- (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.

- Candidate for Mayor, Floyd Bonner, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

I'm joined tonight by candidate for Mayor and Shelby County Sheriff, Floyd Bonner.

Thank you for being here again.

- Thank you, Eric.

Thank you for having me.

- Absolutely.

Along with Bill Dries, Reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Before we get started with the conversation with Sheriff Bonner tonight, I wanna just remind everyone, and those who've been watching have heard me say this, but it's only out fairness to all the candidates.

We have had eight, the top eight candidates on the show over the last few months.

The criteria of how we determined that was the limited polling available, financial viability, and previous election success.

Those have included, of course, Floyd Bonner, who's here today, Karen Camper, JW Gibson, Willie Herenton, Michelle McKissack, Van Turner, and Paul Young.

Frank Colvett dropped out of the race, but was on to talk about his candidacy.

There's been no magic to the order.

I've been asked about the order in which we've done candidates.

It's been just about getting things scheduled, our availability, the candidates' availability.

We appreciate all of them and the work that people did to get everyone here.

Again, if you missed any of those, you can go to wkno.org or you can go to the Daily Memphian to get those past one-on-one interviews with those candidates.

They're also available as podcasts.

We've also got right now extensive coverage of the race on the Daily Memphian, including the Council races.

We have not been able to do the Council races here on Behind the Headlines, there's just too many districts, too many candidates, it's not possible.

But Bill, and Sam Hardiman, others on our staff have extensive coverage on the Daily Memphian.

The election is October 5th, early voting goes through September 30th, and you can go to the Election Commission site, shelbyvote.com to see sample ballots, see where you can vote early voting, where you vote on election day.

All that's at shelbyvote.com.

Sheriff Bonner, thank you for being here, appreciate it.

- Thank you.

- And for being here, again, the first time not in uniform, I think actually, as I think about it.

- I think you're right.

I think this is the first time I've never been in uniform.

- Yeah, let me start with a question I think I've asked all the candidates previously at some point, which is, has Jim Strickland, the current Mayor who's termed out, has he been a successful mayor and why?

- Well, I think Mayor Strickland has been somewhat of a successful mayor.

Obviously, the crime rate is not where he would've liked it for it to have been.

I think he made a statement or had an interview just the other day and talked about it, obviously, with what's goin' on with bail reform and the DA's office and juvenile court as well.

But I give him A+ as far as the relationship that he's built with Nashville, or reestablishing that relationship, which is so important for Memphis and even this region.

So, I'm sure he would say that some areas he wished he had done better or could've done better for whatever reason.

I'm sure COVID, being a mayor during COVID was difficult.

And, again, Nashville, that relationship is so important.

- You talked about bail, the DA's office, juvenile court, one could extend that all the various parts and pieces of the criminal justice, public safety.

You as sheriff are part of that.

You oversee the jail, you oversee the deputies, who are essentially, in layman's terms, patrol people over unincorporated Shelby County and Nashville.

Nashville sets the laws, virtually all the laws, that you as sheriff have to abide by, that the Memphis Police Department, that the courts and DA have to abide by.

Jim Strickland has expressed a lot of frustration with how things are handled very much by the judges and by the DA's office.

You, as sheriff, have worked with them quite a bit.

- Yes.

- And you just talked about relationships with Nashville, how would, if you were elected mayor, what would you like to see done differently by the DA's office, Judicial Commissioners, bail reform, that sort of interrelated set?

And how, as mayor, who has no authority over those entities, how would you make any change, if you want to make change?

- Well, I think it's gonna have to start, Eric, I think with another conversation.

I was just in a town hall meeting last night.

Citizens are upset.

They're really upset about the revolving door, as Mayor Strickland calls it, the in and out of prisoners, getting back out, even juvenile court.

One lady expressed an extreme concern about juveniles and what was goin' on down in juvenile court.

So as the mayor, you're right, he has nothing to do with the criminal justice system per se, but you can also lobby Nashville.

