- (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 Steve Mulroy tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

Thanks for joining us.

We are joined tonight by Steve Mulroy, Shelby County District Attorney.

Thanks for being here again.

- Happy to be here.

- And Bill Dries, reporter with the Daily Memphian.

We'll talk about a lot of things today, but I think just your take at this point, we're mid-February, towards the end of February, has the Memphis Safe Task Force been a success?

- I think, Eric, that there is both good and bad about the Memphis Safe Task Force, and I think we are entitled to identify both the good and the bad.

So, on the one hand, I don't think the National Guard has been much help at all, I think it's been a waste of money.

On the other hand, trained civilian federal law enforcement agents have been helping us reduce our backlog of outstanding warrants, which is very good.

On the other hand, all the feds have been doing is helping us on the front end with arrests, they haven't been helping us on the back end, which means that we've got overwhelmed clerk's offices and an already overcrowded jail, making it even more ridiculously overcrowded.

Love to see some federal help on the back end as well.

Tennessee Highway Patrol, again, good and bad.

To the extent that they are enforcing speeding laws and doing ticketing for moving violations that have a direct effect on public safety, I think that's great.

Blanketing low-income neighborhoods with non-public safety related tickets, like the equipment violations, you know, seatbelt violations, and taillights being out and expired tags, I think that's less helpful.

But I think most all, the most toxic thing has been ICE.

Arresting law-abiding, tax-paying people who have lived inour communities for decades peacefully, tearing them apart from their families, that's not making Memphis safer, I think it's making Memphis less safe.

I think Mayor Young is correct to say that Memphis doesn't have an immigration problem, it has a crime problem, and yet about 20% of the arrests coming from the federal task force are immigration-related.

And for the most part, the only charge is "Not lawfully present in the United States."

These are not people who have other serious criminal charges, they're not, as the Trump administration says, "The worst of the worst."

And so I think, you know, there's a mixture of good and bad.

I think the already downward trend in crime that we had seen well before the federal task force came has accelerated thanks to the federal task force, and we should be grateful for that.

But I think at the end of the day, Eric, there's an opportunity cost question that needs to be asked here.

I think they said it was $19 million a month.

Was that just for the Guard or for everybody?

It's probably more when you include everybody.

If you had tens of millions of dollars a month to spend for six to eight months to decrease crime in Memphis, would this be the best way to spend that money?

I think there probably would be better ways.

- Let's talk about ICE for a second.

Are any of the ICE immigration-related arrests going through your office or are they all federal?

- No, they all go federal.

- So do you have numbers?

I mean, this has been one of the things that I think that's frustrating for us, not just us in the news, I think for the public, because the data has been so hard to get to.

- Yes.

- How many people, give or take, have been picked up, deported, detained, put in a detention center?

Do you have any insight on that?

- Yeah, I mean, we don't have a lot of data about what happens after it goes federal, but we have data about the initial arrests, okay?

And like I said, I think about 1-in-5 of the federal task force arrests are immigration related.

And among that universe, the overwhelming majority, I mean, overwhelming majority, the only charge is "Not lawfully present in the United States."

So these are not people that have other criminal charges pending.

Now what happens after that?

We know less, because it goes federal.

- Because some people are detained, some are deported, some are released.

- That's right.

- Okay, but you don't know.

Which I'm not faulting you for that, it's just it's been this frustration.

One more thing, and I'll go to Bill, you said help on the back end from the federal.

What shape or form would that take?

- Well, extra funding for extra personnel for the Clerk's Office to help process the cases, or for people to adjudicate some of these, you know, traffic offenses.

But also help out with the jail, you know?

I mean, the jail was already overcrowded, now it's severely so, we need help there too.

- We'll talk more about that.

But, Bill?

- Is there a state component?

I mean, could the state help with that as well?

- Absolutely.

Yeah.

We need help, either from the federal or the state, or both on the back end, and we'd welcome it.

You know, I mean, in terms of the state resources, Bill, you know, the state talked about backlogs in our justice system and then took one of our 10 criminal judges away.

You know, the state talks about low clearance rates in Memphis, which, you know, is definitely an issue, but really hasn't helped much with the local crime lab.

