- (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 County Commission on the Federal Task Force, borrowing and spending, schools, and much more 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 three members of the County Commission.

They include Amber Mills, County Commissioner for District 1, including Arlington, Millington, north unincorporated county.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you.

- Charlie Caswell is County Commissioner for District 6, including some of unincorporated north Shelby County, Raleigh, and Nutbush.

Thanks for being here.

Mick Wright, County Commissioner for District 3, including Barlett and Lakeland.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- And Bill Dries is a reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Thank you all for being here.

I should say, since we're gonna talk about the federal task force, this is Thursday morning as we record this, and just kind of a lay of the land right now, and every day is a new day, and there's talk that more of the Guard, or the Guard will be more publicly deployed as of the time this airs on Friday.

But right now, you know, the updates are that Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth has said up to 1,000 Guard could be here for more than a year, or as much as a year.

Some are here, it's a little murky of who's here.

Maybe some commanders.

We'll know more as every day goes forward.

There are roughly 700 federal law enforcement agents that have been here, as many as almost 900 over the last week at various points.

U.S.

Marshals, ATF, Bureau of Tobacco and Firearms, FBI, Immigration Custom Enforcement, plus a whole lot more Tennessee Highway Patrol it seems.

A number of arrests.

We're not gonna go deep on every part of this, but I just wanna get a lay of the land of where we are Thursday morning.

Bill, what did I miss in terms of just kind of orienting to this discussion?

- A lot of questions still about how this works among the different agencies, local, state, and federal, but that seems to be moving forward with some kind of plan for the presence here.

- Yeah, I'm gonna just get your guys' take.

So I'm gonna start with you, Amber.

Your take on is this a good thing, bad thing.

What do you wanna see?

What do you not wanna see from this federal presence?

- I think it's wonderful.

I was excited to hear that we were getting the help from the federal government, and that Governor Lee was stepping in and helping as well.

I know, when I talk to our law enforcement now, they are so happy to have the reinforcement and the support.

You look at where we were, even in our last term.

You had resolutions to defund the police and just this against law enforcement.

So to now have the help and the support that they need to do their job, I think it's all wonderful, and I think the citizens are happy with it too.

Somebody the other day said, "It feels different."

I was like, this is what civilized society is supposed to be, and this is not what we've had lately.

- Yeah.

Commissioner Caswell, thoughts on this?

Good, bad, what you wanna see, what you don't wanna see.

- So I think I'm on both sides in part, right?

So coming from one of the most violent precincts in our community, Frayser-Raleigh, and seeing the crime for many years, growing up in that community, I'm most definitely acceptive to the help that's there.

To see families get these crimes solved I believe is most definitely something we needed.

On the other hand, when I look at it, when we talk about resources, I know it goes deeper, right?

It's the poverty that I've seen for 20, 30 years, living in that community.

It's the disinvestment of, in that community around education, to see kids going to school without the proper books, to see that we had trauma, but no mental health and the other social supports that are there.

I think that we have to invest there at the root cause, while at the same time, addressing what's on the table, and that's the violent criminals that's in our community that we got to get out of our community.

- And Commissioner Wright, your thoughts, and also, outside of being a commissioner, you work at Youth Villages, you work with Memphis Allies, the Violence Intervention group.

So maybe first as a commissioner and what you hear from your constituents, and so on, and then maybe what you see as somebody who works in these spaces on a regular basis.

- Sure, yeah, I think this is what we're seeing a big impact.

It's a big change in Memphis and Shelby County.

Just coming in today, I saw multiple officers out on the street, making stops.

And you just get a sense of better safety, and that finally there are some consequences to that behavior.

And I think that's the piece that's been missing, so obviously, you know, I'm very focused on prevention and intervention and you know, transformative effort.

But you've gotta have enforcement measures as well.

If there's no consequence, if that piece is missing, the whole system falls apart.

- Look, let me say too that we have two Republicans.

I always forget if we have partisan, and which bodies, we have two Republicans and one Democrat.

That is not by design, it's just, we'd asked about seven county commissioners.

Not everyone could make it.

We'll have other commissioners, other folks on, talking about these things.

So just to acknowledge that, but let me go ahead and bring in Bill Dries.

