- (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.

- Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, 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 Jim Strickland, Memphis mayor.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thanks for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

The first question is an odd one, but are you a resident of Memphis?

[Jim laughs] And were you a resident of Memphis the first time you and the second times you were elected for five years at least?

- I've been a resident continually since August of 1977.

But it is interesting; Four years ago, not all my opponents were residents.

And we knew that and we just, we knew it wasn't a factor, so we just didn't push it.

- Who were not resident?

There was questions around former Mayor Herenton.

- The only home he owned was in Collierville.

- So more seriously though, and it's a very serious issue, and you're nice to put up with my joke, but it's a segue into a very serious issue that I think most viewers will be familiar with.

And Bill will correct me where I get this wrong, but right now in Chancery Court, there's a case.

People have challenged the residency of two of the leading candidates, Floyd Bonner, the sheriff, and Van Turner.

And there are some questions around, again, Willie Herenton, former Mayor Herenton, and his residency.

That issue's in court, and just this week, Jennifer Sink, the chief legal officer, or city attorney, came out and said that a candidate for mayor must in fact have lived in the city for five years.

The city's position on this was unclear.

The judge has been trying to subpoena you to be a part of this case.

Do you agree with Jennifer Sink's position?

- I don't know.

[chuckles] I've not read, and her opinion or really Robert Meyers' opinion.

So I've not read Robert's opinion; I've glanced at it.

I've not read Allan Wade's opinion; I've glanced at it.

I don't think my opinion really matters.

I always knew it'd end up a judge was gonna have to decide.

In fact, probably a court of appeals or a Supreme Court judge.

- You would think, Tennessee, yeah, that it would go.

I'm surprised.

I mean, you are a lawyer.

I mean, you're the mayor, you were a City Council person, you've been in politics for a long time.

I guess I could understand you not giving us your opinion publicly, but I'm surprised you haven't read the opinions and formed an opinion, both as in your position and given that you're a lawyer.

- Well, I've got a lot of things to do.

So I mean, [chuckles] in the list of things to do, understanding the legal intricacies of residency.

I do know it's not clear cut, because you have really good lawyers who disagree.

And if it's not clear cut with lawyers who disagree, it's gonna take a really deep dive.

And I just haven't spent the time to do it.

- Last one, I mean, Jennifer Sink works for you, Chief Legal Officer.

Will you direct her in terms of, it sounds like she will get wrapped up to some degree in this case, potentially.

I mean, will you be in conversation with her about how she handles this going forward?

- I mean, she'll update me, but I'm certainly not directing.

- I mean, is that a formal recusal of you just wanna stay out of it or is it-?

- No, I don't dictate how legal per, I mean, even though I'm a lawyer, I don't dictate how contracts are drafted or how litigation proceeds.

She's a really good lawyer.

And she's got really good lawyers working for her.

And I let them do their job.

- All right, I'mma go to Bill.

- So, why didn't you challenge Mayor Herenton's residency four years ago?

- Frankly, we just didn't think he was gonna win.

And it was drawing more attention to a fact that, it was kind of a side issue.

And I thought we were gonna win anyway.

And I just wanted to get out there and get as many votes as I could.

- And you did, you won with a majority in- - Yeah, I think 72%.

- Seventy-two percent?

I think more like 61%, maybe?

- Oh.

[Eric laughs] - 61?

I don't know.

- Okay, all right.

- No, no, you're probably right, you're probably right.

Was it 62 to like 25?

- I believe so.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- I believe so.

- You're right, you're right.

You're right, I'm wrong.

- Okay.

- Let's stay with the mayor's race, and then we'll move onto other things.

Are you gonna endorse in this mayor's race?

- I don't have any plans now, but who knows.

- You could.

I mean, have you been watching?

Have you watched debates and forums or-?

- I've not watched any debates; I've read stories about the debates.

Not all of 'em, but some of 'em.

