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- What it's like to be a police officer in Memphis, 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 MPD police officer, and one of the heads of the police union, John Covington.

Thanks for being here.

- Well, thank you for having me.

Appreciate it.

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

We'll talk about a lot today and appreciate you coming on.

It's always, we've done so many shows in the last year, year and a half on crime as this spike in crime nationally, in both locally has taken place.

So it'd be great to hear from someone who has been on the street.

Right now, you're in this union position, so not really out on patrol.

We talked a little bit earlier.

- That's right.

- But obviously a police officer for 10 years now and been and are around and talking to all the police and so on.

And we'll talk about restoration of benefits and the kind of impact that is having on you all and the goal the city has of hiring and so on.

I am curious though, with a big picture kind of thing of what it's like to be, as I said at the top, what it's like to be a police officer right now.

And you wrote a column for us recently and addressed some of this.

I mean, we're in the midst of a national and local spike and violent crime since what, over the last eight years and the change in benefits.

Some 500 police officers have left Memphis Police Department.

In the last few years with George Floyd and with other incidents of bad behavior by police officers, a major, major spotlight has been put on police.

And we've written about incidents I mean in The Daily Memphian as well.

And I, I'm, it, I don't know that anyone says it's an easy job though, against that backdrop, right?

So I'm curious what you, what you experience and what you've experienced as your time, a police officer and then your colleagues.

I mean, are they demoralized?

Are they angry?

Are they just running out the clock or are they still driven to do the good work that police officers try to do?

- Well, I put it this way, you know, there's just, there's not enough of us and we all know the spike in crime.

So it's a stressful job, a tough job.

There's a lot of overtime right now because regardless of the numbers, we're gonna go out there and protect the citizens of Memphis.

And so, as I said, there's a lot of stress and pressure and you talked about the shortages add to that there was a social upheaval and turmoil and many go into the wanting to be a police officer when they're growing up because they're, that person's kind of held up on a pedestal.

And that took a real hit that image.

And that certainly played a part in officers not feeling valued.

And that has an impact.

And we also we're seeing in the '90s, as you calling under Clinton, there was a big move to hire officers.

A lot of those officers are heading towards retirement.

So we're getting younger, we're dealing with millennials, kind of a different breed, so to speak, and learning how to speak to them, so, but you know, as you saw recently, we had some tragic, frightening events and what you saw and with the guy driving around shooting people and then of course that tragic kidnapping is how well the police department did in those situations, which is a testament to our training and how committed we are.

But it is a tough time for officers.

- So many things to come back to one, one simple thing though, that is a weird place for me to go and then go to Bill, but you mentioned the overtime and I remember years ago we had Bill Gibbons, former DA, now head of the Crime Commission, on the show with Josh Spickler, head of Just City now working with and a criminal justice reformer who came outta the, I think the Public Defender's office and now working with Steve Mulroy.

And we'll talk about Steve Mulroy and the new DA and expectations there, but they, one thing they do not agree on a lot, right.

Bill Gibbons and Josh Spickler people go back to the, they do not, [indistinct].

One thing that they really came together on was that issue of overtime that if you have police officers working so much overtime away from their families, stressed out, and it's already a stressful job.

That, it really can create a lot of problems.

And so, although obviously maybe police officers like that extra overtime paycheck do, I mean, is there just overwhelming desire among the rank and file police officers to get more cops in and to reduce the amount of time they're having to work?

- Absolutely.

You know, a lot of times you're gonna have socially younger officers who don't have families who just overtime, but as you get older, that can be kind of tough and a lot of officers put a lot of value on that time away.

So that does create... Yeah, it's tough on 'em right now.

And because the job is gonna get done regardless and they're gonna be out there and so we have So you talk to any officer, they want new officers to come in to fill the ranks so we can have a little bit more balance right now, so.

- Bring in Bill.

- One of the things in talking about recruitment is that it, I think from past experience that there have been like cycles of recruitment for police where we have a bunch of police officers who are about to hit 25, 30 years, who are about to retire so we need to start, start thinking about recruiting more officers.