- So we're still early.

The Guard is here, but probably not in the full numbers that we're going to see.

But what are your thoughts on what happens after the Guard goes?

I mean, is this just temporary, or do you think there is some lasting effect on this?

Start with you, Commissioner?

- Well, I hope it's some lasting effects.

What I seen a couple of weeks ago, I was in D.C., and I've seen some of the National Guards around where they were supporting around the convention center.

That allowed the officers to work inside of the community.

What I hope is the Sheriff's Department and Memphis Police Department take some tactics from this, that they continue to work together on those hotspots in our community where we know there is gang violence, where we know there is drug dealing, that they intentionally work together.

I haven't seen that before this happened.

We asked for the sheriff to come into the inner city.

It was some kinda rule that they was not.

They worked in the incorporated in municipalities.

So hopefully they train them on how to do collaborative policing together, alongside FBI and TBI, even after they're gone, and the Highway Patrol who's have been assisting as well.

So I'm hoping that's the sustainability outside of any other federal resources that may still be here.

- Commissioner Wright, to that point, should there be a federal and state commitment to this beyond this task force?

- Well, I'm thankful, I guess, for the surge.

I don't think it has to be a permanent presence.

But I'm just very appreciative of both the federal and state governments putting in resources.

This was the community that needed it, of all communities, that we had the highest homicide rate in the entire country.

And you've gotta have a response that meets that need.

- Commissioner Mills.

- I could say, I hope, I think it falls on the people to elect, in 2026, local electeds that will help law enforcement.

We've had a sprinkle of electeds that help law enforcement, but we've had money taken from the sheriff that he should have gotten.

So I think it falls on the people of 2026 to elect the right people to continue what the federal government and the state government, coming in, have started for us.

- You're in your second term on the County Commission.

You know a bit about how politics works, and short memories that voters may have.

Is what happens next going to be an issue in those county elections?

- I hope that people see what it's like to have leadership come in that does the act that says what they're gonna do, and to fight crime, not just talk about it, but to fight crime so that we can have better lives here.

'Cause you're electing your quality of life with who you elect, basically, who's gonna set up your environment to live your life in Shelby County.

So I think it falls on the people to decide where we go from here with this surge of resources that we've had from the federal and state government.

- Commissioner Caswell, you talked about your district and the problem with violent crime there.

What do you hear from your constituents?

Are they all of one mind on this, or are they split on this?

- They're split on this, and I have some positive stories of one policeman, looking for a suspect for almost two months of the multiple killing that happened in Frayser, and through this task force, they just recently caught one of the last suspects.

That put the community at ease because they knew he was in the community, and they knew that if he was out there, something else could have happened.

So they're excited about those type of things.

Then on the other side, when you talk about some of the pullover for maybe a busted taillight, or some things, they feel, in part, threatened because they don't know what's coming outta that.

But even in some of those stops, I have heard positive things where the police interacted in a positive way, not in a negative way that it is that.

So I think that just the ideal of the surge put fear in a lot of the people, but at the same time, I'm thankful to the officers, and actually one of the guys I'm looking to recognize who helped some police officer who flipped over on Frayser Boulevard and Watkins a week or so ago, some federal agents was on the chase and he went out there and helped, and he said in the news report that he wanted them to see there are some good people in Memphis, not just the bad people they heard about before they came here.

- And we should point out, that was at Frayser and Watkins.

And when you talked about flipping, one of the pursuit cars actually flipped over- - Flipped over on top of another individual car, yeah.

- Let me, in other cities, we're early into this, although the Guard is, in some ways, the Guard, I don't wanna say it's a distraction, but the real emphasis it does seem to be is, is these federal law enforcement agencies, who have been in Memphis in gang task force in various initiatives forever.

Other cities, some of the things that have gotten the most criticism have involved ICE.

There's a video of a Black Hawk helicopter and a whole lot of federal agents, a lot of them ICE, you know, repelling down ropes into a building in Chicago.

Other incidents that have been filmed, but there've been incidents around ICE that people have really focused on and have been critical of.

Do you all, I'll start with both of you, Commissioner Wright and Commissioner Mills, do you have concerns about any of those kinds of things happening here?

