- (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.

- Shelby County Mayor, Lee Harris, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

I am joined tonight by Shelby County Mayor, Lee Harris.

Thanks for being here again.

- Sure thing, thanks for having me.

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

We'll talk about a lot of things going on tonight, but I wanted to start with crime.

We've done a series of shows, as I think, you know, over the last six weeks or so.

We had Mayor Strickland on, we had- from the city, we had DA Weirich on.

We had Sheriff Floyd Bonner on.

We had a couple of representatives, a Republican, Democrat, who represent the Memphis area at the State House.

All of them, to some degree or another, talking about crime, and the spike in crime, nationally, the spike in crime here, locally, particularly in violent crime.

The, you know, there's a lot of- people are very concerned about the streets, the highways, and how people are driving.

And what becomes clear through that whole series of shows, something I knew, but just becomes clear as you talk to all these different people, is that there are a lot of different people with different parts in this puzzle.

Whether that's crime fighting, and officers on the street, or that's the court system, and the court system itself has many different elements.

You have the state making laws that the local people don't necessarily agree with.

And you've got various entities, like yourself, who have some piece of the puzzle, whether again, crime fighting, deterrence, rehabilitation, and so on.

With all that set-up in mind, what are the areas you have control over, and what are you trying to do to fight crime?

And then we'll talk more about how all these different entities can maybe work closer together to address the problem.

- Thanks for the question, thanks for having me.

And there's no doubt about it, in our community, public safety is that number one issue.

And I think all of us are fighting on that front all the time.

I think, if you think of crime as a three-legged stool, one of those legs is certainly intervention.

That is the idea that we've got to get into the lives of young folks with more meaningful opportunities for them, so that they know that their future is bright, and that some of them don't turn to criminal activities, and find themselves on the wrong side of the law.

In addition to that, we've gotta do the law enforcement piece, that's the most popular piece.

That's the piece that makes the most headlines.

We've got to get that piece right on the Shelby County side, just like for the city of Memphis.

We're really keen on recruiting more officers, and making sure that we retain as many officers as possible.

And so our our Sheriff has a great signing bonus program.

We're gonna implement the same signing bonus program across all of our public safety agencies.

So you'll see a signing bonus program, with respect to our correctional officers.

You'll see a signing bonus program, in the works, with respect to our Homeland Security officers, as well, coming soon.

We've also just taken to the Commission of Program to expand the benefit for our Homeland Security officers.

And so that's the kind of thinking that's gonna help us to recruit and retain, on the law enforcement front.

And then the kind of third leg of the stool is re-entry.

We have tens of thousands of individuals in Shelby County that have a criminal history, something that has happened in their background.

And if we don't find a way to make sure that those with a criminal history re-integrate back into our community, then there's a high probability that some of them may commit a future crime and recidivate.

That is a vicious cycle that we see time and time again.

And so the way you do something about it, is make sure they're more meaningful economic opportunities, that is to say, more jobs.

I think Bill Clinton said it best, "The best cure for crime is a job."

And so we're working on that.

You know, we have the Office of Re-entry in the Shelby County family, and so expanding programming there, and making sure we get it right, with respect to re-entry programming.

- You talked about, before we go to Bill, you talked about young people.

I mean, juvenile crime is up, I think that's the one that is just most, for lack of a better word, just most upsetting, on lots of different levels, to a lot of different people.

The Youth Assessment Center, we've talked about that before, the effort to get particularly low-level offenses, you know, delinquencies, minor offenses, and not take juveniles to the Juvenile Justice Center to jail them, to find some other path.

What's going on with the use of Youth Assessment Center?

And what do you- how do you hope that will work?

- So with respect to the intervention of youth, that may find themselves on the wrong side of the law, we have a variety of programming.

The Youth Assessment Center is now the Youth and Family Resource Center.

This is a program that was signed into operation, actually, the day before I started.

And so we came into office with this signed by the previous administration, and we followed their plan.

That plan did not work out in this first iteration, and so now we have shifted and adjusted to open up a Youth and Family Resource Center that's gonna be managed and operated by Shelby County government.

We think that's a better model, we think we'll see that center open up in the next few weeks.

And it will provide programming for youth who find themselves in trouble.

- Really quick, just so- for people who aren't as close to this, why did the other program fail?

Why would you hope this one won't?