You can go to Nashville and talk with, and that's why it's so important to have those relationships.

And I've had those relationships over the years being the sheriff, not to toot my own horn, but was just named Sheriff of the Year just a couple of months ago by my colleagues, the other 94 sheriffs across the state.

I just saw Governor Lee last Friday at a groundbreaking here in Memphis, and we talked a little bit, so it's about establishing relationships, which are so important.

- Do you, separate from, again, as sheriff, you provide, again my layman's terms, security at the jail.

You don't determine who goes in and out of that jail, that's determined by others, but again, there's a part of your job, which is, there are people patrolling, they're part of task force, they are arresting people and sending them to jail.

- Yes.

- Are you frustrated in your current job as sheriff, do you believe there's a revolving door?

- Yes, our officers are seeing the same thing.

I mean, we're arresting the same people over again, and they're getting out on low bonds or no bonds at all.

And it's frustrating, especially when you take a juvenile to jail, and they're kinda laughin' at the officer, demoralizing the officer sayin', I've heard things like, "I don't know why you're taking me down here.

They're gonna let me right back out."

And explainin' that last night in a town hall meeting, there's the DAT score, the detention assessment tool that must be used, that came from DOJ, I think, in 2014 or '15.

- That's for juvenile court.

- For juvenile court only.

And so right now, we have to go by that DAT score, or the DAT score is still being used.

We don't have to go by it because DOJ is no longer there.

So with that being said, the juvenile court judge, Judge Sugarmon, he could change it.

He could lower the number, or he could raise the number, whatever his choice is, so.

- And you would like him to change that number, before I go to Bill, such that more kids are detained, more juveniles are detained?

- It's not so much as being detained, but I think a lot of times, Eric, when certain crimes are committed, especially when you arrest a juvenile for the same crime twice in a week, that juvenile needs to be detained.

Something needs to happen to that juvenile, and if we don't have things in place to make sure that those juveniles are, it could be something as simple as a sit down conversation with a counselor to see what's going on with that child.

But right now, they feel that there's no consequences to their actions.

- Okay, let me bring in Bill.

- Sorry.

- Sheriff, earlier this week, the Shelby County Commission got some statistics from the Judicial Commissioners, which are a much discussed part of this whole system that we're talking about, and those numbers show that there are not as many people being released and re-offending and coming back.

So, given the statistics and given the genuine concern that a lot of people have for this, how do we assess the problem that we're in when the statistics say one thing and the sentiment says another thing?

- Well, I think, Bill, the statistics, you could make statistics say whatever you like.

Again, myself and the Memphis Police Department, we were in a town hall meeting last night, and Chief Davis gave some other statistics.

So I think statistics can say whatever you like, but I know what the officer on the street is telling our command staff that we're arresting the same people over and over again.

So again, maybe we need to have a conversation again, maybe we need to analyze it a little bit more, drill down a little deeper, if you will.

But it's frustrating for everyone, and I'm sure it's frustrating for the judicial commissioners, because you have me, you have the mayor, you have the police director saying one thing, they're saying another, the County Commission is getting different information.

And so we need to find out who's right and who's wrong.

- If you're elected mayor, how does your relationship work with whoever the police director or the police chief is?

Because if you're elected, you're elected primarily on your law enforcement experience, so do you, is how the police director or police chief runs the department different than it might be for another mayor, who doesn't have law enforcement experience?

- Well, I think so, Bill, and that's what we've been running on, and that's why we've been talking about a lot about crime.

The number one issue in our community is crime, so when myself come into office with 42 years experience in law enforcement, I think I can take a different look, a different approach, if you will.

We have strategies and ideas that we have.

One of the things I've been talking about on the campaign trail is our Desk to Duty plan, where we're gonna take officers out of desk duty and get them back out on the streets, because right now, statistics and data shows that the more officers you have on the streets, the safer your community can be.

