Jeffrey Dunham and wife Tracey (Photo: courtesy Jeffrey Dunham)
Jeffrey Dunham did a lot of construction when he was chef/owner of The Grove Grill. But he was using ingredients you could eat. Like meat and fish.
Now, he’s constructing things with ingredients you wouldn’t eat. Like wood and paint.
For the past six months, Dunham, who closed The Grove Grill in 2020, has been working on woodworking, plumbing, and painting jobs with his buddy Ben Homolka of Quality Painting. He’s also been looking for places to eat lunch under $10.
“Most of his business is out in the Cordova-Bartlett area,” Dunham says. “So, every day it’s lunchtime and he likes to sit down and eat, so we just started going out to eat.”
It wasn’t anything planned days in advance. “It was just, ‘Okay. Let’s go get lunch.’ And you take a break and get in the car. ‘Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know. Where do you want to go?’ ‘I don’t know. Where do you want to go?’”
Dunham says, “Being an interested observer in the restaurant business and industry, I started evaluating these places. With inflation and all the cost pressures that restaurants have, it’s tough to keep your prices down. As a customer, it’s quite a lot to go out and eat a $20 lunch every day.”
Dunham began looking for lunches under $10. And he found them. “I don’t know if I consider it a challenge. It’s not necessarily a budgetary motivation, but it’s fun to find places like that. Especially independents.”
He was happily surprised to find a great deal at TJ Mulligan’s. “You get two fried pork chops, a couple of sides, and a couple of rolls. And it’s a well-prepared, quality product.”
Dunham said, “Wow. Look at this. I can’t believe this is such a reasonable price.”
The pork chops were a half to three-quarters of an inch thick. They were seasoned with flour and maybe a little cornstarch because “there was some crispness to it.”
Dunham changes up his sides, which include a spinach casserole. “Their rolls are very good, as well. But, yeah, it’s just a well-done meat-and-three kind of meal.”
Dunham discovered another lunch under $10 at My Favorite Place. “It’s a Hispanic restaurant,” says Dunham, who’s known the owner Dennis Zamora for a long time.”
Dunham ordered one chile relleno for $9.99. “I love my grandma’s. She used to make them for me.”
The ones at My Favorite Place also are great, Dunham says. “They are roasted poblano chilis stuffed with cheese and typically pan-fried in an egg white batter.”
It has a “rich chili tomato sauce” on top, he says.
Dunham also likes the chili seasoning on top of the chips. “Then just a simple fresh picante salsa, which is, again, great.
“Everything I had over there is always on point,” he adds.
Waldo’s Chicken & Beer is another lunch favorite. “You can get three chicken tenders for $9.99.”
The tenders come with fresh hand-cut fries and a drink. “They have several cases of potatoes in the dining room.”
And, he says, “Their fried chicken is solid.”
Dunham was pleasantly surprised when he discovered Abbay’s. He thought it was a chain until he learned it was locally owned. “They’ve been going at it for a long time.”
“You can have chicken-fried steak and a side for under 10 bucks,” he says. “Apparently, a lot of folks in the area come and get their sides for the holidays.”
Dunham can see where Abbay’s could have been designed as a chain restaurant. “It’s set up like that. You order and it’s ready in five minutes. Again, good side, good center of the plate, and great rolls. It’s a classic meat-and-three. Bookend meat-and-threes here with Abbay’s and TJ Mulligan’s.”
In addition to local eating spots, Dunham says they’ve tried “some chain places that are solid for $10.”
Chipotle Mexican Grill is one of them. “You can get three tacos that are enormous for $10. I generally eat just two of them and maybe have another one in the afternoon.”
Serving lunch under $10 isn’t difficult, Dunham says. “Lunches are not all that expensive. But it costs more money to do some things. They are trying to achieve a price point and selling that price point. At every one of the restaurants you go into, you can always get something more expensive: ‘Let me have the hamburger and onion rings.’ All of a sudden you spend $15. The ultimate objective is revenue. And sustainable revenue.”