Do you have other concerns about where things could go not so well with this intervention?

- Well, I would say that you always have to be careful in how you act, and, you know, just because you're wearing a badge doesn't necessarily mean you're a person of character.

So we have to make sure that there's supervision on all of those forces, make sure that they're following the chain of command.

But I think the good structure's in place here.

I have a lot of confidence in our city mayor, as well as our governor, and I think they're doing the right things to make sure that our officers here treat people with respect, and that's what we need.

- Concerns of where things could go badly, or not as well as you feel they're going right now?

- No, I think these agencies coming in, they know they're under a microscope here locally.

And, I was disappointed when it was announced that they were coming in, and local leadership just automatically put them in a bad light.

Like, we don't want 'em here, they shouldn't be here, they shouldn't be doing this.

Well, when you get the people that broke laws coming in, and people who are criminals and came here illegally, well then you have resources to better serve the people that are citizens here.

So I think they are aware they're under a microscope.

I think they're gonna do, this is what I want to believe, and this is what I believe, they're gonna do the best job that they can.

I think it's good what they're doing, and I think it's gonna help the residents of Shelby County in the long run.

- Commissioner Caswell, I'm sure that, I'm always struck when we have these conversations, and again, we talked about two Republicans and a Democrat, and that if this were national cable news, there would be certain people just shocked at what you're saying as a Democrat, representing a majority Black district about your positive aspects of how you view this.

And I think back on the last mayor's race for city mayor, when Paul Young ran, Bill and I did one-on-one interviews at this table with I think all eight of the top candidates.

We did multiple debates, and all eight of those candidates, seven of whom were Democrats, seven of whom were Black, wanted more police, including the former head of the NAACP, Van Turner, who went out of his way to say, "No, I think we need more police officers."

And when I talk to people, and I'm sorry I'm talking so much here, but I mean, when I talk to people in other cities and I'm in, you know, local news conferences, maybe in... They're kind of shocked by that.

- Yeah.

They shouldn't be, I think, right?

- No, because I think it goes back to what I said earlier, when it was disinvestment of addressing trauma and mental health in there, I witnessed at 14 and 15 years old, 2 friends killed, and I grew up with that.

And when you see hurt people, they hurt people.

So when you don't address those things, then later in life, you have to deal with the reality of where we are.

We are at a place right now that we have to address people that's hurting, that seek to hurt other people, and we have to do it in a way, sometime it come through suppression, it come through prevention, and it come through intervention.

We have to do all three, and I think that right now, we need more police because we don't have community like it should be.

Until we can restore community the way that it should be, that's us looking out for each other, then sadly, we got to have somebody else to address these individuals.

- And we're midway through show here.

I'll bring Bill back in.

- Are any of you concerned about the rhetoric this past Friday when you had Stephen Miller, the Deputy White House Chief of Staff, and Pete Hegseth, the Secretary of War, and you had Pam Bondi, the U.S.

Attorney General, talking about unleashing the police, telling the police, go out there, we're gonna let police be police.

That struck some people as being very aggressive.

How did you take it?

- Go ahead.

- Well, I took it as, it shouldn't have been said that way.

When you think about, this is the city where we just witnessed Tyre Nichols beat to death, and police officers, right now, are being released out of jail, on something that we saw clearly what it was.

And so to the Black community, I know it put fear in us to say that now you're gonna unleash that, and now there's no accountability held there.

And to hear the president say that we're gonna release military and use it as a training ground.

That do do something to us as a community, because we talking about historical trauma that's now rising up in many people.

So it may look different in some communities, but in my community, it did release a lot of fear of people not moving because of the trauma that they experienced from watching the beatings, not just Tyre Nichols.

Rodney King, George Floyd, the things that we have seen happen in the Black community when it comes to police and being released.

- What I heard was, "All the resources you need are here.

Go do your job."

And and I think that was refreshing for our law enforcement to hear, 'cause I know even as an elected, we have to tiptoe around what we say so we don't offend anybody.

So we have to be very careful.

But there, it's like, you need this, you got it.

I mean, no matter what the scary equipment is, they haven't had to tiptoe around it.