Right now, we have officers that are doing tasks on desk duty that could be out on the streets.

But that brings me to another point as well.

We have a car shortage at the Memphis Police Department, something that maybe all the public doesn't know.

Just the other day I received a phone call, where we had six officers that were waiting on cars to come in, and so when the city goes cycles without buying cars, something that I saw at the Sheriff's Office, it hurts and it hurts bad.

And so one of the things that we're gonna do when we're elected is make sure that we get some cars in, so these officers can get out on the streets, so they can protect the public like they should.

But you should not have six officers waiting on a car to come in, and then you think about that car, it's already ran for eight hours, now, it's getting ready to run for another eight hours, so eventually, you're gonna wear 'em out.

And that happened to us a few years ago at the Sheriff's Office.

I'm very familiar with that process.

And really, they're just things that we can do immediately when we come into office.

- And I have to say, in many years of covering the mayor's race, usually what I've heard new mayors say and what I've heard people who want to be mayors say is, "I'm going to let the police director "or the police chief run the department.

"I'm gonna appoint the best person possible, and maybe I'm gonna have some ideas."

This sounds like a whole agenda, so do you tell the police director what to do on that kind of granular level, or how does this work?

- Well, I think right now, with crime being our number one issue, I bring a unique perspective to this as the mayor.

Sure, I'm gonna appoint the police director.

Sure, I'm gonna listen to what they say, but Bill, being in this business as long as I have been, you can't tell me anything, okay.

And I've been in meetings where chiefs have told just anything.

So I have a unique perspective on this, and I can't be told anything by this police director or any other police director in the future because I know about it.

This is what I've done for 42 years.

- Would you, if you're elected mayor, would you keep Chief Davis on as police director?

- Well, I think that's inappropriate, Eric, for me to say that right now, but I will tell you this, if I'm elected as mayor, I'm gonna take a look at all the division leaders and directors, and we'll make an assessment and make a proper choice at the right time.

- Okay, I should have also noted that we're recording this on Wednesday morning.

This will air on Friday, that's 'cause of my schedule, so something I should have mentioned at the top.

You've had some criticism of the jail, and specifically, people who have died while in custody at the jail.

Are those questions and criticisms, and we don't necessarily have to talk about specific incidents, but it has happened.

Some think it's happened a lot.

Others have said, "Well, people die, and there's a big population in the jail," but are the criticisms or the questions about it fair questions?

- I don't think so, Eric.

We've had 44 jail deaths since I've been the sheriff, now taking.

- That's since 2018.

- '18, correct.

And see, numbers were quoted back in '16, when I wasn't the sheriff, so there've been a lot of numbers pushed out there.

I don't think it's fair, especially, for the men and women that work in the jail.

Over half of those incidents occurred or happened because of medical reasons or overdoses.

We got hit with a jail death.

A man died from a DUI, never came to jail, but it counted as a jail death.

So, I don't think some of the questions are fair, but we're in politics season now, so my opponents use what they can.

- Is there a way to be, and maybe this is just the press, but I hear it from other people who are not in the press, to be more transparent and faster about what has happened when there is a death.

I mean, and I think of the DA's office has been trying to move faster and faster to release video of officer involved incidents, and the transparency around the Tyre Nichols incident was praised widely by Chief Davis and DA Mulroy and others, that they got the video out, as horrific as it was, there weren't all these questions because the darkness of the lack of transparency creates questions and concerns, and it gets people heightened and more finger pointing going on.

Could you, as sheriff, be more transparent when there is a death?

- Yes, we try to be transparent, Eric.

The last officer involved shooting that we had, the officer was severely injured.

We wanted to take a statement from that officer, however, the doctors would not allow us to talk to that officer at the time.

We wanted to get a clean statement from him, and what I mean clean, without the video being out there, because we wanted to know precisely why you made the stop, what happened, what was said, so on and so forth.

