- (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.

- Another look at how to address crime and criminal justice 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 Chase Carlisle from the Memphis City Council.

Thanks for being here again.

- It's always a pleasure.

Thank you.

- Along with Ben Adams, Chair of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission.

Thank you for being here.

Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

This is obviously, in no small part, a kind of reaction to the, I mean, I think it's fair to say, a collective trauma that the city and the whole community has gone through with the mass shooting, with the abduction and killing of Eliza Fletcher, with a series of high profile killings.

Yvonne Nelson, community advocate was killed a month ago.

The Reverend Autura Eason Williams killed two months ago in July.

And we did a show last week that we had lined up many months earlier with a lot of criminal justice reform folks.

We had Ayanna Watkins from MICAH.

We had Josh Spickler from Just City, Cardell Orrin from Stand for Children, with a particular point of view about long-term investments.

And people can see that show.

It's on wkno.org, or you can download the podcast.

But we also wanna to get another point of view.

Not that the group of you all disagree on everything, I don't wanna set it up that way, but crime is heavy on everyone's minds.

It has been for quite some time.

We've done a series of articles and really ramped up the amount of coverage of crime and solutions and problems at The Daily Memphian and Bill and I have interviewed, I think probably 20 different people in the criminal justice world, elected, appointed, and so on officials over the last year plus.

So with that in mind, I mean, what can be done?

What can be done?

I'll start with you, Chase.

And it's the same question I asked the folks last week, there are a lot of agreement about long-term solutions, but there's a lot of concern about what can be done today, tonight, to make people safer.

- Yeah, I think you make a great point.

I think you're gonna find that we all agree that we want a better Memphis and we want it today and we want it to be a lasting, better Memphis.

I think it's simply to say that right now when people feel like they are under attack, under duress, scared to go on a walk, scared to be out in parks, scared to just live their lives as Americans and Memphians, the simplest thing to do is have a show of presence.

I mean, you could use the term, force, but people need to feel like there is a public safety officer that can get to them or can protect them or can be present in and around their neighborhoods and our public assets.

And I think that's a very simple thing to do.

And then the second thing, and this is the one thing, we're not talking about broken window policing, but when you look at major cities that had decreases in violent crime in near terms, it typically is arrests and convictions.

And so our officers are arresting people.

We need to ensure that violent criminals, in particular, are being convicted and put away.

- Yeah, I mean, all the crimes I mentioned, as people have read and seen, involved people who had had repeat offenses and an escalating path of repeat offenses.

Ben, if you would quickly, what is Memphis Shelby Crime Commission?

'Cause people aren't necessarily familiar.

- Sure.

- And then you're, again, you're answering that same question.

What can be done in the short term, in the near term, today, to address crime?

- Sure, so the Crime Commission is a nonprofit 501(c)(3) organization.

We have 50 board members.

Half of them are public officials, law enforcement, mayors, that type of thing.

The other half are business leaders, community leaders, folks that are involved with some of our strategies, nonprofit organizations and what not.

And so the first thing is everybody wants to know, what's the plan?

Well, that's what the Crime Commission does.

We adopted a 20-point plan in January, unanimously adopted by those 50 board members.

And there's a combination of prevention, intervention, enforcement strategies in there.

Now, is that everything that we did to do?

No, no.

The recent events, like the rape kits and some of the truancy arguments, we gotta look at some other things.

But the main thing we need to do is work the plan.

We have to have the will in this county to do the things we all need to do.

And that's not just resources, that's execution, follow up, holding folks accountable.

- Let me bring in Bill.

- There has been some discussion about the Crime Commission facilitating a new discussion about this, one that might go beyond the plan, one that might get into things like the school system and its efforts.

What do you think about that as chairman of the board there?

- Well, I think we should continue to update our plan and add things to it.

And we have to work with the various people that are accountable for all of these things.

I mean, there's a lot of work to do, for example, with the County Commission, because of we have a whole new juvenile court group.

And this is a good time to really rethink how we're doing juvenile court, what we're doing in terms of intervention.

Our remedies for juveniles that are committing violent acts are pretty limited, and we really need a much more robust program.

Youth Villages and Memphis Allies has agreed to help.

We need funding for that.

We need other funding for more case workers, more follow up, more intervention, working with families is just one example.