- So again, this was a plan that was hatched before I arrived.

- Sure, but what was it- we've had other people on the show talking about it.

I don't- I haven't heard anybody say it worked well.

So, go ahead, what went wrong?

- So the contract was between Shelby County government, and a nonprofit vendor to provide those services.

A lot of the details about how those services will be provided was not- you know, just wasn't worked out.

And so we tried it for a few weeks, but that did not pan out, and so we have shifted.

And so we're doing something different.

I think that this new plan is gonna work out.

In addition to that, we're doing a whole host of things that have been started since 2018, since I've came into office.

We've got youth counselors in some of our police precincts, which helped to provide a suite of services.

So that officers that interact with youth can call on someone who has experience with youth, to give them feedback about how to handle that youth, and how to intervene with the families who might need help.

In addition to that, we have after-school reporting centers, which we have doubled our capacity to do after-school reporting centers.

Such that youth that are written a citation, that is, that enter the juvenile justice system, have an alternative to detention.

They have an after-school program that fits their needs, that they can go to, and they can avoid further interaction with the juvenile justice system.

- Yeah, Bill, sorry.

- Mayor, the- you have a number of county officials who are involved in part of this whole crime issue.

But they're also elected officials, which gives them some degree of independence, that they're not division directors as part of your administration.

Does that make it more difficult to get a unified approach?

- Absolutely, I think our power centers are decentralized on the county side, and that makes it more difficult, but that's part of our process.

We also live in a democracy, which means that one person can't, on his or her own, just order things to happen, that you've got to work and build coalitions with a bunch of others.

So there's no doubt about it, that it's decentralized on the county side.

And that does make things difficult.

If you look at the county charter, it actually puts the responsibility for public safety and law enforcement outside of the mayor's office, and puts it in the sheriff's office.

But fortunately, we have a fantastic sheriff, and over the last three and a half years, we have worked hand-in-hand on a variety of different programs.

Right now we are modeling a bonus program, right?

A recruitment and retention bonus program for our correctional officers, which is modeled on a program that the sheriff has put forward.

At the same time, we expect that we'll see pay increases for a variety of our first responders, including our deputy jailers and our correctional officers.

Those are the kinds of programs that I think we've been able to, you know, collaborate and work on together.

So yeah, it's decentralized, and yes, law enforcement and public safety, by our charter, are elsewhere, but that doesn't mean each of us don't have a role to play in fighting crime.

And it's gonna require each of us, in order to do something about the problems we see on the news every single night.

- There has always been this dichotomy, I think, between the immediate response to crime as it spikes, and then the longer term approach.

What do you think the coexistence of those two approaches is?

Because people tend to want to see something done right now.

And a lot of the approaches that are being talked about to solve this, on a long-term basis, they take time.

- No, I think that people want results now, and that's understandable.

And I think they can get results now, or in the near term.

So a lot of things are kind of near-term items, they're just hard to do, right, hard to turn.

So the recruitment and retention of officers, there are certain things we can do there.

I've talked about benefits, I've talked about pay.

Those are really, really key ingredients that if the political will is there, will have an impact on our ability to recruit more officers.

And we certainly want to recruit more on the Shelby County side of things.

In addition to that, when you talk about re-entry services, re-entry services, there are things that you can change almost immediately, to expose folks with a criminal history, to more opportunity.

In fact, just at our Office of Re-entry recently, we changed from a urine analysis for drug testing, to a swab analysis, and that had a profound change on the number of folks with a criminal history that would seek out our services.

Because the urine analysis, I'm told, is a lot tougher to navigate, right?

Drugs stay in your system a lot longer.

And if receipt of services is contingent on a clean drug analysis, well, they may not even try.

But if you change to a swab analysis, apparently, a lot more folks turn out for the services, if that's all they have to submit to.

So there are little changes like that, we have now at the Office of Re-entry campus.

We have a classroom where we can get vocational instruction, and that helps a great deal, that sets people up for job opportunities.

We have the same things- same kinds of services behind the wall, that is, at the penal farm, where we have vocational services being delivered.

So there's a bunch of things right now.

I'm really interested in transitional housing.

So I expect, over the next few months, you'll see a transitional housing program, initiated on the county side.

Because again, sometimes people just need somewhere to go when they get out of prison, almost immediately.

And so if we had a transitional housing program on the Shelby County side, we could see some effects right there.