Now, there was body cam footage.

It delayed us for a little while to release it, or not necessarily release it, pass it to TBI, because every investigation, TBI, according to our Memorandum of Understanding, TBI takes over the investigation.

Once TBI finishes the investigation, then they give it to the DA's office, so in our last officer involved shooting, that's what occurred.

We were delayed because of medical reasons.

- About 10 minutes left here, back to, you said, I think, 44 people died, 20, half of those give or take were medical conditions, the other half were what?

- We had some suicides that occurred.

We were right at the national average, I think, of suicides that occurred in the jail.

I can't remember all of 'em.

- Well, are there times, let me, that's not a fair question 'cause you shouldn't have, I mean, it's 5 years and it's 22 people, and there's a lot going on.

Have there been incidents where you've had to discipline guards or people on your staff?

- Well, we've disciplined officers, when we felt that they didn't make rounds properly, or they didn't do things like that.

We have disciplined 'em before, and so, that's usually what we look at.

We try to go back and look at the video and assess that then.

- Let me bring Bill back in.

- So there was some video released from one of the jail incidents, and the reaction to it was a lot of people looked at it and said, "This doesn't look right."

What do you say to people, who, when the video comes out and they see it, they react to it and you're still, there's still a process to be followed on your end.

What do you say to people who judge these incidents on the videos?

- Well, most of the time, Bill, when people see those videos, first of all, that video was released illegally.

That video should not have been released.

There's been court cases throughout the state because of jail security that you don't release jail videos, not officer involved shooting videos, but jail videos.

So when people see that video and they don't know all of the story, then they've reached their own conclusions.

So, we've tried to be transparent enough to talk about it, but obviously, it was an ongoing investigation, and we couldn't.

The DA chose not to continue with his investigation.

He sent the investigation up to Nashville.

He handpicked the DA up in Nashville to look at the case.

We're concerned about that, because that DA in Nashville is under investigation now with TBI.

But we followed all the rules.

We did everything that we were supposed to do, as far as the video was out anyway, but our officers made their statements, and we're very concerned about how this process has really worked, because at the end of the day, those officers deserve to be treated fairly and it needs to be a fair investigation.

So we're waiting to see what's gonna happen with this, but I do have some concerns about them being treated fairly.

- Is there a different standard for releasing video from jail incidents than there is for an officer involved shooting?

And should there be?

- When you say different standard, could you clarify?

- In terms of when the video is released?

- Well, according to our MOU with TBI, when we get the video or officer involved shooting, we do our preliminary investigation, 'cause officers have what's called Garrity, and so we have to do a separate investigation from TBI.

So, we give TBI all the video, everything at the beginning of the incident.

Again, this one was delayed just because we didn't have an opportunity to speak to the officer just because he was so severely injured and his doctors wouldn't even let us talk to him.

So we've tried to be transparent, we tried to work as fast as we could, because we do know the public wants to see those videos, and we're not trying to not be transparent and show the public what really happened.

So, but what we're concerned about is is when only one side of the story gets told and those officers, their families, is going back to the jail.

These are mothers and fathers and sons and daughters, and to have just one side of the story told, when you see the attorneys from the other side talk about it, and those officers really can't talk about it because it's a criminal case.

I mean, it kind of skews the process, if you will.

So again, with the DA here at Memphis, who publicly said that he wouldn't investigate the case, after five months of having it, he decides he doesn't wanna investigate the case because he supported another mayoral candidate.

Well, we wasted five months there.

How did you decide at five months later that you didn't wanna investigate the case?

And then to turn around and handpick a DA, a DA, again, that's being investigated by TBI for some things that's going on in his office, it hadn't sound right to me from the very beginning.

So, I'm very concerned.

- And so you think there's a political motive?

- Absolutely I do.

I think it's a political motive that what's going on here with this case.

The normal process was not followed.

