- (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.

- U.S. Attorney Kevin Ritz 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 U.S. Attorney for Western Tennessee, Kevin Ritz.

Thanks for being here.

- Great to be here.

Longtime viewer and listener of Behind the Headlines.

It's an honor to be here.

- Oh, absolutely.

We're glad to have you here.

Along with Aarron Fleming, who covers criminal justice and public safety for us at The Daily Memphian.

- Thanks for having me, Eric.

- Yep.

Let's start with, we'll talk about as many specifics as we can, and obviously you're not gonna be able to get into some things, and we'll talk about some of the initiatives you have going on, your office has going on.

But let's kind of back up and talk about what the U.S. Attorney is and does.

And how do you describe it?

Let me start there, and then I've got specific questions.

And I will say this against the backdrop of, in the last year and a half, given this spike in crime nationally and certainly locally, we've had so many different parts and pieces and representatives of the criminal justice system, the public safety system on and how they interrelate.

So let's go ahead and try to define your piece of the puzzle.

And I'll start with you defining it, how you do it.

- Happy to do that, Eric, and I appreciate that opportunity, because I do find that sometimes people struggle to place the U.S. Attorney's Office and the federal justice system in the larger conversation.

So as United States Attorney, which I've been for about 16 months, I am the Chief Federal Law Enforcement Officer in West Tennessee, and we have an office of about 47 or so Assistant U.S.

Attorneys.

I was an Assistant U.S. Attorney for 17 years before becoming U.S. Attorney.

I've been in the office for almost two decades.

And our mission statement is we uphold the rule of law, protect civil rights, and keep the country safe.

When you're reading about us or hearing about us, and I imagine what you want to talk about, often it's our criminal prosecutions.

And so we prosecute violations of federal criminal law.

I'll make a quick plug for the other work that we do.

One of the ways that we're different from district attorneys' offices for example, is we handle civil litigation on behalf of the United States.

We handle appellate litigation, financial collections, and we do a lot of that good work for the people of the United States.

We're essentially the United States' lawyers.

- And there are in Tennessee, three districts, I think?

- That's correct.

- West, Middle, and East.

Okay.

- Correct.

- You've been in the office for 16 months, I think we just said.

- In the role, yes.

- Excuse me.

In the top role here, appointed by the president, confirmed by the Senate.

- Correct.

- And the 47, let me figure out how to ask this question.

How do you, when you say you're Chief Enforcement Officer, there are all these parts and pieces.

There are the federal judges, there are the U.S.

Marshals.

There's ATF, Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms.

- That's right.

- Then there's all the local people.

You mentioned the DA, but then there's obviously the police, the sheriff, the jail, the civil and criminal judges that are elected in Shelby County, and a whole other bunch parts and pieces I'm gonna forget.

Where do you fit, I guess, relative to local crime?

Because that's so much on people's mind.

Where do you fit relative to the locally elected judges and DA?

- Well, I would say we have a relationship with all of the law enforcement agencies, federal, state, and local, in West Tennessee.

And I'll emphasize that we do have 22 counties, and so I take that responsibility very seriously.

But of course, we're here talking mainly, I think, about the Memphis area.

But in the Memphis area, it's certainly part of my role to interact with and have strong relationships with law enforcement agencies, and that's police department, sheriffs, the District Attorney's Office, and certainly all of the federal agencies.

You mentioned the Marshals, ATF, DEA, FBI, Secret Service.

We have all sorts of federal law enforcement agencies that we work with every day.

And our job is essentially to work with those agencies and other officials, identify, on the criminal side, good candidates for federal prosecution.

And so there are times when there are cases, violent crime, drug cases are a great example, that often could be prosecuted in state court or in federal court.

And the reason why it's important for us to have those strong open lines of communication is for us to be able to identify what are the best candidates for federal prosecution, where we can spend federal resources and really make an impact in keeping people safe.

- We'll talk more about that.

I wanna get Aarron in, and maybe talk some more specific, the initiatives you've got going on.

And then we'll talk again generally about this interaction with the other parts of the criminal justice system.

- Yeah, so kind of jumping off of that, I know recently we had this announcement that we were bringing additional federal prosecutors down here to kind of help with some of the violent crime that's been going on in the city.

So tell me a little bit about that.

So obviously that's kind of to help, like you mentioned, we're identifying candidates that would be good for federal prosecution.

So tell me kind of where that ties in with this new initiative.