- Why not endorse, why not?

- I don't know.

First of all, I don't know if anybody wants my endorsement.

And I don't know how the race is gonna shake out.

We'll just have to wait and see.

- Let's switch gears to- - First, I also don't think endorsements in mayors' races mean that much.

I know you have to write an obligatory story about it, but I don't think it moves voters.

Endorsements for judges that are lower on the ballots where people don't know the people running, those mean more.

But by October, people are gonna know the four or five top candidates for mayor, and an endorsement doesn't move 'em as much, 'cause they've already made an informed decision themselves.

- Let's switch to, obviously crime has been on everyone's minds, it's been a big topic for you, it's been a big issue for you since you were first elected the first time.

As violent crime has jumped through COVID, and jumped both in Memphis and nationally, it's been more of a topic.

Tyre Nichols, all that.

So one is, you talk a lot about the revolving door.

That 201 Poplar, the jail, the criminal justice system, and what I would define, and you can correct me, the revolving door is that after criminals are arrested, they're out on the street too quickly, because of too low a bail, because of all kinds of problems in the system.

We have a new DA, and we have a new juvenile court judge, a hundred or a hundred fifty days into their jobs.

Let's start with DA Mulroy.

Has he at all had an impact on what you describe as the revolving door?

- I don't fully know, 'cause it's the system.

And I'm not blaming him, but the entire system is not transparent at all.

So I don't know.

I do know that last year, in 2022, murders were down about 16%, aggravated assaults were down 7% or so.

This year, murders are up over 30%, and aggravated assaults are up; I don't know the percent.

And I do know that from talking to police officers, from veteran prosecutors to our gang interveners, that word is out on the street that there are little to no consequences to illegal acts.

- Or at least that's the perception among criminals, or the reality among criminals.

- That's definitely what they're thinking.

And giving you an example is, last year, Memphis police arrested over 1,600 people for car break-ins and car thefts.

In the first 3 months of this year, over 400.

So over 2,000 people have been arrested for breaking into cars and stealing cars, which is a real prevalent, y'all just wrote a story about it this morning.

There are no consequences to those 2,000 people, adults or children, being arrested.

It is truly a revolving door.

Low bails, probations when they're convicted.

And, if you're an adult, it's a stop at the jail.

You get a meal and a rest, and you're right back out.

Juveniles don't even go see juvenile court.

It is a real significant problem.

And the judicial system needs to be open and transparent.

What is their plan on that?

- Get Bill in here.

- Mayor, the Memphis City Council just gave final approval to the last of their reform measures that were involving what are known as pre-textual traffic stops, traffic stops for minor equipment issues by police.

And the ordinance asks and requests that Memphis Police not make those traffic stops.

Have you signed that ordinance, and what are your views on the effectiveness of that?

- I have not signed it, and we're meeting about it.

We meaning city attorney and MPD.

We have another meeting coming up relatively soon, this week or next week, to kinda hopefully finalize our viewpoint.

One of the challenges is when police officers are sworn in, they are sworn to uphold the laws of the United States, the laws of Tennessee, and the laws and ordinances of the city of Memphis.

I've forgotten the exact wording, but that's pretty much it.

Well, that ordinance actually says, don't enforce these as primary purposes to stop.

State law, we think, says something opposite.

So it puts a police officer in a real awkward position, where they're sworn to uphold the law.

So we're working through that.

- Is it possible there could be some amendments suggested, or is it possible that you would veto that?

- I guess anything is possible.

So I don't know the answer to that.

- Okay, all right.

- But, you know, veto really doesn't mean much, because, as you know, a simple majority can overrule veto.

- Nevertheless, Chief Davis was involved in some of the rewriting of the ordinance, some of the wording on it to make exceptions for what are known legally as exigent circumstances on it.

- That was the unmarked car, which is a separate ordinance.

Basically she said that's the way our policy is now, while she's the police chief.