Even if this DA had decided that he wasn't gonna investigate it, well, why not say that at the very beginning, and say that, "Because I'm supporting another candidate, I'm gonna send this."

But then, even when you sent it to the DA's conference, there's a process, and as far as we can tell, the process wasn't followed.

It was handpicked or hand chosen to a DA that I have concerns about, because again, he's under investigation himself with TBI.

- Let me, with four minutes left here, we'll shift from crime and public safety, although that is obviously a huge part of what the city mayor does, but another part is issues around infrastructure, one is MLGW.

So is MLGW, I mean, it's had a lot of outages this year.

There's been tremendous weather incidents.

They're in the middle of a big spend to up the infrastructure and improve the infrastructure.

Is MLGW going in the right direction?

- Well, you have to look at what's going on with MLG&W.

In 2020, they went to the City Council, got a rate increase.

Obviously, they didn't spend the money, they're sitting on millions of dollars.

They didn't do the tree trimming like they should have, so there are some concerns about what's really going on over at MLG&W.

- Do you support Doug McGowen, who's been in the job for 10 months?

- Well, again, he's a director, he's over MLG&W now.

We'll make an assessment and see what the future holds.

- Another big part of what the mayor does is a part of the whole process of economic development, be that PILOTs, be that TIFs, be that, infrastructure, whatever it takes, projects big and small.

What would your approach be to those sort of, the use of incentives and the many different types of incentives to bring businesses and retain businesses to Memphis?

- Well, I am for PILOTs, but I think PILOTs have, if you're gonna grant a PILOT, people need to be held accountable.

How many jobs, what type of pay those jobs are gonna be?

You're competing in a global market all over and especially in the Mid-South area, when many cities are giving PILOTs, incentives, if you will, for companies to come in.

We're excited about BlueOval and the possibilities that it could bring to our city, so I think when you talk about PILOTs and even TDZ zones, which are two in Memphis, we're excited about that as well.

And from what I understand, the city will not be issuing anymore, but again, PILOTs are a part of it, and we'll take a close look at it to see what's best for Memphis.

- Another very important bread and butter kind of issue for the mayor's office, for the city, is roads.

Would you wanna be spending?

I mean, Mayor Strickland points that as a success of increasing the amount of spending on paving and rebuilding roads.

Would you wanna accelerate that spending even more?

- Absolutely, I've talked to so many citizens during this campaign, and one lady even told me, she said, "Mr. Bonner, if you just fixed the potholes, I'd vote for you."

So it is a concern for our citizens.

Now, I know Mayor Strickland did talk about we have so many state routes that are through Memphis, and again, that goes back to relationships, relationships, getting the state to do more for us.

- In terms of spending more, and we've talked about spending more on, I assume you wanna increase the number of police officers.

We didn't ask you, but I think you've said that on the campaign trail, you talked about cars.

Can the city afford that without a tax increase?

- No, we're not looking at a tax increase, Eric.

We have the debt cliff that we'll be coming off.

We'll infuse about $50 million, reoccurring dollars, into the city's coffer in the next few years.

- The court case was decided, but there was criticism of the fact that you hadn't been living in the city of Memphis.

Was that fair criticism, again, separate from the legalities?

- I don't think so.

We checked on it before we even announced our candidacy and what the rules were.

We followed the rules, and so we had to go to court to get the judge to decide it, but my wife and I, we live in Memphis now, and I've lived here all my life.

I have a reason why I moved, but.

- And you've talked about it, and I don't mean to cut you off, but I wanted to touch on it for a second.

- Sure, sure.

- We're out of time, we really appreciate you being here.

- Absolutely.

- Thank you, Bill.

If you missed any of the show, again, which was recorded on Wednesday morning, airing on Friday, you can get the full episode at wkno.org.

You can also get interviews with all the other major candidates at wkno.org and our coverage in the Daily Memphian.

Election day, October 5th.

Early voting continues through September 30th.

Thanks very much.

We'll see you next week.

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