- (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.

- A look at the upcoming legislative session 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 two members of the state Senate talking about the upcoming legislative session.

London Lamar is a Democrat from representing District 31 excuse me, District 33, Southeast Shelby County.

Thank you for being here again.

And Brent Taylor is a Republican state senator from District 31, representing east Shelby County.

Thank you for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

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

We'll start about we'll talk about a lot today.

We'll talk about criminal justice.

We'll talk about issues around the the district attorney that Senator Taylor has brought up.

But I guess I'll start with the consent decree.

Even though the findings of the federal the US Department of Justice.

And I am curious, y'all's take on this was all came out of the Tyre Nichols incident, the killing, and the city of Memphis, at this point as we tape this, and this is airing after Christmas and we're taping it before Christmas.

The city of Memphis is pushing back on going into a consent decree.

They're talking about other monitors.

They're talking about some of the problems that come from consent decrees.

They're talking about the costs that come from consent decrees.

I guess I'll start with I'm going to start with you, London Lamar.

What is your take on the DOJ report and what the city should do and what then the state and in your role you all might do about police accountability, changes to police or nothing at all?

- Absolutely.

So, first and foremost, I'm not shocked that the DOJ decided to come in after such a high profile case made the news around the Tyre Nichols case.

And I do think that we should look at some of the recommendations, and see of those recommendations, what can we implement here in the city that's going to allow us to further hold police accountable, but also keep the community safe and be fair.

I do think the city of Memphis is closest to the people in on the ground and know best what the temperature of the climate is here on the ground with people and how they interact with crime.

I do think there needs to be a happy medium.

I do think that the DOJ needs to listen to the city of Memphis and their suggestions around how they should move forward.

And I think that the city of Memphis can take on some of the recommendations from the DOJ.

Our city is unique.

It is comes with a lot of challenges when it comes to poverty, lack of resources.

I don't think the state of Tennessee has done necessarily right by Memphis when it comes to allocating resources and supporting impoverished communities.

And so all of that goes into how crime is exasperating in the city.

So that must be taken into account as we make recommendations on how police interact with the community.

And then also listen to the community how they want to see the police interact with them.

- You're, I don't believe your district covers any parts of the city of Memphis, am I right?

- I do, half district's in East Memphis.

- I'm sorry.

I totally screwed that up.

- Y'all always have that wrong in the paper as a Republican from Eads, And I'm a Republican from Memphis.

- That's fair enough.

Fair enough.

But your take, when you read the report and your take on whether the city should enter into a consent decree.

- Yeah, well, first of all, I'll push back on my friend from from the Senate.

The state does not ignore Memphis.

Matter of fact, I had the majority leader down here, Jack Johnson from senator from From Middle Tennessee, Williamson County.

He was down here, he spent two days and we looked at the infrastructure needs downtown.

We looked at the the Beale Street infrastructure needs and how to address crime and blight.

We toured the xAI facility.

We toured the Rock and Soul Museum and all the money that that that they're looking to raise.

So I'll push back on that.

As it relates to the DOJ report, this is the last gasp of the Biden administration.

This report, this type of study typically takes three years to do.

They did it in about 18 months, and they want us to rush to sign this, the consent decree.

I actually applaud Mayor Young for not signing that decree because we'll have a change of administration in just about another month.

And for a report to come out and say that a majority black police force that is run by a black police chief in a city that has a black majority on the City Council and a black mayor is somehow racist, I find as credible as my mother's Facebook page.

- All right.

You wanted to respond.

- I also say that, well, when the city of Memphis and a police department did come together to make recommendations and they came up with a list of things that they wanted to see and changes from the police that they all agreed on, the state of Tennessee, your bill, you reversed that and took away their voice.

And so our challenge to say that I don't think anybody's listening to nobody.

And then when the people and the police came together to make recommendations to make policing safer, the state of Tennessee reversed that and took that away.

- What examples of this, and I'll let you respond.

- So about the pretextual stops.

Excuse me if I forgot the name of it, but we reversed the bill where the City Council laid out a list of things where you can't stop people for like a broken taillight or a tag that's expired within 60 days.