There are things that the state government already could have been doing, but help on the back end, as I've put it, is probably one of them.

- At this point, everybody, locally, seems to be talking about life after the task force.

What does that look like?

Is it digging out-- - Is it what?

- Digging out from this?

- Oh, yeah.

So, dealing with the extra caseload is gonna take some time.

I wouldn't mind seeing, I would like the National Guard to go, I'd like ICE to go, I wouldn't mind seeing a rump residue of federal law enforcement agents, maybe 15% to remain behind maybe on a longer term basis to help us.

I would welcome that kind of assistance.

But for us, it's just gonna be processing the many thousands of cases that we've had since the federal task force arrived, and that's gonna take many months.

- Is it also possible that you don't see a dramatic drop in cases, but you see this kind of continuing at this ramped up level?

- A drop in, are you talking about arrests?

- Yeah, yeah.

- I mean, I think that there will be a drop in arrests after the federal task force goes, for the simple reason that there'll be fewer people around to make arrests.

I'm hoping, [knocks desk] knock wood, that the downward trends in crime that we've seen for the last seven quarters will continue.

You know, other than that, I'm not sure what to expect.

- We had Jerri Green, the Interim Public Defender on the program last week, and let me ask you a question I asked her.

So, crime is down, has been for about two years.

The jail is full.

Is that how this is supposed to work?

[Steve laughing] - I think too many of the people that are in the jail right now probably don't need to be in the jail.

You know, if there isn't a significant criminal history suggesting that they are at risk of re-offending while they're out, and most people don't re-offend while they're out on bail, or if there isn't a risk of failures to appear in court that suggests that they are a risk of flight, where they're not gonna show up for their court, then we probably shouldn't be crowding the jails with them, and we probably shouldn't be spending the money on keeping them housed.

I mean, that's what the law says, that's what the Constitution says.

I think we probably have erred too much on the side of keeping people in there.

Some of them are there just because they can't afford their cash bail.

We need to do a better job of sifting this, separating wheat from chaff, because there are people that sometimes get let out that don't need to be, and we've heard a lot about that, the media's done a good job of pointing that out.

But we are hearing less about the other side of the coin, where there are people that really aren't a risk of flight, are not a danger to the community, but just can't afford their bail.

- The other thing, in terms of perception that I see, is that before this started, we would have like a rough weekend, I'll call it, where you would've some shootings, several of them, two or three maybe, and there would be a big reaction like we've got to do something about that.

We're starting to see that now, but we're not seeing the same reaction to it.

- That is a good point.

And I'm not sure I can explain it myself, Bill.

I mean, I agree with you.

You know, maybe it's the fact that we've had such a steady decline for so long that maybe some of the panic has eroded.

Now, I wanna make sure I'm clear, crime is still too high.

We've been coming down from an unacceptably high level, we still have a ways to go, but you know, maybe there's a little bit less of the panic than there was in 2023 when things really, really spiked.

- How much farther is reasonable to expect in terms of the decline in crime?

- Yeah, that is an excellent question.

I mean, it's never gonna be zero.

And when you have a high-density urban population with a lot of generational poverty, and flooded with guns, thanks to lax gun laws like we do, we're always gonna have a significant amount of crime, and we need to be realistic about that.

I think what's reasonable, which is what your question is, maybe, you know, get at or below the national average, compare ourselves to peer cities.

We're still not good compared to peer cities, we still have a ways to go.

So for me, the next couple of years, my goal is gonna be to try to get us at least on par with the national average.

- You talked about the issue of people who shouldn't be released being released.

- Yes.

- What has your office done?

And some of it, maybe it's been forced on you by changes in state laws in the three and a half years, but to prevent that from happening, at least with the parts of the system you have authority over?

- Right so, I don't know if changes in state laws really forced our hand that much, mostly been what we've been talking about in terms of the prosecutors.

You know, we have this V11 program we've talked about before where we focus on 11 types of violent or violent-associated offenses.

And if it's a V11 offense, the presumption is in favor of affordable bail, so we have been, you know, drilling that into our prosecutors.

We've been asking 'em to take a good, critical look at the criminal history.