- Absolutely.

Aarron, the violent crime initiative we announced in late November, and we're the second city in the country to get this additional surge of resources.

And it's really experienced prosecutors who have expertise in building cases against gang members, violent criminal enterprises, and bringing federal cases, building and bringing federal cases in federal court against those types of individuals.

I wanna be clear.

This was work we were already doing, and have been doing since I've been in the U.S. Attorney's Office, almost two decades.

We're good at this work.

We have really good federal prosecutors working on violent crime cases and criminal enterprise cases every day.

But, as I think anyone who's in charge of a government office would say, it's always great to have additional bodies and additional resources to really plug in.

I've described it as doubling down, and that's really how we see it.

Very thankful for the leadership of the department in Washington for agreeing to send these additional people.

They are here.

I wanna be clear, they're here.

They're embedded, working with the prosecutors in my office, working with the law enforcement agencies that we were already working with, and we're looking to build these cases.

And what kinds of cases?

Firearms, people who are committing violations of federal firearms laws, drug trafficking, violent crime violations such as carjackings, business robberies.

Those can be federal crimes.

Not every crime is a federal crime.

And in a larger sense, some conspiracy or even racketeering type prosecutions against groups of people that are engaged in these activities.

- So tell me a little more about that.

So I know that was part of what was mentioned, that these guys had racketeering experience or senior members of like RICO leadership, and kind of experience with that.

And I know the DA's Office now is kind of prioritizing, like smash-and-grabs is a crime that they're focusing on.

And so is that, have there been discussions about, you know, maybe a partnership there as far as that initiative and kind of what they're focusing on?

Tell me a little bit about that.

- Sure.

A RICO case can take several forms.

When we talk about it in this context, it's kind of going after gangs that are involved in street violence and also drug trafficking.

You can use the RICO statute, the racketeering statute, to go after those gangs.

That is not always the best way to proceed.

Sometimes we just use the firearms laws, or the business robbery laws, or the drug laws.

But yes, you're right.

These additional prosecutors are from the violent crime and racketeering section, so they have this expertise.

You mentioned smash-and-grabs.

You know, again, not every crime is a federal crime.

There are some of these crimes that we're seeing against places of business could be federal crimes.

Certainly if someone uses a gun illegally, that can lend itself to federal prosecution.

Business robberies, when someone actually goes into a store with a gun and holds up the clerk, that kind of thing could be a federal crime.

And so we take a look at these things, and if there's a federal hook, we ask more questions.

And we work with the agencies that, again, we were already working with.

And I wanna stress about this violent crime initiative.

And Memphis, I think, got these additional resources because we have some serious challenges.

We also got them because we have a really good history and tradition of strong relationships between my office and law enforcement.

And that's federal, state, and local.

And, you know, I'm not gonna comment on what it's like in other federal districts around the country.

All I know is here we have really good working relationships.

- The other city was Houston.

- Correct.

- In 2022, they got, I think, some 50 gang members have been prosecuted when they got this extra resource.

About how many people is it?

If you said that, I apologize.

- It's seven- - Seven, okay.

- Is the number right now.

And so they are here for the medium to long term.

- Gotcha.

And that choice, let's say carjackings.

You know, that's a thing that's very heavy on people's mind.

All this violent crime is, but I think people feel more closer to maybe they're gonna have their car broken into and maybe they're gonna be in their car and there's gonna be a carjacking.

What kinds of things, without necessarily a specific case, or if you have a specific case, would make that a federal crime versus a local, a county-prosecuted crime?

- Sure.

A carjacking, there is a little bit of a, without getting too much in the legal weeds, of an element of force that has to be present for that carjacking to trigger federal criminal liability.

Many of them do.

If somebody's got a gun and they come up and they carjack somebody.

You know, "Gimme the car or I'm gonna kill you," that's typically gonna trigger federal criminal liability.

We have mechanisms in place.

So every month we have a carjacking initiative, and we sit down, members of my team sit down with members of the district attorney's team, MPD, ATF, FBI, and go through any carjacking arrests that have happened, and also talk about the ones that have been unsolved, and say, "Hey, is this a good candidate "for federal prosecution?

What types of leads do we have?"

and those kinds of things.

- I remember we had one of your predecessors.

Michael Dunnavant was the predecessor right before you, and before that, I think it was Ed Stanton.

- That's right.

- I may missing some interims in there, but we had Ed Stanton and Amy Weirich, former Shelby County DA on, oh, quite a while ago.