I'm wondering if now though you have more police officers who have an outlook that I might not do this for 25 years.

I might do this for five years and go to law school while I'm doing it.

Or I might do this for five years and be looking for a position with federal law enforcement.

How common is that these days?

- Well, that's not just in the police world, it's kind of a generational thing.

I've seen studies where, you know, our generation, I think generally thought in terms of like one career or maybe two at most.

But you see a lot of the new generation that does think in some shorter term like that.

But what we do find is to be a police officer to really commit to it, if you do it for five years, we're finding if you hit that kind of five year mark, generally speaking, you're gonna stay because that's the person who had the calling to do it, has now seen it on the streets.

Really, it takes about five years to really get it down how to do it.

So when they hit that mark, they're kind of on for the long haul.

But to your point, the ones that we're losing tend to be before that five year period.

And that's why I know we'll get into it later.

That's why the question of the pension restoration came up because that was one thing that some of the younger officers talked about over and over, is wanting that defined plan to know their future.

- So Chief Davis, Chief CJ Davis has been on the job for what about a year, about a year at this point, some further efforts have been made.

There's been a law passed in Nashville that says you can't have any kind of residency requirement for police and firefighters.

The net effect of that and as well as the pay raises, the bonuses, the incentives, and now the restoration of the pension and the next city budget.

Is there a net gain there for the police force in Memphis now with all of that in place?

- Right.

I think that's definitely where we're headed.

We have a huge class coming out.

It's over 80 I maybe even in the 90s, which is one of the biggest classes we've had in a long time.

There's obviously been a big focus.

So now as I say in the piece I wrote, this is one of the final bits of the puzzle.

We've been, as you say, residency, benefits, pay raises and so forth is that's all kind of coming together.

The next step you'll see is the police department going out and advertising that and pushing it.

'Cause I think we'll have the opportunity to bring officers in from other departments 'cause we're kind of going in another direction than a lot of major departments away from the cuts, you know, to restoration.

So I think we're gonna see over time, I think we'll look back to this time period and say this is really when the foundation was built to start rebuilding the department.

So I'm pretty optimistic.

- Right now in round numbers.

I don't, we don't starting police officer makes what, give or take?

- Well it's in the high 50s, 58,000.

- And there's big signing bonuses right now.

- That's correct.

- New recruits in the 10 to 15,000 range.

- That's correct.

Right.

- Depend.

Okay.

And then the let's go and get wonky for a second about the benefits that have been that police officers when the benefits were cut in 2014 in the Wharton administration.

What, they have now and what is being restored.

If you can walk through.

- That I can, Well what was cut the time was the one was the retiree benefits pre-65.

So in our job let's say you come on at 20, you could very well be retiring at 45 and it takes a toll on you physically doing this kind of work.

And you see the kind of heart attack rates and everything are much higher for police as a profession.

So that was a big deal that was restored because it also sends the message to that person who hits that five year say, "Hey, "when I get outta here I'm gonna have health insurance instead of spending $1,400 a month on it."

So that was big.

They cut the, they moved.

Well when the Council made that decision, they went seven and a half years back and took away the defined pension benefit and it turned into a hybrid, 401a plan, which I've never been able to have anybody explain to me how it really works.

I hear as people say, Oh it's a great plan.

I say, Well how does it work?

And when you get ready to retire, they're like, I don't know.

And you can't tell the number.

So that was restored and now going forward, all those people since July 1st, 2016, they're gonna be able to opt into that in new hires as well.

And we also got 10% raise over the next two years.

And we also got these bonuses, which are pensionable, which have a positive impact on your retirement obviously.

So there's been a lot going on.

And so some of these new officers come on and we kind of joke about it at the union that's like, we're gonna get spoiled thinking that these just good things happen.

But it's been a lot of hard work to make this happen.

- The restoration part came off the referendum that you very much worked very hard on and the whole union worked hard on in 2019.

- Right.

