- (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.

- The impact of the federal intervention 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 Josh Spickler from Just City, executive director, thank you for being here again.

- Of course, Eric, thanks.

- Along with Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children Tennessee.

Thank you for being here again.

- Thank you, appreciate it.

- And Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

This and a number of series of shows we've done and will continue to do, obviously, on the federal intervention, the Memphis Safe Task Force, last week, we had Memphis Mayor Paul Young talking about his take on what's going on, and I think the week or two before that, we had a number of county commissioners, a Democrat and two Republicans, and we're looking to get Justin Pearson, we've asked Steve Cohen, we'll be asking David Kustoff and many others over the weeks as we get reactions to what's going on here, so you all, I think it's safe to say, are not exactly in favor of what's going on here, I think we can say that from the start, but let me start with this kind of a variation of the question I asked Paul Young last week, does anyone seem to know how many arrests have been made by which of the many agencies that are here and who has been arrested?

Is there a comprehensive list in any way?

- No, I mean, and this is a question that Just City has been asked quite a bit by many people inside and outside of Memphis, and the answer is, "No."

Data exists, and there's local data, and then, there's data that's given by the federal government about this, but in terms of who's getting arrested and for what, no, there's not a comprehensive understanding of that and... If it's even collected.

- And the recent data dashboard that the city put out hasn't clarified anything in terms of which agencies is actually leading charge based on the arrest or stops that they've put out data about.

- Yeah, and Paul Young had a very similar... You know, here's the mayor of Memphis, he had a very similar take last week when we talked to him, that he didn't know, they were trying to get that, there is data, though, I think, showing... I mean, crime was already trending down overall by the measurements of the Shelby County Crime Commission, however you wanna look at it, the general sense, were already going down prior to this intervention, data that was in the city dashboard as of a couple days ago, we had a story that, you know, four weeks this year versus the four weeks prior year, crime was down even more in terms of arrests, and calls, and so on.

Some people point at that and say, "This thing's successful, crime's coming down, "Memphis has a crime problem, these guys are focused on the violent criminals out there," your take, I assume, is different.

- I mean, there's no evidence necessarily that they're focused on the violent criminals out there, one, to say that, two, because we just talked about lack of information about the arrests that are happening and who's doing those, I think it's very hard to draw a conclusion that this is a part of an overall impact on crime.

What we do know is crime was going down and already trending down, as crime is nationally, and we also know that this has a repressive effect on people in the communities, we've seen that in D.C.

and other places where we've put out military, put the military out, that that could be a part of it, people just aren't going outside because they're fearful of running into people, running into ICE, federal agents on the streets.

- And that story was actually somewhat misleading, I thought, Eric, because, you know, the Marshal Service issued a press release that was included in that story in The Daily Memphian with the names of seven people and their charges, and they were violent charges.

I would suggest that if the Marshal Service had the names of 70 people charged with violent crimes, they would've included that.

What's happening on the streets of Memphis right now is not focused on violent crime.

This was never about violent crime.

This was about a political power play and an occupation of a city that is predominantly black, and what we're seeing as we look at these arrests, 'cause that data does exist, affidavits exist, police officers write up what they're doing on the streets, is a roundup, this is, plain and simple, a roundup, and the charges that result from it are not violent offenses, they are low-level drug and weapons charges, and it has a repressive effect, and so, we might see a downturn in crime.

This is not a durable solution.

- All right, let me bring in Bill, and we'll come back to a lot of that.

- What do you say to folks who are not seeing that presence?

Because there are, depending on what part of town you're in, in some parts of town, there are no outward signs of this.

What do you say to folks who live in those areas, who say, "I feel safer"?

- I mean, you know, part of the challenge that we know is that even as crime goes down, the feeling of how people feel and the perception is very much driven by media, by what they hear, by the things that elected officials say, and what we consistently hear is that media in a lot of ways, especially broadcast, is driven by, well, "If it bleeds, it leads," putting all of the shots out there, and we've seen that start to diminish since the deployment as we see this different change in narrative as there's more support thinking about that this has some effect when it's really just, we're just not reporting the same things in the same ways.

And so, some folks will see that and their perception will change.

They will say, "Oh, okay, this is what we need, more police on the streets," and what they won't see is, well, what's the long-term impact?

Am I really gonna be safer?

Are people in other neighborhoods really gonna be safer?

