- (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.

- District attorney, Amy Weirich, tonight on Behind The Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] - I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, and thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Shelby County DA, Amy Weirich.

Thanks for being here again.

- Of course.

Thanks for having me.

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

It has been two years.

We were talking a little bit about the show because the last time we had you on it was in person.

I think it was about this time two years ago.

So COVID has happened.

And in that timeframe over the last two, three years, there's been a pretty dramatic increase in violent crime.

And we'll talk about that a lot.

We'll also talk about some areas of crime that are down, which I think in some ways is maybe even counterintuitive to the gut feel a lot of people have right now.

But in the three years violent crime is up 30% since 2018.

These are the Shelby County Crime Commission statistics as of end of June.

Murder's up, I think it's 80%, the aggravated assault at 50%.

I mean, which is horrific, right?

And scary and upsetting.

What can you and your office do?

What are you doing to address this huge spike in crime?

- Well, what we do the best and that is holding people accountable.

You know, I think what everybody would love to see happen is more in the area of prevention, right?

It's very easy for our office when the Memphis Police Department and the Shelby County Sheriff's Office makes an arrest.

We do an excellent job of prosecuting those offenders, but by then the violent crime has already happened.

So I think really the question is how do we hold those offenders accountable and keep them from re-offending.

And for the violent offenders, oftentimes the only way to do that is to incarcerate them, to send them to prison for as long as the law will allow us so that they can not continue to re-victimize.

What becomes a challenge is then keeping them there in prison.

- And why?

- Well, because of the laws, because of the sentencing laws.

So you'll hear me and you'll hear others talk about the need for truth and sentencing in this state.

You know, when we sentence an offender to 10 years, if that's what the legislature says that crime is worth and a judge sentences someone to 10 years, then they should do that 10 years.

But far too often it is much less than that.

They're back out of prison and they're back in the community.

And far too many times, they're re-offending.

- And the numbers, and I forgot to write them down, but the five-year numbers on recidivism of people who go back are actually down overall.

Are they up with violent crime?

And again, throughout this, well, I love to try to distinguish between violent crime, murder, aggravated assault, sexual assault and smaller, quote-unquote, "lesser crimes," which we'll get to.

So still saying with violent crime, is there a high degree of recidivism in that category?

- Yes, there is.

- Even though the overall number's down in recidivism?

- Right, right.

- Okay.

- I mean the violent crime and, yes, the murder rate is up.

And any increase, any homicide that occurs in our community is a tragedy, but what drives that number is the aggravated assault.

And often today's aggravated assault could end up being tomorrow or next week's homicide case.

And so getting a handle on reducing those aggravated assaults, and that's why you see efforts in our office for focused deterrence.

That's why you see the mayor talking about and implementing group violence intervention.

What can we do to intervene in the lives of those individuals who have a propensity for violence?

- One more question.

I'll go to Bill.

- Yeah.

- I think the mayor in a recent TV interview, Mayor Strickland, said that 201 Poplar, the jail downtown, had become too much of a revolving door.

I think I have that right there, and blamed that for one of the reasons of violent crime.

Is 201 Poplar too much of a revolving door right now?

- Certainly, and it certainly was before COVID and it's certainly been that revolving door seems to be spinning a little bit faster because of the pandemic.

And so, the frustration becomes why do we have these offenders who are out on bond, who continue to re-offend?

We track the numbers from going back to when the pandemic hit, March 13th, when the court system changed.

All of those people that were let out because of the pandemic, for whatever reason, they were given a low bond or they were let out of jail for whatever reason, we track how many of those have been rearrested, and we're up to about a 1,000 just in a year and a few months.

- Whose call is that?

I'm sorry- - The bonds are set by judicial commissioners.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- And then the COVID, there were restrictions, I think, and then there were- - There were restrictions on what we were handling.

We weren't able to handle people who were out of custody.

We could only handle those cases that were in custody.

We could only handle those cases where there was an opportunity for that person to be released.

And so there became this great push of let's look at all of these cases and who can we safely and reasonably take a chance on.