We know where a lot of our crime comes from, it comes from recidivism, people that are repeat offenders, over and over, through this vicious cycle.

We know that it comes from folks who are suffering from mental illness and substance abuse.

And with each one of those kinda really, really big buckets, you can do something, right?

On the mental health services front, as I'm sure you know, and you may have even reported on, Bill, you know, we have, over the last few months, really driven profound change in our approach.

Working with the mental health court judge, and working with District Attorney Weirich, and our public defender, Phyllis Aluko, to say that we gotta make sure that we get folks with mental illnesses stable, and get them the services that they need.

Because if you don't, you see the same sort of vicious cycle, where they commit the same sort of crimes, or are picked up for the same sort of incidents.

And we all suffer when that happens.

- Is it possible that the county could get involved in actually having mental health facilities, as opposed to contracting with them?

- It's possible, it's possible.

I think the first step along that path is probably transitional housing.

And so I've talked about one place on the county side, where you might see transitional housing, where I'd like to see transitional housing.

And that's with respect to our ex-offender population and our Office of Re-entry, One could also set up transitional housing as part of kind of the county's responsibilities in the courtroom, and we have a behavioral health unit.

And again, we help facilitate things that are going on in the mental health court.

And the county could have the same sort of operation there.

So there are- and that would lead you to, as you say, "Well, what kind of services are they receiving "in that transitional housing?

"Are there detox services there?

"Can they get the right kinds of prescriptions, et cetera, in that particular setting?"

So I think we could get there, but the first step is trying to probably do something with respect to transitional housing, which we're not currently doing in the county.

- Okay.

- Oh, go ahead.

- You talked about political will, and let's talk about politics.

You recently announced that you're running for re-election, running for a second term.

Tell me the differences in running for the first term, and now, essentially running on your record?

- So I've only been running for about a week, and I don't even know if it's been a week, and probably about six days, at this point, but I can give you my reflections on the six days, and overall.

My impression is that re-election campaigns are probably just about doing the job that you have.

And so that's what I'm really laser-like focused on, is trying as best I can, to do the job as well as I can, right now.

And we have really, really important and persistent challenges in this community.

And so I'm gonna work hard to try to address as many of those as I can.

As you know, my entire public life has been focused on centering the lives of working families, and middle-class families, in everything that I do, and everything that I advocate for.

And so I'll continue that mode, as the re-election date nears.

But I'm gonna- so, you know, short of it is, I plan to focus on doing the job.

And if it- and I hope that that's enough, and that I make it through this particular 2022 gauntlet, and to have a chance to serve a little bit longer.

- I'm gonna add two more questions on crime, I think.

Maybe more, but two more, one is, the driving issue I talked to earlier, and the reckless driving, and the speeding and so on, on both the highways, and on city and county roads.

The city police chief has said, "Look, we're not gonna pursue people going 100 miles-an-hour, going recklessly."

Their argument is, "It creates more risk "for people around them, it creates risks for the officer, "and it's very hard to catch somebody.

What we need is technology."

I think I'm paraphrasing correctly, and I think Mayor Strickland said, "We need the technology to identify those cars and find those people later."

Do you agree with that philosophy?

And again, the- as county mayor, you've got oversight over unincorporated Shelby County with the deputies, is that the- actually, I should know, is that the policy with the deputies, if they're doing speeding and traffic enforcement, and do you agree with that approach?

- Well, I defer to the police chief, and if in her estimation, that's what needs to be done, then yeah.

I support it and agree with it.

I do think that a chase could be dangerous, that makes sense to me.

- Right.

- And I've been on those interstates at nighttime, and I've seen people, you know, driving at really excessive speeds, and it is scary.

And so, yeah, set up an investigation, Let's see if we can get the technology to find out who's in those vehicles, what their license number is, and set up an investigation, and let's go chase them down later.

That's probably a lot safer than any other strategy.

- I think law enforcement people, most, if not all elected officials that I've had on, talking about crime, have generally pointed to the state's changes in gun laws, as there's some 30% increase in gun crime since 2018.

That that would correlate to when the partly- one of the big changes was, that a gun in your home was extended, your right to have a gun in the home was extended to the car.

There are more guns in cars, cars get broken into, criminals know there are higher percentage of guns in cars.

And so we- it's a bad cycle.

You were a state senator for six... - Four years.