And what we know is that this will not have a long-term effect, and if we don't start to deal with the issues that people are confronting for real safety and security, then we're not gonna see the change, and so, they can feel like that, but the truth of the matter is that it's not having that impact.

- Conversely then, if... And I'm gonna use your phrase, if it bleeds, it leads happens on a big weekend, like this coming weekend, we have what we have periodically, we have a number of shootings, woundings in different parts of the city, and the TV coverage reverts to it and leads with that, does that mean conversely that this is not working?

- This is the problem with actually not looking at data and facts, is that, yes, from day to day, from week to week, from what's reported on and not, that, you know, yeah, perception will change and people will say, "I'm for it," "I'm against it," that's why we need data, that's why we need information, that's why we actually need to have agreed-upon facts and truths about what's happening in our justice system, and, you know, Just City tracks this very well, so I'll turn it over to Josh.

- Well, because the fact of the matter is... And this is not a Just City statistic, is that when these folks arrived, when this task force was sent to occupy our city, Memphis was experiencing crime rates that they hadn't seen in 25 years in the positive direction, lots of work to do still, too much of all sorts of any crime, right, is too much, still higher than most of the rest of the country, but 25-year lows, and we have responded with a policy that, again, is not about violent crime.

This is a political power play, right?

This is not coming to Memphis' aid, if they were coming to our aid, they would reinforce the things that we were doing, right?

Which was not flooding the streets with armed agents.

It was supporting neighborhoods, supporting children, supporting communities that have suffered from disinvestment.

If the federal government were interested in resisting more violent crime and keeping our crime rates low, they would invest in those things, this is not about that, and, you know, this is the... Our freedoms are at stake, whether we live in a neighborhood where the National Guard are on the corner or not, this does not stop with a ZIP code, right?

This type of autocratic behavior, this type of militarization of an American city doesn't stop with the people who we don't interact with daily.

And that's what I would tell the folks, right, in the parts of the community that don't see this, is that this is an incredibly dangerous act and it will come for all of us eventually.

- So Mayor Young said on this program, and has said pretty frequently in other places that he was not in favor of the Guard coming here, but that this is a chance to, in his words from the show last week, steer some of these resources toward areas that the city government wants more policing in.

Is that possible?

- I find that... You know, the mayor's in an incredibly difficult position, but I find that to be naive.

I find that to be conveniently ignoring the context around us, right?

The context in this country right now is such that I think it's foolish to think that we are going to get 1,500 federal agents from 13 different agencies to focus on clearance rates, for example, to focus on the kinds of things that actually impact violent crime.

That's not happened in any area of this presidential administration or, quite frankly, state administration's efforts in places like Memphis.

They have come after law firms, they have come after universities, they are coming after locations where the population is black, and to think that we're going to be able to harness this in some way.

This is a critical moment in America, it's a critical moment in Memphis, and the leadership that we need to see from our elected officials is that this is not okay.

There's no middle ground right now.

- And this is really... I mean, same point of the context of it, this is about Memphis and it's about the country, and they're testing out things in various places.

We've seen it in D.C., they're talking about Chicago, Portland, all different contexts to see, "How do we normalize militarization that leads towards authoritarianism power?"

And we heard the words in our own city from Bondi, Hegseth, Stephen Miller, mirroring what Trump has said about the specific ideas that they want to put across, and to a large degree, you either believe what they say or you don't, and other than that, you're kind of, you know, keep hope alive, sure, that we can direct them in a different way, but what we know is what we've seen and what they've said and we should trust that.

- Well... But, I mean, there's a bit of a contradiction here, which is that, as we're saying, we don't have the data.

We don't know what the U.S.

Marshals are doing.

We don't know... We don't really know, right?

'Cause we're saying we don't... There was a report... There's a ton of numbers that get put out, but we don't always know who's behind them, so how do we know that they are doing what they've done in other cities if we don't know what they're doing here?

- I know what they're doing here, Eric, I've spent most of the last two-and-a-half weeks... - All 1,300 of them?

- Reading... No, of course not, but I've spent... - Okay, well, that's what I'm saying... - I'm reading a lot of affidavits and there are consistencies throughout them, there-- I hear, I talk to attorneys, I sit in courtrooms, I've been sitting in courtrooms for the last three weeks.