Asked why he closed The Grove Grill, which he opened in 1997, Dunham says, “It shut down for Covid and we just never reopened.”
Dunham was one of the owners of Magnolia & May with his son Chip and daughter-in-law Amanda until Chip bought him out. Jeffrey also did a lot of the physical work on the restaurant before it opened, including knocking out a wall and putting in a bar. He and Chip built all the tables and chairs.
Construction isn’t something new to Jeffrey. “When I was a kid, I worked for a contractor. But that was a long time ago.”
He also worked on his grandfather’s ranch. “Whatever we needed to do.”
The only similarity between construction work and cooking is maybe the “prep work.” Like sanding the walls before painting, which is akin to cleaning a case of Brussels sprouts before cooking them.
Jeffrey still cooks elaborate meals from time to time. He and his wife Tracey recently drove to Jasper, Alabama, where he prepared a “Chamber of Commerce sit-down dinner for 30” for a good friend. “Tracey and I joked about how it wouldn’t be the Christmas season if we didn’t have at least one 40 top.”
By the way, customers could eat for under $10 at one point at The Grove Grill. “When we first opened, our hamburger was $9.13 But, as a rule, most of our stuff was over 10 bucks.”
Reba Russell reflects on her career (Photo: Jamie Harmon)
Last Saturday at Hernando’s Hide-A-Way, the Memphis Blues Society recognized nine artists for their regional and global impact with its Lifetime Achievement Awards. Among the awardees were Thomas Bingham, Charles Gage, Mike Glenn, Eric Hughes, Al Kapone, Memphis Gold, Andrew “Shine” Turner, and Jay Sieleman, a roster marked by its eclecticism and inclusiveness. Yet there was one more recipient who was especially notable: Reba Russell. As one of the few local women still regularly singing the blues in this town (also including Barbara Blue and the incomparable Joyce Cobb), the celebration of Russell’s decades-long career was significant beyond the music itself.
It was an appropriate award for the artist who only last year released the powerful single, “Women Rule.” As Russell says, “You know, I am a woman-lover. I believe in women, and I want women to do good, and I have even been ugly and kind of mean to men over my career and in life! It’s one of my favorite themes. But I’m really passionate about that. I really believe it. I just don’t think we get a good enough shake and that we’re still trying to overcome that.”
Saturday’s ceremony, then, meant a great deal to Russell. “Memphis doesn’t support the blues or the Memphis Blues Society like it could, you know,” she says. “I just wish there were more people that cared, but at the same time, it was just a big, warm hug. And for me personally, Wayne and James and Sally were there, and they were at the very first gig I ever played at RP Tracks.”
Memphis Blues Society president Angela Ghoreishi and Russell at last Saturday’s event (Photo: Mark Cardwell)
That would be Wayne Russell, her husband and bass player; drummer James Cunningham; and longtime friend Sally Raburn, who, Russell says, “has been a music fan her whole life.”
Speaking of that first RP Tracks show back at the dawn of the ’80s, accompanied by her husband-to-be and Cunningham, Russell says today, “I told the dude who was giving me a ride there, my friend Bill Turner, ‘Take me home. I don’t want to do this. I’m scared!’” Luckily for the club-goers that night, Turner stayed the course.
But it was still nerve-racking for the young singer. “I pretty much sang with my back to the audience,” she laughs, and that was not lost on Raburn. “She was the one who, at the end of that night, came up and said, ‘You are an amazing singer, but you know, it’d be nice if we could see your face. You should turn around while you’re singing!’”
It may be hard for today’s fans to reconcile that stage fright with the bold, bawdy blues (and soul and rock) singer they know. That’s summed up by longtime Memphis multi-instrumentalist and erstwhile guitarist for the Reba Russell band, Paul Taylor, now living in Wisconsin. “You could ask anybody about Reba,” he says, “and they would say that she’s one of the most electrifying vocalists you’ll ever hear in person, and she never fails to deliver, and she has the same powerful voice that she’s had for her entire career. I just marvel at her every time because she just has such an intense power.”