- What has changed?

I'm sorry, but we are largely past COVID, not totally.

But we're at a better place.

What are the rules now in terms of 201 Poplar in that dynamic you just described?

Are you able to keep people in there for longer?

- Well, there's now of course, even before the pandemic, there was a new way of setting bonds.

And the judicial commissioners were using a new matrix that was designed by the county and implemented by the county to try to reduce the number of people who are in the jail, which is all great and good, unless and until those offenders thank us by re-offending, by victimizing someone else, committing another crime.

- So should that matrix be changed?

- Well, even before... You have the law that talks about bail and talks about everybody who was arrested in the state of Tennessee, unless they are charged with a capital case, has a right to a bail.

So then the question becomes how do we set that bail to ensure public safety and to ensure that, that offender will return?

And so then the matrix that was implemented a couple of years ago, one of the frustrations for us is that the commissioners are not really asked to look at the facts of the case in front of them.

They're asked to look at a host of other factors.

- Are they gonna show up?

- Right.

Well, are they gonna show up?

Do they have a history for bench warrants?

Do they have prior felony convictions?

Do they have prior misdemeanor convictions?

But not necessarily what are the facts of this case that's before me and what is the strength of that case?

So the statute on what judges should look to in setting bail talks about the likelihood of success by the state in prosecution.

How strong is this case?

And so if I were a commissioner setting a bail, I would wanna know what are the allegations?

What is it that has brought this individual to the judicial system?

What are they accused of?

- For quite a while, long before the pandemic, the discussion was that the same people are offending over and over again.

So it would seem like that's a pretty select group.

Are there indications that it's going beyond that group or that it's involving more people now, violent crime?

- Yeah.

That's a good question.

I mean, I think really when you look at we certainly do have an issue with repeat offenders.

It's why we've got two courtrooms dedicated to and have for as long as I've been in the DA's Office to handle repeat violent felony offenders.

Certainly when you talk about juvenile crime, it's a manageable number of juveniles in our community.

The challenge becomes getting timely and effective interventions.

Having those juveniles brought to a place at the point of their criminal conduct where there's consequences, you know?

Right now there's too much of that revolving door of giving them summons, having them come to court in a couple of weeks and they're out free to continue to victimize.

So there really need to be timely and appropriate consequences for juvenile offenders, as well as the adult population.

And when we do finally... All we want to have happen with every case our office ever touches, is to come up with some resolution that keeps that person from coming back.

How can we come up with a resolution, solution, disposition that keeps this offender from coming back to the system?

For the tip of the pyramid, the most violent, often the only choice they leave us is to seek that prison sentence.

For everybody else, how can we make sure that there are meaningful and effective programs in place and probation requirements and things that are asked of them?

Whether it's drug court, mental health court, veterans court, that get that job done and making that work in a meaningful and lasting way.

But that takes the resources too.

- Right, the last time you were on, I think we talked about the juvenile assessment center, which kind of got off to a rocky start, and it kind of demonstrated just how difficult making those kinds of decisions short of being in court can be for juveniles.

In the last year there's a different way for this.

Is it a better way?

- Hopefully it will have the impact that we wanted the original plan to have.

And that again, gets back to this timely and meaningful intervention in the lives of juveniles.

Sometimes juveniles are committing crimes because they are crying out for help, right?

You've got kids that are breaking into homes because they're homeless.

You've got kids that are breaking into homes and hurting people because they wanna join gangs, but there need to be interventions and answers by the community for either one of those.

What we've kind of experimented with and piloted is putting prosecutors from our office in three different precincts.

Tillman, Mt.

Moriah and Old Allen.

Along with them, there are juvenile court probation officers.

And so what those two or three teams have been doing is trying to address low-level juvenile crime in the community with the community instead of sending those offenders down to juvenile court.

So this assessment center will kind of take that model and expand on it.

Some of the challenges in the early days are going to be that it is still going to be simply a referral system.

It's not going to be a center where law enforcement can take youth in the moment to get that assessment performed.