- Four years, okay.

Is there any chance of the state going back on that, or is that just a lost cause?

And I'm assuming that you would like them to roll that back, and maybe you don't.

- I would love for them to roll that back, and there's no doubt about it, that that's one of the drivers of some of the violence we see out there.

It's a proliferation of guns, and we don't have any rules, or any more, such that we can do something, to try to enforce a more safer environment.

So the guns in cars, led to guns on street corners.

I think people call it "constitutional carry".

I don't know why, it's really a guns-on-the-street-corner bill.

It means you can walk around, and have a gun, and no one can say anything to you, and that is not a safe environment.

So it's a real problem, when you can see it in the statistics of the numbers of guns that have ended up back into the stream.

We've asked the legislature for some small changes.

One change that they could make is give law enforcement officials an opportunity to destroy guns that they confiscate, or come into ownership of.

Right now, we not only have the forced proliferation of guns, because we've got guns in cars, and guns on street bills.

But we also have a situation, where even if law enforcement were able to confiscate a gun, rightfully, they would have to sell that gun back into the stream.

- Really?

In other words, they'd have to put it back on the street.

The legislature has outlawed any destruction of any gun, by any government agency.

And so, in other localities, law enforcement agencies that get a gun in the normal course, have an ability to destroy it, to not put it back on the street.

But because we have to put those guns back on the street, it just continues- you know, it is another vicious cycle that doesn't have to be.

So I met with members of the Shelby County Delegation recently, and I asked them to make that change.

And could they make that change?

Absolutely.

Is it tough because of the politics of Nashville?

It is, but I was there for four years, and these are the kinds of things you can get done, if you are working on them, and you build the right kind of coalition.

- All right, back to Bill.

- I think the county has now- it is now back in charge of distribution of the COVID vaccines, and remained involved in it, even though the city handled just the distribution of it.

What is different, with the county being back in charge of it now, that wasn't there before?

- I don't think there's much difference right now.

I think the sourcing, at some point, the sourcing has returned back to the county.

And so I think the county will source mass-vaccination sites.

I think the last couple of mass-vaccination sites, at this point, are probably Germantown and Whitehaven.

But the reality is, there aren't any mass-vaccination sites across our state, and there are not very many across the country.

And so mass-vaccination, as you know, a distribution point, is fading away really, really quickly.

And so I don't think there is much change there.

I think the changes, an overall change in how COVID vaccine is delivered, and it's gonna be delivered here and around the country, by a lot of private providers, right?

Your pharmacies, your doctor offices, and mass-vaccination sites are gonna be less and less the place where people go get a COVID vaccine.

- Will it also be more of a function of the Shelby County Health Department, as we move into things like the booster shots, and talks about, well, maybe something beyond that.

Would that be part of their long-term role?

- So the Shelby County Health Department, their role, in terms of administering shots, hadn't changed, even throughout any of the pandemic.

I think that the role that changed, with respect to sourcing the vaccine to some of those mass-vaccination locations.

So the Shelby County Health Department, yeah, will continue to deliver COVID vaccine at its clinics, and at its headquarters, as it always has done.

And that part won't change.

- As we record this, the Shelby County Commission has a proposal to raise the pay of the Shelby County Mayor and the Shelby County Sheriff, as well as their own pay, after the elections, and the new term of office begins.

You didn't have anything to do with that proposal, did you?

[Bill chuckles] - No, of course not, I'm opposed to that.

And I'm opposed to that, because I just don't think the timing is right.

I think right now, we are still in the midst of a pandemic.

I'm hopeful that we're at the end, or at least, in the end-phase of this pandemic, but we're certainly still in the midst of this pandemic.

And there's still a lot of folks in our community that are still trying to get back on the path to recovery, particularly economic recovery, a lot of folks that have seen their lives devastated.

And I would rather all of us, the County Commission, the Mayor's Office, elected officials in general, focus all of our attention on the needs of folks who are trying to get back on the road to recovery after a global pandemic.

And I would rather that, you know, the pay of elected officials not be front and center.

It's time for us to put our needs to the side, at least for this little while, and instead focus on the needs of our residents.

So, I'm opposed to that.

I have said, what I am for, though, is making sure that as many folks in Shelby County, as possible, get a living wage.

That is, if you work every day, you should be able to lift yourself out of poverty, and take care of your family.