Little changes like that to stop pretextual stops or stop maybe someone whose experiencing poverty might not have the money to get the tags immediately from getting unfairly stopped by police.

We took that away and they worked together to come up with that.

So I would challenge and say, I don't think that the state always listens to the people or the police department when they are working together because they did that and we took that away.

- Any thoughts on that?

- I do, that's because the ordinance that Senator Lamar is referencing, it was written in two languages.

It was written in English and stupid.

You cannot have police officers out on the street and tie their hands in trying to enforce traffic laws and crimes.

If you take the mayor's initiative that he's got going on, where they actually go in and saturate a community with warrants and traffic stops and roadblocks, it is exactly what was preempted with that ordinance by the by the Memphis City Council.

So, again, the city cannot preempt state law and they attempted to do it.

- I'll go to Bill and again, I want to reiterate that we're taping this right before Christmas.

So it's been a week by that by the time it airs.

But, Bill Dries-- - Senator Lamar, just to be clear, should there be a consent decree?

- I'm not taking a stance on it because, one, I haven't seen all the recommendations.

And two again, I think that there needs to be a happy medium.

I think the DOJ does have some leverage and some great recommendations that the city should take into consideration.

But I also think the city comes from a perspective that the DOJ may not see, because they're not on the ground every day with the people and seeing what's happening.

So I'm trusting that the mayor and the DOJ are going to come together, as he talked about, to come up with a plan together.

It's not a this plan or that plan is a what is the plan is best for Memphis first.

- Senator Taylor, if if this works out and the city comes up with a set of police reforms, do you think the state should be involved in that?

- No.

I mean, if they come up with reforms that don't attempt to preempt state law and are within the wheelhouse of the city administration and the city police department, no, the police department and the mayor there and the City Council, they're free to come up with any reforms.

Look, there's not I'm not saying the police department can't have improvements.

We all can have improvements.

As good as I think the Daily Memphian is, there are always improvements that can be made in that.

That's also true with the Memphis Police Department.

- Let's shift to DA Mulroy who was on the show last week talking about various things going on.

And we did talk about the pressure that he is feeling from this upcoming state legislative session, much of it coming from you, Senator Taylor that I think-- Talk about, you'd like to see DA Mulroy removed by the state legislature.

Is that fair?

- What I would, first let me say, I have not received my Christmas card from DA Mulroy, and I'm not sure why.

Hopefully, it will come between now and Christmas.

Secondly, look, I don't know whether he needs to be removed or not.

I personally think so, but that's.

The General Assembly is not going to vote based on how I feel about it.

What I have prepared is a list of nine specific allegations with documentation and evidence that I have discussed with the comptroller's office.

I have forwarded a copy to the attorney general's office.

I've met with the leadership in both the House and the Senate, and all have found that these are very serious allegations.

And what should happen is the General Assembly should create a committee of five members from the House, five members from the Senate to review my allegations.

They'll have subpoena power.

They'll be able to do their own investigation and let them make a recommendation to the General Assembly whether he should be removed or not removed.

- To be fair to DA Mulroy who's not here now we talked on some of these issues last week before we interviewed you because you've written a few columns for us kind of raising these concerns and we've quoted you in articles.

And also DA Mulroy had an op ed in the Daily Memphian last Friday about various things he's trying to do.

And again, he said this last week, people can go to WKNO.org and get the video, go to the Daily Memphian that he is trying to focus very much on violent crime, that he is trying to make reforms to bail.

I'm not I want to say that I agree that he's doing that.

I'm just trying to give some airing to his push back on some of this pressure.

But let me bring you in.

Where do you see this going?

Do you see this as a productive or helpful part of public safety?

- This is absolutely dangerous precedent that we're setting because we don't like the way that the DA is attacking crime, that we're going to decide to remove him when he was rightfully elected by the majority of the people in Shelby County.

It's setting a dangerous precedent because the pendulum can always swing where one day Democrats can be in the majority in the Tennessee General Assembly.

And we may not like something a Republican DA is doing.

So we're going to push some legislation to remove them.

That is not how democracy works.