That power was apparent to friends who heard her even before that first show, and Russell credits their encouragement as a key motivator back in those early days. Through a series of bands, first Visions, then Portrait, and finally Reba and the Portables, Russell, Wayne, and a rotating cast of band members took the city by storm, performing mainly covers at clubs like Solomon Alfred’s or the Bombay Bicycle Club. In the meantime, the singer and her bassist were clicking romantically, marrying in 1986.
Yet on her journey, from the Portables becoming one of the city’s premier cover bands, to a production deal with Chips Moman, to finally leaning into singing and recording her originals with the Reba Russell Band, the singer has remained appreciative of friends who helped her along the way. At Saturday’s event, Russell says, “I just got up there and praised Memphis and Memphis musicians and producers and engineers and everybody who perpetuates the whole blues scene. Because, you know, I had no experience when I started. I came here and, boom, everybody helped me. Nobody was ugly to me or told me to go away. So I was just trying to express my appreciation to the fabulous musicians in this town, many of whom aren’t here anymore, that have left the planet, yet were so instrumental in helping me and other people get on our feet and become worthy and hard-working musicians.”
That gratitude extended to her fellow awardees as well. “It was really awesome to be included in that group because there were some really cool other people that were given awards that night,” says Russell, noting that it reflected well on the the Memphis Blues Society. Founded in 2005, it gave aid to blues artists during Covid, then launched its Lifetime Achievement Awards in 2021
“There are blues purists, and then there are people who are into opening the blues up,” she observes. “It was really cool that Al Kapone was honored last night, and he spoke about that. He has been advocating and adding a blues feel and blues themes to his rap, and I’m sure that there are a lot of blues purists who kind of thumb their nose at that. But from my point of view, it’s absolutely amazing that he’s doing that, and teaching kids, and passing that blues legacy on. I really enjoyed his speech. What he said was really important.”
Reflecting a bit more on the evening and Al Kapone, she continues, “I think he was as proud as I was about receiving the award. And, you know, he’s a lot younger than I am, and he’s got a long time to perpetuate his artistry. So yeah, that part was lovely to me because it was about the continuation of this genre. It’s important for younger people to get hip to it.”
Memphis Mayor Paul Young, flanked by chief legal officer Tamara Gibson and Police Chief C.J. Davis, responds to the DOJ MPD report at a press conference on December 5, 2024. (Photo: City of Memphis)
In the wake of the killing of Tyre Nichols by members of the Memphis Police Department’s SCORPION Unit in January 2023, the Department of Justice (DOJ) initiated an investigation of the MPD to determine if officers regularly violated citizens’ rights. After 18 months of reviewing case files and video, interviewing Memphians, riding along with officers, and observing the inner workings of the MPD, the DOJ released its findings on December 4th. The 70-page report concludes, “After an extensive investigation, the Department of Justice has reasonable cause to believe that the MPD and the city engage in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of their rights under the Constitution and federal law.”
“Don’t Kill Me!”
The DOJ investigators highlighted four key findings: 1. MPD uses excessive force. 2. MPD conducts unlawful stops, searches, and arrests. 3. MPD unlawfully discriminates against Black people in its enforcement activities. 4. The city and MPD unlawfully discriminate in their response to people with behavioral health disabilities. To support these findings, investigators cited numerous instances of violence by MPD officers against the citizens of Memphis. “Excessive force is routine in MPD,” DOJ investigators write. “Officers use force as a first resort, demand unquestioning obedience, and exact punishment if they do not receive it.”
Nine police cars and 12 officers responded to a call where a mentally ill man stole a $2 soft drink from a convenience store. After he put his hands up to surrender, he was beaten. He screamed, “Don’t kill me!” and tried to run away. He was subdued and repeatedly tased while face-down on the ground, then served two days in jail for disorderly conduct and theft.