- We've talked about the impact that these recent crimes have had on the community.

And I'm wondering if we've also had an impact, if there's also been a seen change with changes in juvenile court judge and changes in the district attorney general's office.

Is that what's driving some of this as well?

- Oh, I don't think that's what's driving any of the violent crime.

No, I think this is sort of a- - No, I mean, the cause to take a second look at the strategies and things like that.

- I think that's coming on both sides.

It's coming on say the right, because people are a little bit afraid of the changes and it's coming on the left because people want some reforms.

But you know, going back to what the last week's program, it's not an either/or proposition.

Of course, we need to deal with the root causes of crime, which is poverty.

Memphis is never gonna reach its potential as a city if we don't have more citizens reach their potential.

And that involves in large measure, reducing the cycle of poverty.

But you know, we've got immediate problems.

We've got people that are afraid to go get gas and go to the grocery store.

We've got businesses that are thinking about expanding here and may not.

We have businesses that are thinking about coming here and may not.

I got a call from one of the board members of the University of Memphis and they're getting calls from parents threatening to pull their kids outta college here.

You know that happened at Rhodes last year.

So there are immediate consequences.

So that folks like Chase and law enforcement leaders and others have really got to take action.

- And Councilman, the discussion last week, while the discussion went around, well, it can't be either/or, the same point that you just made.

Some of the comments last week on the show were that, well, you have to give the long-term view a chance to work here.

What do you think about that?

- I couldn't agree more.

I mean, we are doing those things.

I've been in city government for grand total of two and a half years.

It's not a nimble organization.

It's a multi-billion dollar, 8,000 employee organization.

I don't know an organization of that size that can turn on a dime instantaneously.

It's just not a feasible thing to say.

And it becomes a political narrative and talking point for those that want change and are gonna seek it any way without really understanding the mechanics of how it works.

Things like Transit Vision.

I've spent two and a half years working behind the scenes with Doug McGowen on Transit Vision.

Now we have Transit Vision.

We're giving $6 million a year to pre-K. Our libraries have gone from open four days a week to six days a week.

We've got Employ.

We employed 2,600 youth in the summertime.

So we are making advances and we all want them to happen faster.

But again, governments are not nimble organizations that can just turn on a dime.

And I'd just add one more thing, that public safety is so important to the citizens of Memphis, that they voted to raise their own taxes, in the 2019 election cycle.

And the good news about that is, is it shows that they take safety very seriously, is their number one priority, but it's also allowed us to make those investments in the general fund budget, by utilizing those dollars to supplement certain things so that we can expand resources for the community.

- At the last Council meeting, Councilmember Ronda Logan had a resolution that was a general call to the state to help improve the presence of law enforcement here.

You added an amendment to that, a friendly amendment to it, asking the state to send 50 highway patrol officers here, at least 50, to work with Memphis police for a period of no less than six weeks.

Has there been a response from the state yet?

- I've personally not received one.

I'm sure that Mayor Strickland's administration is in conversation.

I have had conversations with a few chiefs of staff of senior members to see what we can do in the near term.

I'm hoping that they will give a formal response.

But I think what that really demonstrates though, is that the City of Memphis and Shelby County in general is one of the state's, if not state's largest GDP producer, we have some of the largest private taxpayers in the state.

And that, if you're a fiscal person on the state general assembly, you'd want to protect that cash cow.

And so we need help, in particularly, when you talk about the interstate shootings, which we're talking about the violent crime happening in the neighborhoods, and we're forgetting that we had over 40 something interstate shootings over the last summer of last year.

And so we have to protect that economic commerce that's happening in and around I-240 and over and across into Mississippi, the rest of the state of Tennessee, and into Arkansas.

And I think the state has to play a critical role in that.

- But, I mean, the state promised in its budget, I mean, Bill Lee announced what?

sixteen highway patrol.

- Yeah.

- I'm not putting that on you, but they are nowhere to be found.

- It's frustrating for me.

So to that point, so to be specific, the governor added an additional hundred highway patrol officers, twenty-five of which were to be designated, is the term I'll use, for Shelby County.

But the way that the highway patrol works is, it's not like the military where you get assigned.

You get to pick where you want to be assigned and getting officers to want to move and be assigned to Shelby County is seemingly a difficult task.