Meaning you can't use an unmarked car routinely for traffic stops.

That there might be an unusual circumstance here or there that you can use one.

And I think she agreed to that.

- Were there any of the other ordinances that the Council passed that have similar questions or are under similar review?

- Well, we're looking at 'em all, but a couple of 'em we don't have to dig very, I mean like one of 'em I think said almost the Council could act as a CLERB board and do investigations themselves.

- Civilian legal, civilian review-?

- Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board.

- And have access to things like body camera footage could request it, because some Council members are already talking about, in light of that ordinance passing, getting the body cam footage for an incident that happened in the past week.

- Oh, I didn't know that.

But I think that's within their purview.

So we didn't really necessarily see a problem with that.

- So many questions.

One is you mentioned the revolving door; Juvenile Judge Tarik Sugarmon was on the show in the last couple of weeks.

He said that he had met with you, he had heard your concerns about the revolving door, and that the juvenile court, the juvenile detention center, was no longer a revolving door.

Is that in line with what you just said?

- No.

Not at all.

We just see things differently, I think.

What I see is them detaining thirty to thirty-five juveniles at any one time.

And we see the level of violent crime and crime going on and the lack of detention more than 30 to 35.

That's a real challenge.

And I know they can't detain every juvenile, but this is where, and this is not his fault, but the juvenile court is completely underfunded.

You have about 500 juveniles a year who commit violent crimes, two thousand who commit felonies.

So that's a lot of juveniles.

So you can't detain 'em all.

But you need to intervene with all of them.

And he has so few, I think they call 'em probation officers, that these kids are only checking in once a month or once every two weeks.

They need somebody to call.

And I gave you an example; When these kids are out late at night and breaking into cars, nobody's calling the family the next day and saying, "Why is Junior out there at two o'clock in the morning?

"He's 14 years old; "Who's he hanging out to?

What do we need to do?"

It's 30 days, 45 days before they even get to court.

They need a dramatic increase in their budget and the County Commission, I guess I'm pleading with them, put more money there so that they can intervene with more.

Now, we have asked for a $6 million grant from the state in a partnership with Youth Villages to provide intense intervention to some number of juveniles.

But it's not gonna be all that 2,500 that need it.

- You mentioned out late at night.

Where do things stand with this juvenile curfew?

It was announced, it was pulled back, there was confusion.

Is there going to be a curfew, is it gonna start downtown, and how will it be implemented?

- There already is a curfew, it's just not enforceable.

The problem with it, the challenge that city government has always had, since I've been involved, in enforcing the curfew, we have no place to take the juveniles.

Let's say you're 14 years old, and you're out, and police stop you and pick you up.

Juvenile court will not take you.

So what does the police officer have to do?

Police officer ends up having to call parents.

And sometimes it's hard to track down parents.

And it basically takes that officer offline from patrol, could be for hours.

So it's just a real challenge.

The city government doesn't have detention facilities.

So we said, on a pilot basis, the downtown colonel said, "We'll see if we can do it."

And one reason we just wanna start in one area is we haven't done this.

We have not detained children for their parents to come pick up.

So we don't know if it'll be five children, 10 children, 50 children, how many we can handle, how the operation will go.

But we will enforce the curfew sometime this spring or summer on a pilot basis to see how it goes.

- And you're gonna use, is it Greenlaw Community Center?

- Well that's what I heard.

I heard that or the downtown police precinct.

- And it'll be staffed by who?

And will it be a jail or will it be like-?

- No it's not a jail- - A library where you, hey, sit over there at that table.

I mean?

- You know, I don't know.

And see, those are all the things we have to work out.

It would be so much easier if juvenile court would take the children, which I think happened years and years ago.

And that's the number one challenge with enforcing a curfew city wide.

We have no place to take the children.

- So piloting sometime this spring to summer, using one of these two facilities, not sure who they're gonna staff it.

MPD would be doing the enforcement in sense of, hey, looks like that's a kid, check ID.