The youth are gonna have to get there on their own or have family or someone else take them there based upon a referral from law enforcement or schools or other individuals like that.

But just having it there, having it up and running, having the doors open is certainly better than nothing.

But the long-term goal, I hope is still the same.

And that is a 24-hour, 7-day a week assessment center for our juveniles.

- And this got hung up in the first iteration of it because of a law or a requirement that juveniles have to be handcuffed if they're in police custody.

- Sure, and yeah, that's a safety thing, obviously.

So there are these- - I'm gonna interrupt.

- Yeah.

- And this is where there was the original plan for the youth assessment center was in partnership with UTHSC, am I right about that?

- It was.

- They did not like the idea that juveniles were coming in.

They didn't want them coming in handcuffed.

And it was more than that, but that was kind of the symbol of where the disconnect was.

- Right, they didn't want squad cars pulling up with handcuffed juveniles on the property of the University of Tennessee, which is fine.

You know, they were very generous and gracious to offer the facility, to offer the funding and the resources, but those were asks that they had.

And so we tried it with that model.

It didn't have the impact I think that everybody had hoped that it would.

With this new center at the old Raleigh Library, it's still police are not going to be transporting juveniles there.

They're gonna refer juveniles there.

Our prosecutors who are working in the community will refer this as a resource for juveniles, but it's not gonna be 24/7 in the early months.

And when it first gets off the ground and that's really, again, I hope still the long-term goal, having a place where if juveniles come in contact with law enforcement at two o'clock in the morning because they've been caught breaking into a home, there needs to be some consequence for that behavior that is timely and not three, four weeks down the road.

- And you mentioned different types of crime.

I'm gonna guess, but you correct me.

The assessment center is not for violent crime, or is it for violent crime?

- No, it's not.

- Okay.

- It's not.

- I mean, because some of the highest profile crimes over the last few years have been tragically and horrifically juveniles who've done the shooting and killed.

They would go where?

- If they meet the detention assessment tool score, the DAT score, then they are detained at juvenile court.

And so, yeah, when we talk about- - The assessment center is more...

I mean, breaking into someone's home is no small thing.

I'm sure some people are like, "Whoa."

The kid needs consequences even if he is a kid or she has a kid at 16, 17, for breaking into someone's home.

- The kid needs consequences and it's also a kid safety issue.

You know, I talk a lot about Cameron Pryor, the young man who was shot and killed trying to take somebody's car from them.

And leading up to his death, he had been involved in about a half a dozen break-ins, serious thefts, high-speed chase with police.

You know, what some people might call low-level crime, but which can be very dangerous, not only for innocent people, but also for the offender.

And we saw it play out in that tragic case.

- It is interesting to look at the numbers that I think many people, the sense people have is that juvenile crime is skyrocketing overall.

I believe it's that violent crime is way up, but actually delinquencies are down dramatically over the last few years.

Overall, serious crimes are down 8% since 2016, but there's this concentration of this uptake in violent criminal among juveniles, is that fair?

- There is an increase overall in juvenile crime.

And we know that much of that, based upon what witnesses are telling us and based upon information that police have, it doesn't necessarily mean that they're able to make those arrests, but anecdotally and from what is being shared with law enforcement and what law enforcement knows, it's juvenile violent crime is on the increase, yes.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- The other thing that obviously gets a lot... We could talk about juvenile crime the whole time, I'm sure we'll come back to that, but I wanna make sure it hits some high points.

A huge focus right now and a huge concern I think, among most people who live here is the streets and highways, reckless driving, shootings on the highway.

- Yeah.

- Drag racing, all that sort of stuff.

What is your office's role and what are your abilities to curtail any of that right now?

- Well, again, we got to follow the law.

Drag racing is a misdemeanor, which makes it impossible for law enforcement to pursue, right?

Because it's a misdemeanor.

It also becomes- - Could pursue in the sense of pursuing the drag racer?

- Exactly, because it's a misdemeanor, it's not a felony.

And so there are laws and policies and procedures in place that limit what law enforcement can do.

There's also a safety issue, right?