- That there was a tax increase that would pay for restoration benefits for police, fire, also some paving, and also pre-K. - That's correct.

Yes.

- And we'll get more into the numbers, as we go into budget season, we'll try to get Shirley Ford on, the Chief Finance Officer, and others from the city and City Council.

So we won't go too far because there are people out there, and I remember the debates we had many shows that we did, many, many, many shows that Bill and I did about decision.

But it was really important and it was, you know the reason that people wanted to cut it was that it looked like we were going towards this fiscal cliff and this argument that the city over the long term couldn't afford this.

The state stepped in and said, "Hey, you're underfunding your pension."

We're gonna skip a lot of that today and we will get to that with city officials and go and charts and graphs and so on and so forth.

'Cause I wanna stay with, on this notion of crime, we talked about some of the high profile incidents.

And we've got a big change in the landscape.

We talked about the social upheavals, we talked about all this the reductions in the force.

We've also got a brand new DA, which I referenced.

And it would seem maybe some weariness, but I'll, I suppose it as a question, had Steve on, Steve Mulroy, the new DA on last week, that Steve came in and I think in my words, not his as a criminal justice reformer, wanting to do things differently, but also saying, I want to focus on violent criminals and do all we, that's where we need to be focused.

We need to stop focus on petty crime.

Are the police officers you talk to wary of the new DA and this new administration?

Do they embrace the new administration?

Is it a wait and see of this new DA and his new approach?

- It's kind of a wait and see in terms of just where he is because there's campaigns obviously, and then he's coming from an academic background and then I think there's a reality of doing the job.

And from our point of view, he needs to be given some time to get into the position and learn.

And I think we'll see then how he's going to run that office and his, what his approach is gonna be.

Because I think the vast majority of citizens in Memphis, we need to be tough on crime.

We need to not be just a revolving door and putting people back on the streets.

I think we all agree that some of the minor petty stuff doesn't need to be focused on.

But if you actually look back at DA Weirich, she was already kind of doing that and so-- - Doing what, just to clarify.

- And not focusing not worrying so much about the minor stuff, but really and so yeah, so I think he will be, and I can only speak for, just kind of think about it when the reality of the situation, he'll have perhaps rethink or have a more nuanced view of some things and we'll kind of see how it goes.

But obviously he deserves time to get in, fill out the position and then we'll kind of take it from there.

We're not gonna prejudge him.

It's a tough job.

It's a tough job.

- Bill.

- And in terms of the benefits restoration for the 1978 plan, which is what it's been referred to, Mayor Strickland made that announcement just a month or two ago.

And this will be part of his budget for the budget proposal for the fiscal year that starts July 1st.

When he made the announcement at City Hall, one of the first things I asked him was, "Did the City Council make a mistake when they cut the benefits in 2014?"

- A City Council that he was a part of.

- A City Council that he was a part of, and that he was the budget chairman at the time.

He didn't think that the Council made a mistake.

He said economic conditions changed.

What do you think about that?

Did the Council make a mistake back then?

- When I was watching that press conference I heard you ask that question.

I recognized that as you, and that's obviously a fair question.

I think if you go back and look at the impact that that had on losing the officers, I would assume that if they went back in time, the Council would make another decision on that.

Now, I will say this in the mayor's defense, because having been involved in politics and working with politicians, I have started to understand you have a certain view on the Council that you don't necessarily have from the mayor's office.

You're privy to a much broader view in understanding and thinking of kind of longer term impacts.

I believe.

So we focus on that and as you know when Strickland's first elected mayor, the police association did not have a great relationship.

But over time we both have recognized the need for more officers and retention and recruitment and we've come together and worked really well together on that.

And we couldn't have accomplished these things without working with the mayor.

And so yeah, I would say it, it's good enough for us to focus on the future.

We're fixing I think, some mistakes that were made in the past.

But we said at the time what would happen and it did happen.

There's a great line in broadcast news, which I'm sure you guys are both familiar with.

When he said, "It must be nice to be the smartest person in the room and knows what's going on?"

And she says, "No, it's awful."