We have to give DA an opportunity to do what we elected him to do, whether we agree with it or not in eight years or when it's time for him to be reelected, then let us make changes in the voting booth.

But this is not the way to do it.

- Before I go to Bill, are you satisfied with how the DA, two plus years into his job, is operating?

- I want to give him more time.

I think there are all improvements that people can make.

Right.

But I think there are things that he's particularly done well.

So I want to give him more time.

He's two years in a eight-year term.

What I do know, I wasn't in agreement with how former DA Amy Weirich was running her office, but I let her be the DA and I made my choice in the voting booth.

- If I could just say one thing.

None of the allegations had to do with how he's attacking crime.

And people will see that when I release the allegations.

Secondly, this is how we do this.

- But what are those allegations if they're not about attacking crime?

- You'll find out when I release them.

But let me just say this.

This is not unprecedented.

I know my colleague, my friend wants to say that this is unprecedented.

We're overturning the will of the electorate.

Look, this was done in 2008 and again in 2014 with 2 Republican district attorneys that used this same process.

Ultimately, they both resigned before the General Assembly could remove them.

So this is not an abuse of the Constitution.

This is a use of the Constitution.

The framers, and I'll end with this.

The framers gave the General Assembly the obligation to remove judges and DAs for cause because they are the only two office holders in the state that have nearly a decade-long term.

And they wanted somebody to hold them accountable.

- Bill.

- Will there be a similar effort then, with General Sessions Court Judge Bill Anderson?

- I'm glad you brought up rogue Judge Anderson.

I will tell you, there's a slightly different process with him because there is a the board of judicial conduct.

You can file a complaint with them.

And I did last year and had him reprimanded for comments he made about Tennessee's bail system.

I have filed yet another complaint over the three instances of the Railgarten shooter, the ambush shooter at FedEx, and then Christopher Smith, who actually had a shootout with police and then barricaded himself for 12 hours.

All three were attempted murder charge and were released on their own recognizance.

He ignored and misapplied a state law that I had passed that said, if you elevate the safety of the community, that that's the first consideration when setting bail.

He ignored that and misapplied it.

I have filed yet another complaint with the Board of Judicial Conduct.

If he gets a second complaint, Bill, he will be referred to the General Assembly for action.

And I will, and the General Assembly does not necessarily have to take that action, but I will fight like the third squirrel trying to get on Noah's Ark when the rain started to ensure that Bill Anderson is held accountable before the General Assembly for his gross misapplication of justice in this community.

- For me, it just kind of sounds like that when they disagree around how you think that crimes should be done, then all of a sudden it's complaints filed, it's the push for removal, like they are doing their job in the purview of the law.

They have not broken the law.

They have not misused the law.

They have not committed any crimes.

They have not done anything outside what their job allows them to do.

And so now we're continuing to set a precedent of if I don't like the way you do your job, then I'm going to remove you.

Or if you don't like this part of I put this law in and I want you to consider this first, then I'm going to remove you.

That is not how democracy works.

That is not the role of a legislator is to cherry pick everything a particular elected official does because we don't like them.

Give them an opportunity to lead, give them opportunity, do their job.

Because if the tables were turned, we'd be criticized for doing the exact same thing again.

- I get criticized a lot, and I don't mind that it comes with the territory, but let me just say this.

I have not filed a complaint that has not been without merit.

Every complaint I filed has resulted in a reprimand.

Let's shift away from these specific two people.

Do you see changes necessary and DA Mulroy, who was on the show last week and in an op ed talked about changes that he'd like to see in the way bail is set and the way some of these things operate.

One example was right now when judicial commissioners, I think even judges are setting bail on a juvenile, they don't have access to any kind of prior information.

So they don't know if this juvenile has broken into 20 cars, 1 car.

This is a first offense.

They don't know that he would like to change that.

He's proposed some other reforms.

Do you support certain reforms around that?

Bail is such a hot button issue.

Senator Taylor, do hear from constituents why did this person get released?

I mean, what is your take generally on bail and what the legislature might or might not do?

- I absolutely can agree that there needs to be changes in how we do bail, how much money is set, how much is owed, the whole system needs to be looked at and audited.