Are they gonna pull over or pick up every juvenile they see?

Is it juveniles who might be causing trouble?

I mean, what is the criteria for picking up a juvenile?

- I think a lot of that's left to the discretion of the police officer, just like everything.

They don't pull over every speeder; It's left to their discretion.

So again, the big determining factor is how many juveniles can we keep at one time.

That's gonna drive all these other decisions.

- So if you could keep a lot, you would just pick up any, it's almost like carding at a liquor store, at a restaurant, if you're out buying booze.

I mean, you card everybody or- - In theory.

- You selectively card.

But if you had the space, you would want your police officers, if that kid looks like a kid, err on the side of picking 'em up and taking 'em in.

- That would be my preference.

Because it is not safe for a 14-year-old to be out at mid.

I mean, I've heard coach after coach always say nothing good happens after midnight.

And if you're 14, 15 years old, that's absolutely a hundred percent true.

It is not safe for those 15-year-olds to be out there.

- Back to Bill, 10 minutes.

- So in the beginning, if the number of kids rounded up for this, because we do have a problem with this, if the number of children rounded up is large enough, don't you then have to divert more police to watch Greenlaw or the police precinct, wherever they are?

- That's a really good point, and those are the things we've gotta work out.

And again, we're not in the business of detention.

The county is, but the county won't do this service for us.

- Well, and the other thing I'm wondering about is state laws.

Because as you know, the assessment center that the county worked on, which was where you would have juveniles and their families report after they were stopped, one of the hangups in implementing that was the requirement that if the police transport them, they have to be handcuffed.

And so that resulted in a conflict with the folks who were gonna run the assessment center independent of juvenile court as well.

So are there some state laws that are involved in this?

- That's a really good point, and we are investigating that.

'Cause I also wanted to know, if a church volunteered and said, "Hey, we'll open up our gym "and you could bring all the juveniles there, and we'll wait 'til the parents come pick 'em up," could we do that?

I'm not sure legally we could transfer these children, even if it's the best, most well-resourced nonprofit church there is.

Do we have the legal authority to do that?

I question whether we do, but all that kinda stuff is being researched.

Again, these are challenges because we're not in the business of detention.

And the county is, but the county will not do it.

- The early draft of this mentioned things about if kids are dancing or doing any number of activities that in and of themselves are not illegal, that they would be rounded up.

Where did the draft of that come from?

- I don't know, I've never seen it.

I didn't know about it 'til it was reported.

And that is not part of the plan at all.

- Last question on this.

I mean we have a bunch, but obviously a lot of details haven't been sorted out.

How long might these kids stay?

What if their parents don't come get them?

- See, that's another thing we've gotta work out.

That's one of the big challenges that we have, right now we have, because a police officer has to maintain that kid for hours.

So those are all really good questions and challenges, which is why this has to be done just on a small basis at first.

- Related to the question of the stops, as Bill was asking about these, this ordinance that City Council has passed, some of that came out of obviously the Tyre Nichols tragedy, the killing of Tyre Nichols that's going to court and all that.

Is this balancing act that Memphis has, that every city in America has, of what some people call pre-textual stops; I'm gonna stop someone 'cause they've got a broken taillight, and that gives me pretext to see if there's drugs in the car, something worse in the car.

People accused SCORPION, the MPD unit, of doing a lot of pre-textual stops, roughing people up, and it obviously culminating in the killing, the beating to death of Tyre Nichols.

Do you look to other cities and say this city or this police department has done it right?

In terms of dealing with what seem like small traffic offenses, but some police will say, "Well, but that can give us entree into bigger problems."

- Well, the answer to your question is no, I haven't researched that.

But I do know that every city, every law enforcement office do these stops.

Every one of 'em.

Because they do lead to people who have arrest warrants out on 'em, or illegal activities.

And if not, then you let it go.

So every law enforcement does those.