But I remember District Attorney Weirich talked about the federal government had a heavier hammer.

Now, that's 10 years ago, probably, and laws change.

But is that still part of it?

I mean, that is certainly the reputation, that you all have a heavier hammer, you have harsher sentences, there are less room for parole, early release, and bail.

Is that true?

Is that a fair characterization?

- It's a hard thing to generalize about.

Here, let me say a couple things, that it is certainly the reputation and the perception among people who are committing some of these crimes that they don't want to be in federal court.

And I think that's the right way for them to look at it, for a number of reasons which we could talk about it, one of which is, yes, the sentences can be pretty steep when we start talking about violent crimes, firearms, drugs on the federal side.

There is no parole in the federal system, and so that's a significant fact as well.

And I would say there has been some movement in the legal landscape on the state side, and that's not, you know, I'm not involved in that.

It's the state legislature that sets those penalties, that has, you know, in some instances narrowed that gap, if you wanna talk about... - Yeah, they matched it up, the state legislature last year, and then we'll have Brent Taylor and London Lamar, two state senators on soon, to talk about Brent Taylor's had made a lot of noise and made a lot of about making the sentences even tougher.

Cameron Sexton, the Republican House Leader, talking about that as well.

So, we'll be talking about that.

We'll also have Steve Mulroy on the show, and I think it's about a month he'll be back on the show.

So is this increase in, this, you know, seven new, the violent crime initiative as it's called, and the seven new prosecutors, is that a response to it all?

I mean, there's no secret.

Steve Mulroy and the local courts are under a tremendous spotlight, and a lot of pressure, and a lot of criticism, and that they are... Former Mayor Strickland always talked about the revolving door.

Other people talk about, "Look, people are getting in, they're getting released out."

Bail is set at very, very low numbers.

Is this an explicit response to that dynamic?

- I would say no.

It's a response to the general problem that we have, and the larger challenges that we're seeing, right?

Just some intractable problems that predate me, that predate Mr. Mulroy, that predate a lot of the people who are in the roles that they are in currently in public safety in Memphis.

And a lot of people have, good people who have worked hard to tackle these problems.

We're all struggling with it, right?

I think as a community we are all struggling with it.

And so it's a response to the need to send a message that we're here and we're gonna bring some significant cases down the road against the people who are driving this violence.

- Halfway through the show.

So one more from me, and then I'll go back to Aarron.

You were not U.S. Attorney.

You became U.S. Attorney around the time District Attorney Steve Mulroy was elected.

- It was, in fact, yeah, we took office- - Coincidentally.

- The same month, just completely coincidentally.

- Coincidentally.

But you've been in the office for almost 20 years.

Have you seen notable difference in how your office works with the DA's Office since Steve Mulroy was elected?

- Short answer is no.

I think we have always had a good strong working relationship with that office.

And I'm now in a position where I'm, you know, directly helping to direct that relationship.

I have made it a point, certainly, to have an open line of communication with Mr. Mulroy, just as I've had an open line of communication with the chief of police and the sheriff and the mayor, and certainly our federal partners.

We got, the problems that we face are too significant and too big for us to all be in our silos, and for us, frankly, not to get along.

Does that mean we always see 100% eye to eye?

It does not.

But I am very proud of the fact that in this district we have those really strong relationships.

I see it as my role to build upon and strengthen those relationships.

- let me bring Aarron back in.

- Yeah, so again, just kind of what he was mentioning about the initiative.

I know part of it also was there's supposed to be a community engagement piece- - Right.

- with that.

And so obviously there's kind of differing ideas in the community about, like, I think everybody's kinda on the same page, that like, maybe there is a crime problem in the city, right, but it's about like, what do we do about it?

And I think people have obviously different ideas- - Of course.

- Of how we go forward.

So, I mean, has that communication piece started, and like, and then what are you guys hearing as far as from, you know, the community about like, you know, what they're feeling?

- We have a lot of...

Appreciate the question.

We have a lot of different touch points with the community, and we are continually conducting outreach, whether it's to neighborhood associations.

I've been to a lot of places of worship.

Pretty much anyone who invites us to come talk about our work, we want to take that opportunity.

We have ongoing really good initiatives in prevention and intervention.

When I say we, the U.S. Attorney's Office is part of usually a larger group, whether it's the city's violence intervention program.

I'm on the advisory board for that, and we're a big supporter of that.