I am quite confident, based on 25 years of observing this local criminal justice system, reading affidavits and arrest tickets, that I know what the agents from the federal government are doing, and I think it's clear from the bookings the data supports it.

They are pulling people over for failing to signal, for having a drive-out tag, for window tint, and then, they are hunting for drugs and weapons, that's what they're doing primarily, and I know that, I am quite confident in that.

- And that is a bad thing why?

- That is a bad thing because it doesn't lead to a decrease in violent crime, number one, that's a bad thing because it's not what they tell us they're doing, that they're lying-- - I think they're not really telling us what they're doing.

I mean, I will say from a transparency-in-news point-of-view, it's just... It's so murky to understand what... And in the past, when there've been federal task force here, there's often more, at least more transparency in the sense of, "This is a violent gang focused on fentanyl," or, you know, they would kind of come out and say... Whether or not that was... But there would be more transparency.

I agree there's not transparency and there's not data, from a news point-of-view, that makes it very hard to report on from... As a citizen's point-of-view, it creates some skepticism, but, I mean, if there are people... I mean, if there are people speeding at 80 miles an hour, if there are people without drive-out tags, if there are people who don't have... There's people listening saying, "Yep, all those things are illegal," they may be misdemeanors, but there're illegal, it's illegal to have a gun, there was an example, a person with a gun in their car, and in Tennessee, where almost anyone can have a gun, this person couldn't 'cause they were a convicted felon, they had 60 grams of marijuana in the car.

So there's a sense, I mean, I think, among some people that, "These people are doing things that aren't legal," they got pulled over, they got a misdemeanor, and some of them, it turns out, have committed more serious or have done more serious things.

- Well, I mean, then let's go do stop-and-frisk that many of the tough-on-crime folks... You know, they brought in the godfather of tough-on... You know, Crime Commission brought 'em in as a consultant, so clearly, that has been the thing that they want to lean towards... - So explain to people why that's bad.

- So that is bad because, it's, one, seen as unconstitutional because it's searching for crimes, and it's not actually going out, doing investigations, doing the work that they tell us they will do as police officers to go identify crimes, to go get clearance rates up, to go actually see, "There is something that happened, let's go solve a crime."

That's not what they're doing.

They're searching for things, and then, for most of these, these are pretextual stops and low-level offenses that are just clogging up our justice system.

So as we think about what we want for our justice system, whether you agree, like, whether you... Everybody wants accountability, I think, everybody wants to have a justice system that works, everybody wants to have a safe community, and so, we shouldn't be clogging up our justice system with the things that aren't gonna actually make us safer.

- And I'll go one step further, it's more than the criminal justice system and what we want from it, it's what we want in our community, it's what we want in our country.

Now, talk about being naive and foolish, here I go, but the United States Constitution guarantees us to be free in our person, free in our property, free to walk down the street, free to drive down the street without the interference of our government unnecessarily, right?

Of course, the government can interfere to stop people from committing illegal acts, but the courts and the constitution in this country is based on this idea that I have freedom, and when we are pulling over a person on a bicycle, like, one of the... Twenty-five years, I've never seen someone get pulled over on a bicycle for failure to use the bike lane.

He's delivering food to try to make a living for his family.

He has a gun in his hoodie, right?

But he's on a bicycle and they pull him over.

When those types of freedoms begin to be taken from us at this... When we have an occupied city... We have federal agents in our city not letting us drive down the street, and they're not looking for me, right?

They're not looking for a 50-year-old white man because I'm less likely to be a convicted felon, the people who are being pulled over and are found with guns, as you say, are more than likely to be African-American, to be black people, and so, when these freedoms begin to erode with literal federal agents on our street, where's the bottom?

The Constitution still exists.

- In your example, it's played out, was it a legal gun?

Were they allowed to have a gun?

It's easy to have a gun in Tennessee, so it was... - I don't wanna... I can get you information, I can look at that case and I don't remember what, if all he was charged with, but they arrested him, right?

But it started with... And you can do that in any community in this, to follow your point, which is a good one, right?

We don't want drugs and guns in our streets, but studies for years now have shown that drug use is the same across races, drug use is the same across economic... - Sure, and there's a target, yes, yes.

- And so, you could do the same operation in Collierville and come up with guns and drugs at the same rate as you do in Frayser.

- And I would say, as the person who might be targeted in this, that part of the challenge that we don't want is the trauma that this creates.