- Let's stay on policing.

So if the answer is in part policing, and I think the administration had a goal when it came in, when Strickland came in as for a first term to get back to something like 2,500 police.

We're at 1,920- - 1,950.

- Nineteen fity, give or take, Chief Davis told Council the other day.

I mean, by any measure, hasn't the administration totally failed?

- I think that I'm sure that there will be people out there that will want to use that word.

I think they've had incredible, you know, I'm not here to defend the Strickland administration necessarily, but I think we've seen some tough times.

You've got COVID, you've got George Floyd and the aftermath of all the protests and defunding the police.

I mean, every police department around the country lost tens of thousands of officers collectively.

And it's become almost a thankless job.

And as a matter of fact, I'd even add to that, right now, we have officers working 16 to 18 hour days.

You tell me if you want to get on an airplane with a pilot that's been working 18 hours straight and you're gonna feel safe and that's the quality that you're getting.

And so when we talk about increasing the police force, I mean, it is those things that make it necessary so that we've got the coverage we need with officers that are ready to go, rested and ready for the job.

- The other thing that came up, obviously in the unraveling of the, the unfolding of the Eliza Fletcher case, is that there is a backlog of DNA testing of rape kits at the state, some 600 from across the state, about 300 of those are from Memphis.

The other big, I think it was 170 from Knoxville.

People have read those stories, we wrote those stories.

But you know, people would likely be alive if those DNA tests, which 300 sounds like a lot, TBI says it's a lot.

I don't know, it doesn't sound like a lot.

I mean, that's maybe my personal opinion.

And they've got four people doing testing.

The state has a surplus.

This is, I mean, what in the world went wrong with that?

And you all talked, I believe, at City Council the other day.

I mean, no decision was made.

I mean, is it not time for Memphis just to go to you then?

I mean, you talked about the business community.

I've gotta believe there's financial wherewithal and financial support for setting up.

If that's gonna save some lives, if that's gonna take some dangerous people off the street, if we're talking about a number in the hundreds that is a backlog that can take up to a year- - Nine months they said.

- Nine months to eleven months for the person who is accused of killing.

It makes no sense.

So is that the answer?

Is that part of the strategies?

Memphis Shelby County set up its own lab to expedite that turnaround?

- Well, there are a lot of solutions to that.

And frankly, that's one of the easier problems that we've heard about in terms of, it just takes more money.

We need more money and we need to hire the people.

You do have to train them.

But I think that's just so obvious, it's kind of ridiculous.

Can we go back to the more police question you talked about?

- Sure, yeah.

- 'Cause I think it's important.

Chase mentioned, we need more visibility.

That's really important, makes people feel safer.

And that's true.

And we need more police to do the investigation work because we're behind on a lot of that.

But we need more police for a lot of other reasons.

MPD gets 975,000 calls a year.

They spend almost all their time reacting to calls.

You can't reduce crime when all you do is react to calls.

We need more police because we need more proactive policing.

We need them in the neighborhoods, building relationships, community policing so that the neighborhoods are willing to talk to the police and tell them what's going on, find witnesses for things.

And then we need 'em to do BLUE CRUSH, data-driven policing.

Data-driven policing is very effective.

That's where you use all the data about what's going on, it's predictive and you go to the hotspots and we don't have enough police to do all that.

- You talked about data-driven.

We had CJ Davis, the Police Chief on the show a month ago, in the last month, talking about all kinds of strategies and talking about the challenges of hiring.

People can go to wkno.org and wherever you get your podcast to get that interview.

And it was very interesting about the challenges and getting into that.

But one thing she talked about towards the end, and actually I think it might have been off camera, 'cause we just didn't get to everything.

But we wrote a story about it is, the cameras.

The city is filled with these SkyCop cameras.

But I think most people, I'm sure most people will be shocked to know that those blue light cameras are not tied into the police department.

They are sort of big videotape cameras.

They can be useful.

I've talked to the former DA Weirich.

I think we talked to Chief Davis.

They can be useful in investigating.

Reacting is what made me think about it.

Chief Davis mentioned true cameras that are tied in, in real time, where a shot is fired, the camera zooms in, it comes up at the realtime crime center.

There are, potentially creepy, but some people would say, I'll take it, reading of license plates that go right to the realtime crime center.

