor Strickland has talked about how, you know there's a revolving door because we're not harsh enough.

But then DA Mulroy has said that the revolving door is because we're too strict.

We have this new bail hearing room that launched on February 17th and, you know we might start to see a change in bail amounts.

What kind of impact will that have on the community, especially as property crimes continue to rise?

- Well, you're talking about the bail in particular?

- The bail hearing room, yes.

- Yeah, there's been a lot of talk about that, and my position is very simple.

The judges need to follow state law.

And there are nine factors under state law that a judge is to consider in setting bail.

They need to look at those nine factors and make a decision accordingly.

It's kind of interesting, not included in those nine factors are jail population and the income level of the defendant.

That is--neither is one of the nine factors.

So legitimately people say, well low income individuals can't make bail.

They stay in jail for two to three years, awaiting disposition of their case.

I think the answer to that is not to simply fail to follow the factors in the state law but to speed up the process, to speed up disposition of their cases, to place priority on getting those cases either tried or settled so that that individual is not stuck in jail for two or three years.

But again, the judges really need to be looking at the factors under state law.

And I'm a little concerned that there's pressure from both sides for judges to look at other factors outside of the law such as jail population, income level, and so on.

They need to stick to what state law provides.

- With the six minutes left here, we talked a lot about violent juveniles.

There's been a huge jump in non-violent juvenile crime in terms of, you know car break-ins, car thefts, not aggravated carjackings.

What is the answer there?

If the problem, I don't know which of you to go to, but if the problem, I'll start with you, Bill.

I mean, you talked about the problems of dealing with the violent offenders, but what about the, I don't wanna call them nuisance, people will call them nuisance crime.

It's more than that.

If your car's been broken-- - Property crimes.

- Property crimes, it creates fear, it creates frustration, it's an economic loss.

And some would argue it's a beginning of a cycle.

If there's not accountability of, you know, more crime.

- Listen, I'm getting calls and emails and text messages every day about this, and I'm sure the two of you are, as well.

I've had my car broken into.

Last year, I walked outside to see that my window had just been totally knocked out of my car.

So I understand people's frustration.

A lot of it is being committed by juveniles.

So the Memphis Police Department estimates that about 70% of vehicles that are stolen, are being stolen by juveniles.

Right now, we don't have a system that holds those juveniles adequately accountable in my opinion.

Essentially, unless there's a gun involved, they're going to be issued a summons, a piece of paper to appear in court.

I don't think that that is adequate in terms of holding them accountable.

What I, what I hope will happen is that we need to revisit the detention policy of juvenile court and look at possibly modifying it.

I know that's very controversial, but we need to take a look at modifying it so that if a law enforcement officer ends up charging a juvenile with vehicle theft, for example, that officer has the option of taking that juvenile to detention for at least a short period of time.

Right now, that option really does not exist.

- And the theory, then play that out for me, that it is then a deterrent for the youth?

- I think it would be and it's a matter of accountability.

Sometimes just being taken detention for 24 or 48 hours can have an impact on an individual.

The other part of this is to really address the problem early on.

Once that juvenile picks up that very first offense for stealing a vehicle, find out what's going on in that young person's life.

Assess what's going on in his or her life, as well as family life and try to address it early on.

We have an assessment center now, being run by Shelby County, but it's just on a pilot basis, it's very limited.

We need to look at scaling that up so it applies citywide and that it's 24/7 and officers are able to transport those first-time property offenders to that assessment center to really try to address the problem early on.

- Just a couple minutes left here, so not enough time.

We talked about, you know you mentioned quickly the African-Americans and I want to flesh that thought out.

I mean, the overwhelming number, you know, four white people sitting here at a table.

The overwhelming number of victims in Memphis of crime are black people, right, in black communities.

So finish your thought on that.

You said something to the effect of, you know, African American-- Finish your thought.

- The community, the community's got to step forward and they've got to say, you know, we are aware of this child or that child and they're subject to do or they have done.

And it ties right on to what Bill said about taking them to some detention, no matter how short, and not make excuses for them.

They did it because-- I think that word because really tangles us up in in US jurisprudence, if you will.

I lived in Europe for a number of years and I can tell you over there it doesn't matter why you did it.

Here are some things you don't do, and that's the end of it.

- Yeah.

You got another question?

Just two minutes left here.

- You mentioned, you know, we need more beds in the DCS.

Is it true that Youth Villages, a child can just choose not to go to Youth Villages if they do that instead of going to DCS?

- I'm not sure I understand your question.

- If a police officer picks up a youth and says, well I'm gonna bring you to Youth Villages, can that youth just say, no, I'm not going there?

- Yes.

Yes.

It is totally optional at this time.

What I would like to see is if we can get this intensive supervision underway, for juvenile court to make a as a condition of community supervision that that individual participate in programs offered by Youth Villages.

So make it part of the court order.

- And we talked about Youth Village.

We did a two part, first two parts of a series on Youth Villages with the Violence Intervention Program.

Is that similar to the 9- what was it again?

The Block 901, I mean that same thing.

Intervening early.

- Yes.

In, in Youth Villages through a group called Memphis Allies is beginning to get into that a little bit, as well.

There's enough to go around, believe me.

But 901 Block Squad is really the primary group that is doing that right now.

- Okay.

We're out of time.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Buddy.

Thank you, Bill.

- Thank you for having us.

- Thank you, Julia.

That is all the time we have tonight.

If you missed any of the show tonight you can go to wkno.org and get the full download.

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Please join us next week for a discussion about libraries literacy and all those kind of factors.

So join us then.

Thanks, and we'll see you next week.

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