Think of the trauma, I mean, black folks who drive through... Black and brown people who drive through the city every day, all of us generally, if we see police lights, tense up.

There's a different kind of tensing up, especially in this environment, when you're black and brown and driving down the street.

And as somebody who's driven around downtown, and when they've had some of these federal forces in and seen a whole van jump out of a car just 'cause I'm driving around wandering in downtown Memphis and what that looks like to have a whole crew of people jump out of a car and start to approach your car just because you're driving around and you look like you might be doing something, that's not a good feeling to have and that's not the trauma that we wanna create in our community.

- And we have a... And let me say, like, I'm just telling you I know some what people say to me, what they write to me, we have guest columns we get, people we quote, in the comments, you know, these are not my views, but there are people who push back on these kinds of things.

We also have the... I should point out, you know, we have the example of SCORPION and the death of Tyre Nichols and the kind of pretextual stuff you were... This stuff gets haywire, I'm not saying, and anybody who thinks it doesn't get haywire is kinda fooling themselves, so I wanna say that.

Let me, we got 10 minutes here, let me go back to Bill.

- Let's talk for a second about profiling, is there- Do you have any faith or confidence that when there's a wrap-up on this and when there is some information given out that we will have an idea of how much profiling was done?

- I mean, no, but I could- - I mean, right now, it's mostly reading individual reports.

- Correct, law enforcement... We could do it.

Law enforcement officers know what it means to be, quote-unquote, "unleashed," and that's Stephen Miller's word that he used here in Shelby County when he was here two weeks ago, he said, "You are now unleashed."

- Deputy Chief of Staff for the... - For the White House, right, Stephen Miller, said that, "You guys are unleashed finally," and the affidavits that I'm reading, it's very clear traffic stops are being made in ways now that they weren't a month ago, right?

When it's all said and done, you know, it would take a massive research effort to figure it out, but the problem with these cases, and the, the reason that they're able to do it so freely is because it takes a court challenge, it takes case-by-case, deep investigation, a paper trail, a plaintiff who is willing... A person who is willing to sue or to bring his whole, or her whole life into the public sphere.

It's really hard to gather that data.

You know, will we ever do that as comprehensively as the media needs, probably not.

I, again, 25 years practicing, confident, more confident than anything else I can talk about that profiling is happening at a rate that is appalling, that's unconstitutional, and it's damaging not just to our community right now.

When these agents inevitably leave, the fracture between the community and law enforcement is so much greater after they pull out than it was when they got here.

- Well, let's talk about the compounding factor of this, because we have a DOJ report, whether it was retracted or not, that talked about the disproportionate harm to black and brown folks in the city of Memphis.

And even as we've asked the City to give us data on that, just for the police department, we partnered with ACLU to ask for data.

They did it in seven cities across the country.

Memphis was the only one that wouldn't give us the data about what was happening with the police so that we could just check up on them since the DOJ report, much less what happens when we compound on top of that what's happening with federal forces, and this is another place where we've called for the mayor, and in other cities, they've done it, to be consistent and say, "We want to have the data, "and if we're not getting the data "from these federal forces and federal agencies, "that we as the city, as the county, we'll file FOIA requests to get the information," because it's that important for us to understand the impact.

- We now have attorneys here locally and attorneys from nonprofit law firms who work in this area, who are here, who are looking into things.

Is part of the reckoning after this ends, or at some point, if it continues, going to be a mountain of lawsuits?

- Here's the context that we have is that not just Memphis... In Tennessee, we've been experiencing this for almost over a decade now of the assumption of, assertion of power and control from a state down to the city.

Now, we're seeing it at a federal level, of assertion of power and control at the state level and at the local level, and so, yes, there will probably need to be a pushback on that because as you try to create an authoritarian state, part of the challenge is who will stand up and say, "No, this is what our law says, "this is what our Constitution says, "and we're gonna defend these rights for the residents that we are meant to represent."

So, there's a challenge of capacity and resources to do all of these things, but let's remember that there's a state that's trying to take over a school system.

There are state legislators who are saying they should be able to take over the DA's Office.

They're saying they should be able to take over the Clerk's Offices.

This is not just one piece... This is one piece of a broader context both at the state level and at the federal level, and it really will likely come down to, hopefully come down to some people who will jump into litigation to protect our rights as residents.

- Right, I mean, they're flooding the zone, right?