But again, this is not a precedent for me to remove any elected official because of that.

Everything needs change.

The whole criminal justice system needs reform, not just bail.

How we how we set sentencing, who sets bail?

I think that should be in the hands of the judges, not magistrates.

You know, those things need to be looked at.

So, yes, I can agree with that.

But let's not use that as a a piece of a tactic to attack people based on partisan views.

This is all political.

This is not within the purview of he's done anything wrong or without the constraints of his job.

I want us to stay focused on that.

[talking over each other] - I find it interesting that she is now supportive of changes in bail because when I had bail bills in the last two sessions, you voted against those.

- I didn't agree with those.

- What you just said that you now want-- - I didn't say I didn't agree with change, I just didn't agree with your changes.

- Because I was proposing them, I suppose.

- All right, we got 10 minutes.

So go back here to Bill and begin to segue out of public safety, perhaps.

You follow up on that.

You can follow up on that.

- Well, we will talk about something that may be slightly less controversial, and that is the school board's meeting this week.

And the attempt to remove Marie Feagins as superintendent.

Senator Lamar, in a Facebook post, you talked about some of the, some of the general ground surrounding this.

What, I mean, is this a matter of either you're for Marie Feagins or you're against her?

- I am not against her or for her.

I actually just don't have a strong relationship with her in my attempts to try to connect with her.

I think that how they did this meeting, how the board chair specifically called this meeting was distasteful.

I think that the fact that she tried to bring these allegations without relaying what they were beforehand was distasteful.

If there are problems with the superintendent, they need to be laid out in meetings leading up to the idea of termination.

And I think that she put her fellow board members in a very unfair position to have to make a decision based on what they know.

Do I think that everything is going smoothly at the Shelby County School board, absolutely not.

Do I think that she can do a better job connecting with the board members, absolutely.

Do I think she needs to do a better job in making sure her staff feel encouraged, feel like she is someone they can work with, absolutely.

But what I hope is that they all can come together to hash out some of the issues they're having so that we can move forward on behalf of the children.

So it to me is a lesson for both the board members to figure out, wahat more can they do to get the ear of the superintendent?

And I hope it's a lesson to the superintendent that you cannot leave without having the buy in of your stakeholders, such as the Board of Education, your staff and community members if you plan to be successful in this city.

- Do you think this is to a point where the state in some shape or form should intervene?

- Absolutely not.

The state needs to stay at the state and work within its purview and let the local board and the local people work out their issues.

You can see from the ASD the state is not good at directly running entities and agencies locally, right?

We are a very overarching governing body.

Just allow the school board to work out its issues, give the superintendent an opportunity to rebuild her relationship with the school board and stakeholders and we can figure this out on our own.

But I will be absolutely against the state coming in trying to take over Shelby County Schools.

They do not know our children best.

They do not truly understand because the majority of the individuals are not from Memphis.

They don't get the issues that we're going through.

They don't get the burdens and the poverty issues that our children and our community is dealing with.

They would not be the best entity to come in and directly run our Shelby County School board.

I'll be absolutely against it.

- Okay.

Senator Taylor, you've been a member of local legislative bodies, City Council, the County Commission.

What are kind of your impressions of what some have described as the meltdown that happened at that meeting?

- Well, it was embarrassing to watch.

And I will give Dr. Feagins a lot of credit for sitting there in a very dignified way while you know, all hell is going on around her.

But what you saw were angry parents who want what's best for their children.

And the school board is more interested in playing petty personal politics with this.

This is why, Bill, I think it's important that we have partisan school board elections.

People in Memphis should have a choice that they don't have to continue to choose the same old people who continue to put their name on the ballot and you get the same old result.

There ought to be opportunity for a different path.

And so that's why I support the partisan school board elections.

And so again, it was about as pleasant as as a squirrel trying to cross traffic and it went sideways about that quickly.

- Do you see any grounds for the state to become involved in this at this point?

- Well, you know, I do I do agree with Senator Lamar, and that is that in a perfect world, we would not want the state down here.

But when the school board is acting incompetently and when you have a DA who I believe is incompetent, and when you have a judge who is incompetent, it forces the state to have to come down and protect Tennesseans.