Those are expensive.

But at this point, is it, I'll go to you, Councilman, is it time to just spend the money that it takes to put the technology to be more proactive in how the police address crime?

- So, the way that I'll answer that question is, I think any modern day entity, including police departments, needs to explore all options, including technology on the table in order to be more effective.

And especially if we're having trouble hiring officers, getting boots on the ground, than we have to look at alternatives, technology being one of 'em.

I know you wrote an article about a spot shotter in Chicago, - Shot spotter.

- Shot spotter.

- Yeah, go ahead.

- But yes, I mean, look, not every technology works.

Apple's had several failed operating systems.

But I am an advocate, including tying into business owners' cameras with software patches, if they're willing to do that, in order to have real-time responses.

- Yeah.

- And maybe we should add that there are a lot of other benefits to getting our broadband much stronger.

I mean, there's education benefits, health benefits, and public safety benefits.

If we can take advantage of the dark fiber and really have a robust broadband component here in Memphis.

- Yeah, let me bring in Bill.

- I think most people's identification with the Crime Commission is the close eye that the commission keeps on the crime stats.

From month-to-month, there a monthly report on this.

And sometimes I wonder if we think we're doing better than we are because we see a drop in property crimes, or we see a drop in violent crime and everybody goes, oh, okay, the problem's gone away.

And that doesn't even get into, well, yeah, sexual assaults may be down, but how many are reported in the first place?

And that's a big problem with that particular crime category.

- Absolutely.

- What, from your perspective, what is the value of having those crime statistics in terms of figuring out where we are and where we need to be with crime?

- Well, I think there is a danger when you look at 'em over just a short period of time, no doubt.

But I think it's very helpful to compare yourself to yourself.

And so, when we started really keeping these statistics actively since 2006 and put the emphasis on growing the police force and a lot of other things, our major property crime has gone down consistently that whole period of time until just this year.

And people don't realize that.

It's our major violent crimes driven mostly by agg assaults that have gone up.

They went down until 2011, when we coincidentally, had the highest police force we've had.

But since 2011, they've gone up and driven mostly by agg assaults.

And so you can't ignore that agg assaults are driving this, and we've gotta do something about that.

And frankly, an agg assault with as many guns as that are out there, is basically just a guy that misses the shot.

- And agg assault is aggravated assaults.

- Aggravated assault, yeah.

Because most of 'em with guns now.

So it's a very dangerous situation.

- By the way, a position permitless carry, I think constitutional carry is a marketing term, but that both the Crime Commission and every legislator in Shelby County was against.

We joined our police department.

It's created significant policing issues for us.

One thing I do wanna address in response to the last week's segment that I hear very often is a matter of priorities.

And there's a great talking point in particular from Stand for Children that is, well, our police budget's ballooned while neighborhoods and parks... And the reality is, is yes, it has grown.

But if you look at it and you actually really wanna dive in the data and get rid of the narratives, our police budget grew from 40, 50% to 68, 69% from the '70s to 2010, but it correlates directly with annexation.

As our footprint to 350 square miles got bigger, we needed more officers in order to do that.

And our budget as a whole, the operating budget is 83% personnel expenses.

And so when you look at officers that are highly trained, that have unionized labor or associations helping them collective bargain, you're going to see an uptick in that cost.

And so I think it's disingenuous to say that there has been this massive disinvestment in other areas and over investment in policing as if we were in a police state.

It follows the data.

And I think it's important to get that out there.

- So, how does putting together or augmenting a strategy that's already in place?

That's the way I'll put that.

How does that work when the Tennessee legislature can do things like open carry, constitutional carry, whatever you want to call it, that contravenes one of the key pillars of the strategy here, which is that fewer guns means less violent crime?

- Yeah, it's an interesting thing.

Wyatt Earp is a famous, romanticized historical character, but the way that he saved Dodge City was no firearms in town.

And so we've almost turned into the Wild West.

And unfortunately, I don't think we're gonna convince our state legislature to do away with permitless carry going forward.

So much like people that are upset with the Roe v. Wade decision, states are gonna see, if you've ever read Freakonomics, states are gonna see, we saw an influx of guns, you're gonna see an influx of adoptions.