There's a reason that before we went on air, we were talking about how one day feels like a week right now.

They flood the zone, everyone is reeling, the resources don't exist to bring the types and scale of litigation that we need right now, and they won't exist for a long time, and the people who are doing this to us know this.

And so, you know, in terms of costs and litigation, there should be, and there probably will be, but really, what it's doing is our freedoms and our rights, that's the damage that's being done here and it's really hard to bring, have a reckoning for that.

- Two weeks ago, three weeks ago, Charlie Caswell, Democratic County Commissioner who represents Frayser, including Raleigh, including Nutbush, he made the point that people in Nutbush, with a big Hispanic population, are very concerned, hiding out, I'm paraphrasing, that kind of thing.

He was, on the other hand, incredibly supportive of ATF, FBI, U.S.

Marshals, that, you know, is... Again, I'll paraphrase him saying, "We have..." "We're the most violent community," he said, "In Memphis, we have a violence problem, "we have people who are broken, "we've have people who are lost, we wanna help them, but they have to be off the street," and he also said, "We need to do more to help our youth, "and we need to invest, and we need more resources beyond law enforcement," but he said that he and many of the people he talks to in a predominantly black neighborhood want violent people off the street and are, again, my words, not his, cautiously optimistic that this will help.

With just a couple minutes left, what does work in terms... Why was crime going down before this, and was it all investments in children, and neighborhoods, and people, or was there not an element of law enforcement that has a part in this in terms of bringing crime down?

- Here's the-- - Go.

- Here's the cognitive dissonance, I think, that's happened, is that crime is going down here, but crime is going down nationally, and so... And our rate of crime going down here is about similar to national, and it's not as steep as some other cities that actually have been making investments.

And so, if we were actually making investments, y'all know we were part of the Moral Budget Coalition and part of what we asked for in this last budget cycle was investments in affordable housing, investments in violence prevention, community-based violence prevention, which is probably the most specific thing.

- Memphis Allies, those sorts of groups.

- I wouldn't name them, but I'd say, you know, Heal901 and some of the other community-based organizations that do that work, yes, and those are some of the best ways that we would most immediately impact this.

And not just that, but transit, funding transit and people having access to jobs.

So these are things that we're not investing in, so of course, when our city and county decide not to do what most of the municipalities did, raise revenue and invest in these things, then we get to a point where people say, "Oh, everybody's fearful, we've got to do something, "let's throw up our hands and invite everybody in, "and hope against hope, hope against what they are saying "they're trying to come here and do, "what they're trying to say they're coming "to do across the country that maybe they will help us to impact this thing."

- What, a minute or so left.

- All respect and love for Charlie Caswell, who is a friend of mine, but we, again, are being lied to.

The things that are happening in his district are not about violent crime.

I live in this community.

I don't want people who have committed violence walking around with my kids and my family, but that is not what is happening.

This is a roundup-- - But, what... I know you've said that, with just a minute left.

How then do we deal with those people who are broken, and who are violent, and have committed violent crimes if not through law enforcement?

- Well, all the things Cardell said, and I'm... Cardell and I might differ a little bit here too, I would've mentioned Memphis Allies, and I know... Of course, law enforcement is a part of this.

Now, they're not transparent with us, they're not accountable, they do not respond to requests, they're not doing the things the community's asking of them, but of course, they're a part, and of course, good policing is a necessary component of public safety.

- Does that extend to the federal government, Marshals, FBI, any of those, do they have a role?

- In their constant... in their statutory role as DEA agents and FBI agents, but not in my city, not in your city, this is... - But wait, if the drugs are... I mean, I'm sorry, if the drugs are here, doesn't DEA have to come here?

- Of course, but they don't work as stop-and-frisk, they're stopping and frisking, rounding up poor people in this community at a rate we've never seen before and that is not their role.

- And a disproportionate rate in black communities because if you go out to the suburban areas, you'd see the same impact of drugs.

- We are out of time, we can talk for another 25 minutes.

I appreciate you guys very much being here.

I should have said at the top that we're recording this on Thursday, and as we said, every day is a new day, many people watch this on Sunday, all kinds of things could have happened, we didn't brush over them, it's just the timing of when we taped on Thursday morning.

Thank you, Bill, thank you, Josh, thank you, Cardell.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online, wkno.org, YouTube, The Daily Memphian, or you can download the podcast wherever you get your podcasts.

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

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