If there is a long criminal history, that means that they are a risk for re-offending while out on bail, so we're more likely to ask for unaffordable bail.

Then, I'm a supporter of the constitutional amendment that would say that, for violent offenses, you could just deny bail outright, you don't have a constitutional right to bail.

I'm in favor of all those things.

- And that constitutional amendment is on the ballot, next, what, November?

And then if it passed, would take, what?

A year or two?

You're the law professor, how long will it take?

What other steps are in there?

- Well, I think once it's passed, it could become effective starting the next year.

- Okay, sorry, just to clarify what's on the ballot.

So, Brent Taylor, State Senator Brent Taylor, who's been, you know, a constant critic of yours.

- I've heard of him.

- Yeah, you've heard of him.

He has filed the bill, the legislature's in session, and Brent Taylor, on the show, talked a little bit about this, a lot about schools.

You can get that at wkno.org, or YouTube, or the Daily Memphian, and that was a couple weeks ago.

He and John Gillespie, on the House side, filed a bill requiring your office to report on certain actions tied to felony cases originating from two federal initiatives, the Memphis Safe Task Force, and then Operation Viper, which was a partnership with federal resources in the Spring.

And like, anytime you enter into a plea agreement, lower the charged offense, or if the Attorney general or the District Attorney's Office dismisses or declines to prosecute, they want to know, they want that to be transparent.

One, isn't that already available?

And two, what are the new, but you've said this would be onerous, so why would it be onerous if it's already available?

- I'll be happy to explain that.

You know, to call this bill a solution in search of a problem would be giving it too much credit.

It's actually gonna make things worse, okay?

It is duplicative, it is unnecessary, but it is also burdensome, and here's why.

The legislature already passed a law that applies to all 32 DAs, doesn't single me out, which is probably unconstitutional, requiring all of this case disposition data to be reported on a regular basis.

So, that's already happening.

What he wants me to do is to go in and disaggregate and tease out, separately, just those cases that come from either Operation Viper or the Memphis Safe Task Force, and then report just those out to 6 different government agencies every 24 hours whenever we settle a case, right?

Now, that is gonna require me to take staff time away from other things that are actually gonna help make Memphis and Shelby County safer, and do this just so that he has more things to tweet about.

It is burdensome.

And one other thing, Eric and Bill, it's kind of insulting to local law enforcement, because it suggests that we need to treat the federal cases, the ones that come from the federal task force, any different.

I tell my prosecutors it doesn't matter, we've got lots of cases coming independently of the federal task force from local law enforcement, treat them all the same.

An agg burglary is an agg burglary, a theft of property over $1,000 is a theft of property over $1,000.

And so this idea that they have to get special treatment I think is somewhat insulting.

- Yeah.

Bill?

- While we're on the legislature, there's also been talk of another proposal that would divide Shelby County in terms of being a judicial district.

Right now, we're a judicial district that is the entire county.

Your thoughts on that?

- I think, again, it is unnecessary, and would probably be extremely expensive.

You'd have to, you know, create whole new court system, a whole new DA's Office, et cetera, et cetera.

I don't think that's necessary.

You know, it kind of makes sense, we have interactions with county governments all the time, and so to have the county and the judicial district be co-extensive, it's common throughout Tennessee.

I think there's no reason to do this, and I think it would be incredibly expensive.

- Do all of the state's major cities have a single judicial district?

- Yes, yes.

Yes, Hamilton County, Chattanooga, and Knoxville, Knox County, Nashville, Davidson, it's all the same.

- Okay.

- Yeah.

- The District Attorney's Conference, statewide, is very active in Nashville.

- Sure.

- What has been your experience when you go to Nashville and talk with legislators at large?

- You know, I'm glad you brought up the DA's Conference, because on this show, Brent Taylor, when he was talking about that bill that would just target me for all that unnecessary reporting, he said that the DA Conference, he met with them and they were okay with it.

I think it's important to note the DA Conference voted to oppose that bill, and I want to make sure that's on the record.

I have a good relationship with the DA Conference, and, you know, for the most part, friendly relations with the state legislature.