And so if you're the state government and state legislator that has supported those positions, then you're going to have to pay, bring your checkbook for the resources that these communities are going to need to deal with the consequences of those decisions.

- In a simple matter, if people are gonna carry guns in their cars, we need them to have bolted safes that make it too hard for the criminals.

They're not gonna fool with the bolted safe.

And it's only about 60 bucks.

Anybody that has a gun in their car, when they go into work and they leave it in their car, they're just asking for it that.

And that's going all over the place.

- We don't have a single law, I mean, I met with every town, we don't have a single law in the state of Tennessee that defines what securing a firearm in a vehicle means.

If you leave your handgun on the floor of your car and it's stolen and used in the perpetration of a crime, you are not liable as the gun owner for not securing that firearm.

- Do you think that people who buy firearms for protection and who store them in their cars without the kind of lock box that you're talking about, do you think that they correlate those guns being stolen from their cars, with the problem we are having with the most violent- - We know they are.

You look at the history of the Castle Doctrine being extended from the home to the vehicle.

And I think around 2004, if memory serves me, to today, as it correlates to the amount of guns stolen and guns stolen from vehicles, it is astronomical and exponential growth in the guns on the street.

- I mean, I think everyone I mentioned, that the top 20 law enforcement people we've had on the show, give or take, over the last year plus, all of them agree, I think every single one of them's in agreement with what you're saying.

And then it drives all the car break-ins.

The auto break-ins are people, when 20 cars, or 25 cars in a parking lot broken, they're looking primarily for guns.

- They're looking for guns.

And you're not required to register that firearm.

You're not required to store it.

And I think it's important too, to say before everybody on the right gets very upset with me is I fully believe in the Second Amendment and the right to bear arms.

I think the question we should be asking ourselves is in one of the most developed civilized nations in the world, why you feel the need that you have to have in AR or a handgun to go to the grocery store or fill up with gas?

- We've got just two and a half, two minutes in show here.

Another thing we've written about, and that has been talked about by many, many people who've come on this show is, I think it was through the end of July, give or take, the 10 divisions of the county criminal courts had finished 32 cases.

There is a backlog, at that point in time, there's a backlog of around 460, 470 cases.

It gets to, I mean, depending on what you think, whether you think all 460 of those cases, of all people who are violent criminals who need to go to jail, or they're innocent, it serves no one.

I mean, it's almost four years ago to the day, it'll be a couple in another month, that Phil Trenary, who I know both of you worked with closely and knew, was killed.

They still haven't gone to trial four years later.

So the city doesn't really run the courts, the criminal courts.

What, if anything, can be done to find justice for people, to release innocent people, to make the court system go faster?

- I'll answer quickly, 'cause I think this is a great question for Ben.

But I brought this up at the Council on Tuesday.

we only have a limited scope at City Council, although I brought up consolidation often and this lends itself to that.

But, what we can do, is utilize our platform to ask questions about where are the gaps in the system and how do we clear those gaps in partnership with the state, federal and county government?

- Yeah, so the County Commission funds the courts.

So we need more funding at least on a temporary basis and maybe an expedited way to deal with this.

And it really is a big problem because those cases are lasting three or four years before there's a trial.

That's not fair to the victims.

It's not fair to the defendants.

It puts a lot of pressure on the bail system.

People that are- - Plus the prisons.

- Yeah.

- We do not know whether.

- It's totally a terrible situation.

And to a lesser extent, we've got the same thing in the federal system because federal laws are tougher on gun crimes.

And we'd like to use the federal laws because they're tougher.

But the federal system can't handle all the potential cases that we have for 'em.

- Yeah, we've referenced again, if you came late today, we've referenced last week's show.

We had Josh Spickler from Just City, Cardell Orrin from Stand for Children Tennessee, the Reverend Ayanna Watkins, Executive Director of MICAH.

And you know, I don't wanna share my opinion.

But really, there is a lot of commonality and we talked about this before about, and even Josh Spickler, who's working on the transition with the new DA Steve Mulroy, talked about, look, Mulroy is going to use everything at his disposal to prosecute these people in these most recent claims.

They're talking about bigger picture, long-term things.

So again, for people who want the other side of this, please go to wkno.org to get that past show.

Thank you both for being here.

Thank you, Bill.

Tune again next week.

Thanks.

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