We don't need- - The Chief Davis has said, the relatively new police has said we're not gonna chase the guy going a 100 miles an hour down the highway.

We're not going to chase them because that creates a whole lot of safety issues for everyone around them.

- For everyone around, for the officer, for innocent people.

- But the people doing it, to some degree know this, right?

- Sure, sure.

- I mean, I was driving out here today.

A couple of people pass me going a 100.

I might get a ticket doing 75.

- Right.

- They're probably not gonna get a ticket doing a 100.

- Right.

So in an ideal world the knuckleheads would stop driving like that and stop endangering themselves and the rest of us, right?

What we can do and what we do is follow the law.

The drag racing statute is now an A-misdemeanor.

Our prosecutors are giving a very focused attention to when these arrests are made and these cases come into the system, making sure that we are holding these offenders accountable.

The other piece to that legislation allows us to take that car.

So upon conviction for drag racing, we can seize that car.

- How do you seize that car?

And again, you don't control for everyone.

You know, you don't control the police officer or the sheriffs or the highway patrol, but how do you seize that car if the police don't pursue that car?

- After the conviction, getting a court order and then going out and- - Because I've got a picture of a camera.

I mean, I'm getting really in the weeds here, but how do you know what that car is and who the owner is?

If there's an arrest made.

If you've written a ticket for it then you've stopped them.

- Okay, so again, those people who aren't being stopped, how do we know?

- Well, right.

Hopefully someday before they kill themselves or kill somebody else, they will be stopped and they'll learn a lesson, you know?

And that I think is always important to remember when we talk about criminal law and procedure, is that you hope that these laws serve as a deterrent.

I mean, you really hope when we're talking about juvenile crime, we're talking about adult crime, all of it, you hope that as punishments increase- - Because you've been doing this a while.

You've been DA for... - 10 years.

- Ten years.

- Yeah.

- And you were in the office before then, for a lot of people it's not a deterrent clearly.

- No, right, but you hope that plays a little bit of a role in it, and you hope by law enforcement focusing on these and making some of the arrests that they have been lately, bringing these cases to justice and us following through with what the statute allows, that hopefully some people will think twice.

But until then, know that we've got police focused on it.

The highway patrol is sending us more resources to help with the policing and the monitoring of the streets in this community.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- When you announced for reelection, there's an election coming up next year.

You're seeking another term in the office.

You talked about reform, which has been a big thing, not just in Memphis, but in other major cities across the country.

And one of the things you told your supporters at this is that, yes, there's reform, but it cannot be reform just for the sake of reform.

- Right.

What did you mean by that?

- We've got to always remember the victims of crime.

Every day, all day in the district attorney's office, we are focused on making sure that victims of crime are respected, honored, and have their day in court.

And we can't talk about reforming the system if we do it at the expense of the victims of crime.

So some of the things that we've done that I'm very, very proud of is one that I've already mentioned, the focus deterrence.

Focusing on those crime drivers of crime, giving them opportunities to improve their lives if they wanna take advantage of it, but also sending a strong message to them that we are watching them, that they have a propensity for violent crime and they've now moved to the head of the class in our office.

And we are going to punish them, seek the maximum punishment if they continue to re-offend.

We've completely redesigned the office to a vertical team model, which means that teams of prosecutors, victim witness and support staff are responsible for every case that comes into the system until it's completed in the system.

And that has helped move cases through at a more efficient rate.

And it's kept us from moving cases from prosecutor to prosecutor, which is better for the victims.

We've put, as I mentioned, prosecutors out in the community to work side-by-side with community leaders, to work with principals, to work with business owners, to find out what it is that the various communities are in need of.

And last but not least, our community justice program has been very reformative, but again, victim-centered.

Taking lower level cases and letting those cases be handled by members of the community in the community where it happened.

It's our version of restorative justice.

So those are all reforms.

Those are just a couple of the reforms that we've made in the DA's office in the last 10 years.

But none of them have really been done.

None of them have been done without victims being at the center of it.

No case goes to the community justice program, unless and until a victim says that they are okay with the case being handled that way.