You know, I'm not saying that I'm the favorite DA [laughs] of the Tennessee General Assembly by any stretch of the imagination.

There are a couple of bills though that this term, I think, are really concerning to me, and I'm glad you brought it up.

You know, I mentioned earlier that the ICE enforcement in Memphis wasn't making us safer, it was making us less safe?

What I meant by that was this, if we were to continue this downward trend in crime for the last seven quarters, we need to have the local community being comfortable cooperating with local law enforcement.

That means providing tips, reporting crimes, serving as witnesses.

Now, if they think that they, or someone they love, is gonna be deported if they have any contact with the criminal justice system, they're not gonna do that.

We've already heard, anecdotally, that that's starting to be the dynamic, because the Latino community, the immigrant community, or those that love them are terrified right now.

And they're not picking up the phone, they're not contacting, they're not showing up to court to be witnesses.

There is a bill right now that is pending that would say that every local law enforcement agency has to sign up with one of these formal 287G agreements with ICE.

I think that is profoundly misguided.

- How can that be required though?

I mean, how can you require someone to enter into an agreement that is elective, if you will?

- Yeah so, the state government purports to have the power to require local law enforcement agencies to do this.

Now, I think, to the extent that we're talking about police chiefs, there's probably no problem with that.

I mean, legal problem with it, I have a lot of policy problems with it.

I think you're suggesting if someone is an elected sheriff, would the state have the power to require an elected sheriff to do that?

I don't know, it's a good question.

I hope you're right, I hope they can't, because I don't want them to do it.

- Well, on the other hand though, why wouldn't a law enforcement agency want to cooperate with ICE?

- For the reasons that I just explained, that you want the public to know, feel free to call local law enforcement about regular crime, the crime we care about, carjackings, and robberies, and domestic assault, and theft, and things like that, without fear that we're gonna turn you over to ICE, or that either you, or someone you're related to, or close to is undocumented, and somehow that'll come up, and then you'll end up having someone you love be deported.

There's always been this separation, local law enforcement does local crime, and the feds do immigration, and I think we need to keep that separation for that reason.

- Do you have an opinion, a take, on why the response among the community, the ICE intervention here has been so different than Minneapolis, and it's been different really in some ways in every city where they've done an intervention, and Minneapolis and Chicago to some degree.

Was it that we didn't have the protesters who cared as much?

Was it the people with the whistles?

Was it just the sheer level of DHS and ICE officers that went into Minneapolis or something else?

- I think it's two things.

One is we had a governor and a mayor who welcomed the feds in.

Right now, I know, you can go on about Mayor Young, to what extent he welcomed, to what extent he acquiesced, whatever.

But you didn't have the kind of opposition that you had in Minneapolis and Minnesota and some of these other blue states and blue cities.

Second, I think you are right, I think the level of ICE involvement has been much greater.

You know, in those- - In Minneapolis.

- In Minneapolis.

In some of those cities, like Minneapolis, and Chicago, and LA, it was an immigration action.

- Yeah.

- This is a crime action that has a significant immigration component.

- Circling back to the jail, you don't have any, I know you don't, I mean, the sheriff runs the jail, but do you have any legal authority or relationship with what's happening in the jail?

You and many others have talked about the conditions in the jail, the problem of it.

Does it impact you and your attorney's decisions to send someone to the jail knowing that, by many, many accounts, the conditions are terrible, the processing time, all the problems at the jail?

Or do you just have to say, "Well, that's where they're going because they meet the criteria," even though you've talked about it being a problematic place.

- I'm not sure that the conditions of the jail actually enter into our calculus when we decide whether we're gonna seek an unaffordable bond or agree to an ROR or something like that.

- Yeah.

- I do think that, since the feds have been here, and we've had such a big problem with jail overcrowding, because of overcrowding itself, I have told my prosecutors to take a second look at some of these marginal cases and see, do we really need to push for that person to stay in the jail?

- One more for me.

With the legislature in session, you saying we need, you mentioned it here, faster, a crime lab in Memphis, or more of those DNA testing resources and so on.

Do you see the legislature moving in a good direction, if not a full crime lab, more resources that you and many others in Memphis and the community criminal justice system have asked?