And the first obligation of state government is to protect Tennesseans.

And we sometimes have to do that from our own elected officials.

So I hopeful we won't have to do that.

I'm following Representative Mark White's lead on this.

He's chairman of the Education Committee in the House, and I'm going to follow his lead and see what he proposes.

- I would absolutely push back on the school board being partisan, there is no Democrat or Republican way to educate children.

The first thing we need to look at is evidence-based information and data to inform our decisions around how we're going to further improve the education system here in Tennessee.

Too many times, partisan politics clouds our judgment when it comes to making the best decision for people, which is one of the flaws of state government sometimes because we vote against party lines, not was actually best for people.

So we don't need to do that when it comes to our children.

- All right.

With just a couple of minutes left.

We're going to race through some things we could do a whole shows on.

One is there's a big push for a bunch of funding.

There's always a big wish list of tens and hundreds of millions of dollars from the state.

So we don't you know, we don't want the state down here controlling things.

We certainly want the money.

Where do things stand, I guess I'll go to you, Senator Taylor, on funding for the Grizzlies and, you know, the downtown safety and the various redevelopment down there, do you think I mean, there was talk that that money wouldn't happen after the gun referendum was was actually put on the ballot?

Memphis overwhelmingly voted for a whole range of gun changes in terms of how gun-- - Which will never happen.

- Without the state and federal government, right.

So that and did that impact the city and county's ability to get money from the state and support for projects from the state, including the Grizzlies?

- Well, the short answer is no, because immediately after the election I began working with Speaker Sexton and Speaker McNally and Majority Leader Johnson impressing upon them that we should not hold Memphis accountable for what a rogue City Council does in trying to preempt state law.

We've seen that they like to try to preempt state law, but we just have to correct them when we can and to try to protect those state dollars and that's why I had Leader Johnson down here for two days and we toured downtown, looked at the infrastructure, we toured Beale Street, looking at the infrastructure, downtown blight, to try to make sure find out what resources we need downtown.

- And again, just because you think there is positive momentum in terms of that, the funding for that kind of thing?

- There is.

- For you, I mean, the Democrats are in the minority up at that.

You know, it's a supermajority governor, both houses of the House and the Senate.

What are your interactions like when you're asking for funding or support for various projects?

I mean, are you sort of just left out of the door or in the inner workings of the session?

You've been up there a number of years now.

- Most times I'm left out the door because of my political affiliation, no doubt about it, I try my best to give my best input.

Sometimes it's taken into consideration, sometimes it's not.

But I think it's interesting we say on the education front listen to the people, but on the gun front, the people have spoken that don't want these loose gun laws in our city because it's creating more crime in the state completely ignores the voice of the people.

The people voted and said guns are dangerous for our city.

We want more protections.

We want with the permitting system back all of these referendums are response to what people are asking for our city because of state laws and our loose laws around guns, create an unsafe downtown.

They create more crime.

They create more shootings, they're creating more murders.

And we're literally ignoring all of that.

So I think that we pick, the majority picks and choose what issues they want to listen to based on their own political agenda.

And that's what you see when it comes to guns.

But however, I do appreciate their investment in downtown because Memphis is a great city.

Memphis is one of the backbones of the state of Tennessee, when you think of the tax base and being one of the largest, the second largest city in the state.

So I was unapologetically support them in their efforts to bring funding, help, economic development and all of those things.

But I will hold you accountable that your stance on guns is not right and it's further helping-- - My stance on guns is based on the United States Constitution and Supreme Court rulings that people have a constitutional right to access firearms and to be able to carry them with and protect themselves.

- All right.

We're going to-- we are out of time.

There are other things we would have got to, but we spent a lot on all these things.

Appreciate you both being here very much.

Bill, appreciate you being here.

Again, we recorded this right before the holidays.

So this is will air about a week after it was taped.

If you missed any of the episode today, you can go to WKNO.org, YouTube, the Daily Memphian to get the full video.

Or you can go to wherever you get your podcasts to get the full audio.

Thanks very much and we'll see you in the New Year.

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