And so in looking back at that time we were saying, please don't make these cuts.

It's gonna have a huge negative impact on numbers of officers and crime, and it did.

But to everybody's credit, there's this understanding of moving forward and luckily the citizens of Memphis stepped in with the public safety referendum, which has allowed the funds to be able to rebuild and do these things.

So that's a good thing.

- It was, it I think for people who don't realize this, most referendums that get on the ballot are put on the ballot by the City Council to have what the police and fire unions did go out and do a petition drive and get the number of signatures, which is a pretty daunting task to put this half cent sales tax, a sales tax hike on the ballot.

- Asking people to tax themselves.

- Yeah.

"Do you want to increase the sales tax that you pay?"

For all of that to happen, what was pretty unusual politically and is something that those two unions are and many other unions are not traditionally involved in terms of political activity.

What did you learn from kind of wading into those waters on this issue and seeing this thing through?

- I learned sometimes it's better to not know a whole lot about something before you try it, 'cause you don't realize how difficult we kind of wandered into it.

We had a meeting with the mayor and other city leaders about restoration of benefits because we thought it was that important and we took literally this cause like, well find me $30 million and I'll do it.

So we started looking and we looked at some of the other municipalities who had passed this sales tax increase in Germantown, Millington, to fund their schools nominally.

And I was, Oh, well there it is, there's our solution.

And then we went to the Council and asked them to put it on the ballot and they refused to do so, you know.

There was an election coming up.

I guess the word tax was scary.

Our argument was if you lay out in the wording exactly what you're gonna use it for and let the citizens know and let them know that it will help this issue of public safety, we feel like they'll vote for it.

They didn't want to do it.

And so we talked to the state, we talked to the Election Commission and found out 40,000 signatures would put it on the ballot.

Well, as you may know, we said, oh, 40,000, we can do that.

It took about a year, we had to get 100 over 120,000 just to make sure, because we have people, great people from Bartlett or wherever sign it.

And we're like, Oh, that doesn't count.

You don't live in the city, thank you for your support.

So it was a huge undertaking.

It was expensive, but you know, I always joke we were dumb enough to try it and smart enough to pull it off, you know.

- Well, and so then the pandemic hits and the city starts looking at its finances, and the city government here, the county government, every local government says, Oh, we're gonna take a huge hit on sales tax revenue.

The opposite turns out to be true.

And those sales tax revenue projections are in effect what's going to pay for the full restoration.

- That was correct.

And for the first time in the history of the city, pre-k for every Memphis child that wants it and a huge infusion into paving a lot of equipment and so forth.

We had charted the sales tax over years and looked back at 2008 during that economic turmoil at that time it only dropped a little bit and moved back up.

So we were pretty confident and then we, the pandemic hit now that there internet sales are taxed.

I don't know if like me, I was on Amazon all the time, but having them start having to, trying to break now that the pandemic is nominally over.

But yeah the numbers went way up in which we were all very pleased by.

So yes, it is made all this possible.

- The part of the conversation here with the six, seven minutes left here is the argument you've referenced here and you made in this, the call you did in the restoration, that reduction number of police officers from something like 24, 2500 down to around 1950 right now.

Something like that.

That was directly tied to the increase in crime there people that if we, and that we've had that debate with other people on the shows.

We've talked about crime justice, most people who've been on the show have said, We want more police that will reduce crime.

Others have said other otherwise.

For you rather than, I just wanna acknowledge that there's a debate about that goes on and you have your strong opinion about that.

If the, from your point of view, I mean if the MPD got back up to 22, another 200, another 300 officers over the next few years, one, they would reduce the overtime and stress and the time away from family and even some risks that come with that and burnout and so on.

But also where would they go, where would they be doing, what would you think, I mean, if you could wave a magic wand and say, Hey, we want more cops patrolling, you know, speeders, we want more cops in high crime areas.

What is that answer and what's that, what's the best use of those new police officers?

- Well, you could just be more proactive and that would be more police on the streets.

You could go in and build relationships with these businesses.