And not doing it is a challenge on trying to reduce crime.

So it is a balance.

You used the word balancing act; It is a balancing act.

- We've got just three minutes left.

We could ask a bunch more issues on crime, which we might do on the podcast version here.

But I wanna switch gears, just 'cause we have three minutes left.

We're about to go into Memphis in May, Tom Lee Park.

You helped mediate, forced the parties at Memphis in May and Memphis River Parks Partnership, that controls the park, into mediation.

Are you confident this is gonna go well?

Memphis in May was concerned, they said they couldn't have as many barbecue teams in the park.

Others said, "Well wait, all that was negotiated down to the square foot."

There was plenty of room for the same amount of teams.

Are you nervous about how this is gonna go?

- No, I'm not nervous.

I'm hopeful that it's gonna go well.

We do have people hired to make sure the load in and load out goes well, that hopefully nothing is damaged, people have a good time.

I always promised that Memphis in May would be in the park in May of '23, and they are going to be, and I hope everyone has a great time.

The thing I'd be worried about is it looks like it's gonna rain again this weekend.

[all chuckle] - Well, Bill.

- Always does.

[Jim laughs] Councilman Warren has an ordinance that he is crafting at this moment to in effect pass an ordinance that says there are some gun limits in the city of Memphis, contrary to what state law says.

Are you involved in that?

- No.

I do think it's extraordinarily well meaning, but it's also meaningless.

- 'Cause state law's gonna trump it.

- Yeah, well there's specifically a state law that says local government can't regulate guns.

What we're focused on is trying to support the governor's special called session in supporting that bill.

- The city got a great deal of money for arena and stadium funding, some hundreds of millions of dollars.

Obviously you'd pushed for that, you're happy with that.

What comes next?

- That's a really good question.

We're meeting with all the teams to try to nail down the allocation.

I'm meeting with hopefully Mayor Harris next week to kinda go over it with him.

Then I gotta talk to Council.

We've gotta get a lot done in a short amount of time.

'Cause by the time I leave office on December 31st, I want all the deals inked and the construction projects bid so that the football and soccer can start in January, and basketball can, FedExForum start about a year from now.

- And how much money, give or take, does the city have to come up with?

- Well, it's roughly a $700 million total ask, and locally we're supposed to be half, which is what these funding mechanisms do, which is like the car rental tax, and the sales tax is generated at the finish.

- Not property tax.

- No.

- Last one, we had your former COO, Chief Operating Officer Doug McGowen on the show in January, new to the job at MLGW.

A lot going on there.

But when you look back at the TVA decision to renew the contract, do you think that, now that you have new leadership in MLGW, is it something to come back to?

That question of staying with TVA?

- Well first, I trust his decision a hundred percent.

So I'd support his decision.

Two, our consultant clearly show that there were mistakes made in the original RFP process.

But the biggest downside was it was just bad timing.

Because it was during the pandemic and the extraordinary cost increases that occurred that really tilted it.

And I talked to Elaine this week, and she said that it's still not the right time to rebuild.

- The consultant.

- Yeah, our consultant from Atlanta, she said it's still not the right time to.

But there will be a right time.

It's probably not gonna be while I'm mayor, but we need the markets to calm down.

- So many more questions.

[laughs] What can I get in?

Well, roads.

You've talked about roads from the beginning.

Are the roads better seven and a half years later?

- There's no doubt they are.

We literally have doubled the budget on roads.

The problem is we're 330 square miles large, we're one of the largest cities in the country, not counting consolidated governments, and there was a huge backlog.

And that's why people don't feel it.

- Is the state doing its part, on the state roads that are in the city?

- I wish they'd do more.

- Okay.

Thank you, we'll get you back before you're out of office in December.

Bill, thank you.

Thank you very much for joining us.

That is all the time we have tonight.

If you missed any of the show, you can get it online as podcast.

You can go to WKNO.org.

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

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