They just, we're gonna get the job done, and I think it's totally different than what we've experienced here in Shelby County.

- Yeah, I think they were laying out the idea that we are going to have a zero-tolerance policy.

And that's the kind of thing where you need that reputation, that if you do a violent act, you're going to be caught and you're gonna be charged.

And that's the message that we need to be giving.

- But then, it extends to a military helicopter doing circles over a protest on Saturday, that I was at.

What was the purpose of that?

I mean, nobody's breaking any laws there.

Why does a helicopter circle it eight times?

- They could have been looking at it for a criminal on the run.

I mean, it could have been, you talked about them getting the person that they'd been looking for for two months.

They could have gotten word that that person was in the crowd.

It could have been totally unrelated to the activists there in the group.

I don't know.

I don't know.

- Yeah, I don't have any insight into that.

I would just say, that does speak to one of the issues that I find frustrating, which is that the county really does not have a seat at the table.

Our county mayor has decided to not really collaborate with the task force, and so all we have is maybe our sheriff at the table.

But commissioners don't have a seat at the table, the county mayor doesn't seem to, and we're a big part of this issue.

We've got all of the justice system is under us.

We fund half the DA's Office, the public defender, the clerks, so we really need to be considered because it's filling up our courts, our jail, and County Clerk's Office.

- Well, and I just say, that's why I was tempted to bring a resolution that say give us some type of information, like how can we be a part of that process before this happened?

Because I knew that if we didn't have something on the table to say, again, it was not to say we didn't want the aid, all the alphabets to come here, it was some part to say that the National Guard, I felt like, was not needed if we had these other resources working together on the ground in our community.

- Let me segue.

We could do the whole show on this, and we'll do more other shows on this.

And again, if you joined us late, I wanna say that we're really glad that these folks are here.

We asked about seven commissioners to be here.

These are the folks who could do it, kind of last minute, so we'll have other folks on.

So there's no, I mean, this is who is here, not so much... I know we have two Republicans and one Democrat, and so on.

Let's segue though, and you mentioned this, Commissioner Wright, about, you know, the whole funding of a lot of the local criminal justice system.

One of those is the jail that is... Are you worried about overcrowding?

There is overcrowding there, there's, you know, I think lots of reporting on really terrible conditions of people who have not been convicted of crimes.

Are you worried about that?

And then we'll segue into the comptroller.

State comptroller kind of put a big message out of really slowing down or stopping, borrowing, bonding, however we want to put it, by the county because of concerns around the budget that's been presented.

It was not approved by the comptroller, which is required by law.

So I wanna segue into the financial state of the county, but also the jail and the questions of a new jail, or rebuilding the jail, or doing something about the jail.

Where does that fit in this conversation?

- Yeah, that's been a really a strong focal point.

I would say, my colleague, Commissioner Mills has really led on the issue of a new jail, but we've been putting millions of dollars into maintenance needs at the existing jail, 201 Poplar.

Millington came to our rescue here recently.

We had a resolution where we authorized Millington to free up some of their space to handle some of the surge.

But this is something that we need to be focused on the solutions, and I think a lot of times, unfortunately, we get bogged down in where we don't want a jail, or what the solution shouldn't be instead of working collaboratively toward fixing this problem.

- Let me bring in Commissioner Caswell and then I'll come to you, Commissioner Mills.

Your thoughts on the jail and thoughts on the financial situation of the state saying no more borrowing.

That affects schools, it affects Regional One.

It affects a whole lot of things.

- Yeah, I think so.

So first I'd say the jail, I've toured it two, three times since I've been on this body, and I said it even on record, I wouldn't wanna put a dog in some of that space that's inside of that jail.

The food that they eat, just the deteriorating of that space.

We need a new jail.

We need to address that in a way though.

I don't know how we get there.

We need to, again, be intentional to understand, you said it a minute ago, many of these folks have not been convicted of crime, but it's like they're being treated like prisoners when just in a process of going through until they trial day comes.

So we need to address that.

When it comes to the comptroller, I think right now, it's like jail is not even on the table when you talk about what's gonna go in our budget, that we're focusing on the schools and things.

I think that just understanding from that letter, it's some things we have to address from the comptroller standpoint, but I don't believe we are in a bad place.