You could do more targeted policing, you could create more task force.

There's just a whole variety of things you could do from the crime fighting side and from the community building side, which is so much a part of it, just being able to be more proactive because then so many ways we have to be a little more reactive these days.

And so, and then it's hard to chart how much crime that we stop that never happens just based upon people seeing more police cars on the street and more officers and businesses and so forth like that.

So, and I just go back to the all I have to work from the FBI statistics and the Crime Commission you see pretty clearly this chart is police officers go up, crime seems to drop, but it works on so many levels to reduce crime, as I say, big part of this community working with community and not just the crime-focused issues.

- The one thing you know that has gone on over the last few years of this kind of spotlight in policing, and we've talked about it here on the show and in The Daily Memphian is this notion of sort of the broken window strategy of which was the strategy of, hey, you really want to arrest or give fines to people who do the smallest of crimes because it says, Hey, we're here.

Don't go down that path.

Don't do more because a broken window leads to a break in, leads to some kind of violence, and so that theory,.

Then the other theory is, I can't remember what it, you know, it's really called, but I would sort of think of it as broken taillights where people who say, look, the more touches you give, particularly young, particularly black, particularly male men of pulled over for a broken taillight or an expired license, get a 200, three hundred dollar fine that then has some interest on it, get pulled over again.

Suddenly you get someone who's got a burden that they cannot take care of.

I mean, I think everyone at this table will be like, bummer, I'm gonna pay that $200 fine online and I'm done, or I'm gonna go down stand in line and get it taken care of.

That's not easy for everybody, you know?

- Right.

- And the more touches you create with the criminal justice system is counterproductive.

And so where you, the police department, the cops you talk to, where are they on these small offenses and how effective those are at stopping the bigger offenses?

- Right.

And to your point, you know, Memphis is an economically struggling city in many ways with a large poor population.

And so you don't wanna put those extra burdens on people.

So when I talk about proactive it's being out in the community, in the schools, things of that nature, creating these more positive relationships.

And so that's, so, I don't know what the term, but not, I wouldn't say broken windows, more like broken pathways, you know, towards success.

And I just real quick, the MPA working with the Crime Commission is working with Memphis City or Shelby County Schools, sorry, on a program called Public Services Academy.

The idea is you start in ninth grade and you take different tracks to police, fire, or maybe be a politician or an attorney.

And the idea is to have a lot of mentors and create economic opportunity in these kind of great careers, but also create something uniquely Memphis.

It's something we're talking about.

So I think everybody gets, when you talk about being more proactive, not necessarily that kind of punitive way, but a more positive way.

- Do police officers.

Again, just a minute left here, apologies Bill.

We've talked a lot about diversion programs and alternative programs where particularly with juveniles who are picked up for not gun violence, shooting, but kind of interim sort of offenses.

Not going to the Juvenile Justice Center, not going to jail, but going to some sort of diversion someplace where they might get some counseling, they might, somebody who helps them out on maybe they're homeless, maybe they've got a broken family, they've got their all those kind of factors.

Do cops, and there's similar programs for maybe for people who are homeless or people who are or just other kind of issues, social issues.

Do cops by and large support those sort of alternative paths for low and medium, for lack of better term, medium offenses?

- Absolutely, and in fact, a lot of officers on their own time create programs to do that.

You know, the problem is that you do have this percentage of, even those young juveniles are extremely violent and have done some really atrocious things.

And with those, as tragic as it is we're on the other side of that.

And we have to protect to the community.

So yeah, I think we would love, we don't wanna see any lives thrown away.

It's a such a precious commodity of our young people in this city.

So yeah, I think generally the most violent, yes.

But anybody would support a kind of redemption and resurrection of somebody's opportunities.

So yeah.

- All right.

We're out of time.

- Thank you.

Appreciate it.

- Thanks very much for being here.

Bill, thank you very much.

And thank you for joining us.

We've done past shows on criminal justice and all the different points of view.

You can get those at wkno.org or either also available as podcast, where we get your podcast.

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

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