That's, you know, things like hospital intervention and the focused deterrence programs.

Just this week I was part of the juvenile Ceasefire program, which is talking to at-risk youth who have picked up a gun charge in juvenile court.

And, you know, I go and I try to deliver the message that, you know, it's a two-sided message.

One is you've got some significant penalties if you continue to go down this road of being around guns and committing crimes.

But, you know, you've still got an opportunity to turn things around and make better choices.

By all means, the more we can do to keep people from entering the criminal justice system, certainly the federal criminal justice system in the first place, I'm all about that, because we got enough to deal with as it is, right?

And so, those are important initiatives, and they're ongoing.

- We'll talk next week about two folks who do a lot of early intervention with young people, and, you know, and trauma and childhood trauma, Natalie McKinney and Cardell Orrin who've been on the show before.

When they get to you, I mean, except from you going in and speaking, but when they hit your office, is there a sense of kind of, I don't wanna say hopelessness, but, well, hopelessness about these young people or 20-something-year-old people, who have committed a harsh enough crime, or frequent enough crime, or all of the above, that they're under your purview?

- I would say it's not a happy occasion.

I'm not gonna speak for the federal judges who impose these sentences, but I know from our perspective, it's not like we're happy about it, but we don't apologize for bringing significant cases against 18, 19, 20-year-old if the conduct warrants it.

- Yeah.

And you live in Memphis, by the way.

That is one thing I wanna make sure I clarify, because there is maybe a sense that, well, U.S. Attorney, he's appointed by the president, he flies in.

- That's right.

- He lives out of an Airbnb and he's here for a while.

- I've encountered that.

- Yeah, I would think so.

But you've lived here most of your life.

- Most of my, I grew up here, went to public schools in Memphis.

Went away for college and law school, and I purposefully moved back, because I love this city, wanted to make a difference, so.

- And your father was a county commissioner who's been on the show.

You're what, I think the second son of a guest who's ever been on, I think second or third maybe.

- That's good.

- For you, how do you measure?

There's a lot of talk on the county side, the county judges, the general sessions and so on, about effectiveness, about how many cases go to trial, how many are prosecuted.

How do you measure?

Can you give me some ballpark numbers on the number of cases you all hear?

And sort of give people a sense of the volume, and then also how many federal judges there are that you work with.

And let's go through those numbers.

- Great question.

Several hundred a year from our criminal prosecutors on the federal side.

- That go to trial?

- No, not that go to trial.

- Okay, sorry.

- But these are just kind of ongoing criminal prosecutions, and, you know, trial, I don't know a good number on trials.

- That's fine.

That's fine.

- Here's what I will say.

We have a very busy docket.

The Western District of Tennessee has, since I've been in the office, had a busy criminal docket, and a lot of our cases do go to trial compared to other federal districts.

We have had, in my humble opinion, a very strong group of federal judges.

There are five, I think, active federal district judges and some senior judges in West Tennessee that includes the courthouse in Jackson where we have a branch office and a courthouse.

They move the docket along.

I give credit to the judges, the court staff, federal public defenders, the defense bar, U.S.

Marshals, everyone who's involved in our court family.

I think it's a very, it's a great place to practice and do what we do.

- The hundreds compares to, and that's all felonies, I assume, overwhelmingly.

- Yes, is a short answer.

We rarely do misdemeanors.

- Okay, yeah.

The what, tens of thousands, I think, of cases, fifty-eight thousand I think the DA came out with, the county DA came out with that they see, and that's misdemeanors to felonies.

Anything and everything, I mean, shoplifting to the worst or the worst.

Yes.

- Assaults to murders.

- So it's kind of an apples and oranges thing.

One more, and I'll go back to Aarron here.

So much focus, obviously, on gun crime.

Virtually every law, public safety, criminal justice person I've been on here has talked about permitless carry, whether it's not a Second Amendment debate we're having here, but there is a direct correlation between the availability of keeping guns in your cars and then permitless carry with the huge increase in car break-ins.

You've been a DA, or you've been in the US Attorney's Office for almost 20 years now.

How have you seen the impact of the changes of state law, over which you have no, [chuckles] you know, real, I mean, that's not your purview, but that has, from your point of view, and I'll turn into a question, dramatically increased the amount of guns and gun cases you're seeing, or maybe not?

- I don't, you know, I'm really only as U.S. Attorney in the position now to kind of see, you know, our intake process and the numbers of arrests that we see.