We just need to correct those things that the comptrollers addressed in that letter.

- And Commissioner Mills, and I'll say, we have five minutes left here in show, go ahead.

- Okay.

Well, as far as the jail, it needs to be funded.

That's why we had on our legislative agenda, and I went to Nashville every week, multiple times a week, to try to advocate to get a funding source, not necessarily the state, but a referendum item for the taxpayers to decide how we're gonna fund this jail.

'Cause it's gonna have to be funded, and what we don't want is the federal government to come in.

Now you have to build it.

Well, now you are gonna have a 74-cent property tax increase and we're already the highest taxed property tax in the state.

So that got, it passed in the state Senate.

Senator Akbari carried it, and then Gillespie carried it in the house, and a fellow Republican killed it in the house, and I'm just shocked to this day.

Why would you take options off the table, especially with the state's given so much?

They're paying for the forensic audit for the schools.

Why would you not give the citizens an opportunity to handle it ourselves?

- Bill.

- Do you think there's been an evolution of where the Commission, as 13 individuals, are on the jail because of the conditions, because of the nightmare that intake at the jail can be?

- I do.

I don't think you can walk through there and say we don't need a new jail.

You can talk about process all day, but when you have the detainees locking themselves in their jail [laughs] because of all the, I mean, and you don't necessarily have to sneak weapons in 'cause it's crumbling.

I think once you see it, you can't say we don't need to address this.

- Just a couple minutes here, and again, we can talk much more about the jail, and we will be talking more about the jail and the budget situation, but I want to talk about schools real quickly.

You as a board, as a Commission, voted to change... This is wonky, so I'm gonna make sure I get it right here.

You passed a resolution that would've cut five of the school board member's four-year terms in half.

This was enabled by a change in state law last year, would sync up all the school boards, school board elections.

It's at least related to an effort by the state, particularly Brent Taylor and Mark White to put a board of managers above the Memphis-Shelby County School Board, essentially a takeover as Brent Taylor called it.

Shelby County Mayor, Lee Harris, vetoed that vote by the County Commission.

Did you agree with that?

Will you bring it back up for a re-vote to try to sync up those votes and shorten the terms?

- Override the veto.

- Override the veto, thank you Bill, and try to sync up the terms.

I'll start with you, Mick Wright, 'cause you're right next to me.

- Sure, yeah.

I'm very opposed to the veto.

We really need some more accountability for the schools.

The schools was a major issue.

Going back to what the comptroller had to say, the school's budget was deficient and that was what dinged us this year, and possibly prevents us from investing in more school construction.

So that's a serious issue.

We need more accountability in the school district and we really need to empower the voters to do that.

- Amber Mills?

- I was disappointed to see 'em veto the resolution, though not surprised.

The school's effects, I mean, if you have a good school system, people are gonna wanna move in.

If you don't have a good school system, people are gonna look elsewhere to move.

So I think this needs to be addressed for multiple reasons, but also to align up with, just have one big ballot.

Even the General Sessions court clerk said, "And while you're at it, "you need to add this election on there too, "instead of having it off by itself where nobody's paying attention."

- So I'm gonna say this, I didn't support that item and I won't support it if it comes back.

I support it in a way that unconstitutionally, I think we took away people voting right.

So I'm talking about, in my district right now, my commissioner ran last year, constituents in my district support her.

When I go down my email, go down my phone call, they didn't call and say, "We want her out of there."

And so if I'm going back and running next year, or she's gonna be on the ballot, you think they're gonna wanna support somebody who went against their vote just a year and a half ago to put somebody in office who fought to get a new school in their community, who fight for children in their community.

So I say to this, I think it's unconstitutional to take people voting right away.

When they voted, they voted for four years.

They should get they four years, and then they change it then.

- We are out of time.

Thank you so much.

Thank you all for being here.

We really appreciate it.

Thank you, Bill.

But we are out of time.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, YouTube, or The Daily Memphian.

You can also download the full podcast of the show.

Next week, we've got City Mayor Paul Young.

Can't imagine what we'll talk about, but we'll try to find something.

Also a look at Millington, and I'm sure other shows about these issues that we talked about today.

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

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