No case goes to the community justice program unless the offender is okay with and agrees to having the case handled that way.

But just releasing people from jail for the sake of releasing people hasn't worked very well in other cities.

And to talk about just making oaths and making promises that we won't do certain things and we're not gonna prosecute certain types of cases would be disingenuous and a violation to the oath I took as a prosecutor and as the district attorney to follow the laws.

It doesn't mean we lock everybody up, but I do believe that if you commit a crime in Shelby County, there should be consequences for that.

What those consequences are, are as varied and diverse as the people who commit the crimes.

It's everything.

You've been down there.

You know that prosecutors, as I'm sitting here today, are recommending that someone be given a chance at probation.

Prosecutors are dismissing cases because somebody spent the night in jail and they don't have a bad record and we've probably gotten their attention.

Prosecutors are recommending veterans court, mental health court, drug court, a whole host of alternatives to incarceration.

But for those offenders who continue to victimize, really the only choice they leave us with is to seek that prison sentence, and then... - How often do victims, families of people who are killed, how often do they agree to those alternative approaches?

The community justice?

- Right.

- Oh, very often.

We've had a great response to it.

It's really been... We started the program very small when we rolled it out during the pandemic, and we've now expanded it and allowed prosecutors in our office know that if they've got a case that comes on the docket today that they think would be well-suited for the community justice program, they are free to send it there.

And if the victim agrees and the offender agrees, then this panel of community members who have been trained by our office, they listen to what the facts were.

They listen to the offender explain why he or she committed the crime.

They listen to what the victim has to say, how that crime impacted the victim.

And then that panel decides how the offender should be held accountable.

If the offender complies with what the panel says, then the charges are dismissed and they are expunged from their record.

But yeah, we've had a great response to it.

- Just two minutes left here, and we can do a whole show in these next few questions.

One thing I forgot to ask about juvenile crime, my understanding, which could be wrong and you'll correct me, that, I mean, a lot of crimes that happened before a juvenile turns 18, 19 years old, becomes an adult, are washed away.

And that, I mean, they are expunged from their record.

Is that fair?

And for the worst of the juvenile offenders, do they know this and know that they view this as, "I can get away with a lot until I turn 19?"

- Oh, I think so.

Sure, sure, sure.

I mean the whole juvenile system is completely different from the adult system.

And certainly we don't want to ruin any juvenile's future because of one bad decision.

- Sure, delinquency or some shoplifting.

Something more minor, we were all kids once.

- It's a long list of them.

We were all kids once, we all make mistakes.

The challenge with the juvenile population are those sixteen and seventeen-year-olds who have been in and out of the system committing crimes for years and years and years, and now they're using guns and they're killing people.

- Right.

- And if we keep them in juvenile court, we can only handle them 'till they're 18.

Yeah.

- Right.

- One more, again, we can talk much more, I appreciate the quick answer in that.

Technology, I mean, from your point of view, by the time this reaches your office, what works in terms of sky cops, we just did a story on ShotSpotter and the experiment there, and it's kind of mixed results, home security systems.

What works in terms of technology from your point of view?

- It all works.

Every bit of it.

Ring has been a great tool.

The body-worn cameras have been a great tool.

It all takes additional resources.

It takes additional manpower and technology to keep it all afloat and to keep up with it.

But it all works, yes.

- Would you like to see greater investments in technology and the resources to follow up on that?

- If we have the resources to go along with it, yes.

- Most of these laws you talked about, you've said it before, they're set by the state legislature.

assume you're headed up here soon for the next session to lobby on some of these issues?

- We will, the DA's conference legislative agenda is focused on sentencing this year, yes.

- I didn't give you enough time for that last answer, but thank you very much for being here.

We'll have you here again.

Thank you, Bill.

Again, next week, Mayor Jim Strickland.

We'll talk about some of these issues with him as well.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed anything, you can get the full video online at wkno.org, or download the podcast from iTunes, Spotify, The Daily Memphian site, wherever you get your podcasts.

Thanks.

See you next week.

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