I know that for a long time we've had a weekly meeting under our Project Safe Neighborhoods Task Force, and this is a kind of our premier task force for bringing federal, state, and local law enforcement together, and we review every arrest in Memphis of someone that's a prohibited person with a firearm, 'cause that could be a federal crime.

And so I guess what I would say is we- - You review every one.

- Every arrest with a potential federal hook that involves a firearm.

And we absorb as many cases as we can, right?

And we target the drivers of violence, the repeat offenders, the, you know, people who are also committing other felonies.

It's kind of the factors you might expect.

What I would say, we have really robust tools on the federal side.

I don't, as a U.S. Attorney, I certainly don't get involved in policy debates, either on the federal level or the state level.

- Fair enough.

- We take the federal laws that we are given.

I got a lot of tools on the federal side, and we use them often and aggressively.

- All right.

Aaron, with four minutes left.

- Well, maybe, why don't we switch gears.

I wanted to ask you about the Patriot Bank stuff that recently came out, too.

I just was curious.

The main question I had, so the DOJ announced, I think it was in that same press release, that they had beyond the case that we announced here, that they had 11 other redlining cases that they had announced also, and they had secured over, I think, it was over $100 million, to address those allegations.

Like what does that say to you that we're still kind of dealing with these allegations, and maybe kind of give a little bit of background on that case here in town.

- Sure, Aarron.

You're referring to the department's overall combating redlining initiative.

Redlining is practices of discriminatory lending and not providing lending services in certain pockets or certain neighborhoods.

That's been a priority for this administration.

And I appreciate you mentioning that.

It's a good example of something we do outside the criminal enforcement sphere.

It's a civil matter, and we have had a couple of those announcements in Memphis of settlements, and it's important work.

What does it say to me, is we have a long way to go.

It's unfortunate that in 2024 we are still seeing reports of this, and investigations into that.

- With just a couple minutes left here, we could do a whole show on some of these things I'm bringing up.

But let me, on Patriot Bank, let me, out of fairness, John Smith, Patriot Bank's present CEO, released a statement as part of this, saying, "Patriot Bank has always acted "to serve the home mortgage credit needs "in minority neighborhoods, "and the bank's strong record speaks for itself and flatly contradicts any allegation of wrongdoing."

I just wanted, that was a statement that came out, to be fair.

We could do a whole show on patterns and practice investigation from the Department of Justice.

You ultimately roll up to the Attorney General, Department of Justice.

Are you directly involved in the patterns and practice investigation of Memphis Police Department that came for people, came out of the Tyre Nichols SCORPION tragedy, the whole...?

- I will say we did announce that we, the Department of Justice, in July, the Civil Rights Division, drives that in many ways.

Our office is participating, and is part of the team that is engaged in the civil pattern and practice investigation.

I wanna say it's part of our civil division.

So again, that's separate from our criminal enforcement.

- Is that quite difficult, as you talk to partnering with the chief of police, working with police?

I mean, you're working with these folks all the time.

- I guess what I would say is sometimes relationships can be complicated, just like in any other part of life, but it's part of our job to make sure we are doing what the citizens want us to do.

And I said when we announced that, that I said, and I said, I told Chief Davis and the mayor that day, we are gonna continue our work with local law enforcement, including the Memphis Police Department, to aggressively enforce federal criminal laws.

- Your office is trying the five officers who are accused of assaulting, beating, Tyre Nichols.

One has put a plea bargain in, I believe.

- That's correct.

- The other four, I assume you can't really talk about the details of that case, but what is it like to...

There's a huge spotlight, locally and nationally, on that case.

What is it like?

- What I would say is, you know, I sign every indictment that comes across, you know, our desk.

It's a big weighty decision every time I sign a federal criminal indictment.

And we think all of our cases are really significant and meaningful.

I understand that sometimes some get more public attention than others.

You're right.

I don't have any specific comment to make about that case.

- One last question, and you can just say no comment.

When you saw the videos, what was your human reaction?

- You know, I would say immense disappointment, and just a sense of weightiness, of course, when that happened.

I was in a position where we were gonna be responding, and we have.

- All right.

Thank you very much for being here.

I really appreciate it.

- Thank you, Eric.

Aarron, thank you for being here.

That is all the time we have this week.

If you missed any of the show, you can go to WKNO.org and see the full video.

You can also get the audio of the show wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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