That's why I've pushed hard for the $15-an-hour in as many places as possible.

And that's why I just recently brought to the Commission a proposal, expand the benefits for Homeland Security officers.

They're putting their lives on the line, let's make sure that they're treated fairly, and let's give them the benefits they deserve.

In January, I'll come back to the County Commission with a proposal to raise the pay of correctional officers.

I've been working hand-in-hand with AFSCME, which is our local union, Jason Hunter and Gail Tyree, about how we might go about making sure that our correctional officers are treated fairly and justly.

This is apparently, I'm told, a longstanding problem that they have not been paid fairly for the work that they do, and the risk, that they, and their families, bear.

All right, so- - A lot of officers- I'm sorry to interrupt you, but correctional officers right now, make mid-$30,000...?

- They start in 30s, you know, they start in the 30s.

- You're trying to get above 40, I'm... - I'm trying to raise the pay significantly.

And so I'll bring a proposal to the County Commission, just as soon as I can get on the agenda, to raise their pay.

After having talked to Gail Tyree and Jason Hunter, and the folks at AFSCME about this long-standing problem, and the need to fix it.

- Do you think that that puts significant pressure on the private sector to raise it's minimum wage?

- Absolutely.

- Or on Congress to raise the federal minimum wage?

- Well, I don't know if Congress is susceptible [laughs] to pressure to act.

But no doubt about it, is that Shelby County government wants to be a leader in this community, in pushing all of our organizations to treat their employees well, and to pay them what they're worth.

We want to role model the behavior that we want to see out in the community.

And that means paying everyone a livable wage, and making sure that everyone has access to benefits that they have rightfully earned and deserve.

- Just a couple of minutes, two and a half minutes left here.

Speaking of COVID and economic recovery, the county got, in ARPA money, one of the many, many programs its gone through, am I right, did I write this down correctly, almost $180 million, or...?

- That's right.

- Where has all that money gone?

- So, a variety of places, obviously, that will fund dozens and dozens of programs.

There are some kind of big buckets that I could probably flag right now.

One is deficit reduction.

We spend way too much money in Shelby County government.

And so I'll continuously make that case to the County Commission, that we need to reduce spending.

But until we do, we're gonna have to cure our budget deficit, using ARPA money.

And so about $50 million, of across 2 years, will go to help cure our budget deficit.

In addition to that, we are still one of the leading agencies, in terms of responding to the pandemic.

And so we want to make sure that our hospitals have everything they need in order to take care of patients as they come in.

And so that means we're gonna put about...

I can't remember anymore, maybe 10s of millions of dollars, I can't remember the exact number, tens of millions of dollars, in favor of Regional One, and in favor of our other hospital systems, such that they can be in a position to take care of patients that come in.

- Back to the deficit, I mean, fifty million dollars over two years is a lot.

But unless that spending is decreased in that two-year period, you're back to deficit spending.

Am I right about that, or am I missing that?

- Yeah, that's accurate, but the piece you're missing is that we're in a position to reduce that spending.

- Okay.

- And so- - Where those reductions come?

- So there are a variety of different places where we might be able to pare our spending.

And so I'll be bringing a variety of different ideas to the Commission around that.

And I've been doing that ever since I've come in office.

- We had the head, Gary Rosenfeld, and his Chief of Staff on the show last week from MATA.

I think you've advocated for more spending in that area.

I mean, is that in the cards ever- they're looking to find a dedicated funding source.

People can get that show online, or they can get the podcast of the show, talking about these opportunities they have, but they need some $30 million, plus, a year, in new dedicated revenue.

Is that in the cards?

- It's a top priority for the county, because we've gotta get people to jobs.

We have too many folks that can't access the jobs that are available, because they can't get to them.

And so if our economy is gonna grow, we're gonna have to focus more on jobs, and transit as part of that.

And so, there's no doubt about it, I'll be back in front of this Commission with a plan to support MATA, because that's the way we get people to jobs.

- We've got 20 seconds left.

I was gonna ask you a question about city-county consolidation, we'll maybe get it in the podcast, but that is all the time.

Thank you, Mayor Harris.

Thank you, Bill, and thank you for joining us.

If you missed any of the show, you can get full episodes as a podcast, wherever you get a podcast, or you can go to WKNO.org, and look for past episodes.

Thanks, we'll see you in the new year.

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