- I don't know much about that happening at the state level.

I know there's been some extra funding that has gone to TBI to do some of this stuff, but to help us locally, I'm not as aware of that.

I am grateful though, that the Shelby County Commission authorized $1.5 million in recurring annual funds, which I think might go up in greater years, for a local crime lab effort.

And I've been working with Mayor Harris on that.

- Yeah.

- We also have a new appointed Shelby County Medical Examiner.

Does that help with this as well?

- Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, and we have to work with them, and autopsies and things like that.

- You talked about a separation of federal and local when it comes to immigration enforcement, and that's come into play when Mayor Young has talked about his decision, his strategy on this.

Do you think he had a choice in this?

- He did not have a choice in terms of the actual facts on the ground as to what the federal task force was going to do.

The only choice he had was in messaging.

Right, to what extent, both privately and publicly, he would communicate varying levels of enthusiasm about it.

That's really the only choice he had, right?

And so you see the contrast in between the way Mayor Harris messaged and the way Mayor Young messaged.

And I think people, you know, can disagree about which is the better approach.

- If he had resisted it more, he's resisted the characterization that he loves this, that he enjoys this.

- Right.

- But, given the environment in state government, could it have been worse in terms of the state saying, "We're just gonna take over"?

- It's a good question, and I don't know that I have the platonic ideal answer for how to deal with it.

It's something that I actually struggle with myself.

When do you speak out because you need to speak out?

And when do you, you know, not mute, but massage the tone because you're trying to work with state officials?

And, you know, I think it's a tough decision for any local person.

Any person in a blue corner of a red state.

- Yeah.

You're three and a half years into an eight-year term, so you'll get to watch the county elections this year and not be part of them.

- Yay.

- But it is, I mean, when I talk to people, friends and people I know in other parts of the country, more blue states, or I was at a conference with a lot of different publishers and editors, some from Minneapolis and from other states, they are really surprised when I tell 'em that, overwhelmingly, the Democratic politicians that we have had on this show have said a version of what you said, not sure what the Guard is doing, doesn't seem very effective, not crazy about ICE, but we absolutely welcome this federal intervention.

And I say that to people, and they are shocked, because they don't think Democrat-elected officials would say that.

But Mayor Young has said that, Lee Harris has said that, lots of county commissioners.

I know there are Democrats out there who don't agree with that, but overwhelmingly, that's been the case.

Do you feel political pressure though?

I mean, you've been in lots of different elected offices, do you feel a political pressure to condemn all parts of the Memphis Safe Task Force because it came from the Trump administration, because X, Y, or Z?

- No, I don't feel any such pressure in that direction at all.

- Do you get critics who say, "Hey, why are you doing this?"

- I really haven't gotten critics about it, really.

You know, I've tried to be very clear about what I like about this and what I don't like about this.

I mean, was it done was sufficient planning?

No.

You know, could it have been done better?

Yes, there are lots of opportunity costs.

But, you know, reducing our backlog of warrants, who could be against that?

- A quick, we can do a whole show on this, but some of the proposals that I wrote down that are coming up in the legislature, one is about impoundment of vehicles that have been involved in aggressive driving or racing.

Lots of people have said, "We've gotta take the cars away from those people."

I mean, it's an expression of frustration and a desire for more safety.

Do you support that sort of movement?

- Yeah.

Yeah, I don't really have a problem with it.

I mean, you wanna make sure that you've got actual good due process guardrails on it, you have to have a certain quantum of evidence to suggest that the person really was, and the vehicle was involved in criminal activity before you take it away even temporarily.

And you gotta make sure that you swiftly get to a point where you ultimately decide, was there a conviction or not, and if not, then you need to get the vehicle back to them.

There are due process and property rights involved, but I'm supportive.

- Okay.

DA Mulroy, thanks for being here again, we always appreciate it.

Thank you, Bill.

Thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode at wkno.org, you can go to Daily Memphian, YouTube, or you can download the show as a podcast.

You can also get that interview with Brent Taylor, we also will be having some Memphis-Shelby County School Board members on soon to talk about the takeover.

All that and more, and we'll see you next week.

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