In another case, three officers tackled a man who had littered in a public park. “The man had done nothing wrong, but was ‘talking all this shit,’ according to one officer, and would not tell the officers his name. When the man dropped his drink while leaving the park, four officers surrounded him. … While handcuffed in the patrol car later, the man told a lieutenant that he was trying to follow the officers’ directions, but they had already decided to charge him: ‘I even offered to pick the can up.’”
The DOJ report finds fatal flaws in the MPD’s frontline strategy. “Memphis has relied on traffic stops to address violent crime. The police department has encouraged officers in specialized units, task forces, and patrol to prioritize street enforcement. Officers and community members have described this approach as ‘saturation,’ or flooding neighborhoods with traffic stops. This strategy involves frequent contact with the public and gives wide discretion to officers, which requires close supervision and clear rules to direct officers’ activity. But MPD does not ensure that officers conduct themselves in a lawful manner.”
In two instances cited in the report, officers followed drivers to their destinations and confronted them for traffic violations. One woman was standing on the porch of a relative’s house. After she didn’t produce ID and told the police they were “not welcome on the property,” officers cuffed her, roughed her up, and threatened to pepper spray her. The report states, “After locking her in a police car, one officer asked, ‘So what did we see her do?’ When an officer suggested the woman’s car had improperly tinted windows, another officer responded, ‘All this for a tint?’ The officer shook his head and gestured with his hand that the woman talked too much.”
In another incident, officers forced their way into the home of a woman accused of driving with expired tags and failing to stop at a stop sign. “No exigent circumstances demanded they enter the woman’s home, and the officers had no justification to use force to push their way inside for a nonviolent traffic infraction,” reads the report. After arresting the woman in front of her crying child, “… one officer reflected, ‘In the grand scheme of things, this does not seem like it was worth it.’”
Officers frequently use potentially deadly neck restraints, similar to the one Minneapolis Police Department members applied fatally to George Floyd when he was killed in 2020. In Memphis, an intoxicated man was repeatedly choked into submission until he urinated on himself. “He was not charged with any crime.”
After offering a ride home to a man suffering a mental health crisis, the police uncovered an outstanding warrant for theft. The officer pulled the man from the police car, saying, “You’re fixing to get your ass whupped.” When the man tried to flee, the officer beat him and put him in a neck restraint.
Officers were frequently observed beating, tasing, and pepper spraying people who were already restrained and posed no threat. “One officer hit a handcuffed man in the face and torso with a baton eight times.”
In addition, “Officers repeatedly permitted police dogs to bite or continue to bite people, including children, who were nonresistant and attempting to surrender.”
In one incident, an officer investigating a stolen vehicle report “fired at a car at least eight times at a fast food drive-thru in the middle of the day, jeopardizing other officers and bystanders. … MPD’s investigation improperly found that this use of deadly force was justified.”
In a sidebar titled “Sick of his fucking mouth,” the DOJ investigators write, “MPD officers escalate incidents involving minor offensives by responding to perceived insults, disrespect, or ‘verbal resistance’ with unconstitutional force. … Some MPD officers seem to believe that questioning their authority justifies force — as one supervisor told us, ‘If someone says, “I ain’t under arrest,” that’s resisting arrest right there.’”
Children were not spared the MPD’s methods. When one 16-year-old girl called police to report that she had been assaulted, she ended up in handcuffs. “After three hours, officers removed the handcuffs to reposition them. As she complained that her hands were hurt and swollen and tried to move her wrists, the officers grabbed her and pushed her face down onto the ground to handcuff her again. The girl was then arrested and charged with disorderly conduct.”
When officers were dispersing a crowd after a fight at a high school football game, one officer singled out a “relatively small-statured teen girl trying to leave the premises, yelling ‘Bye! Bye!’ at her. The officer’s taunts provoked the girl, who talked back. In response, the officer shoved the girl, yelling, ‘Get out this motherfuckin’ lot.’ The girl pushed back, and two other officers approached the girl from behind and threw her on the ground. The officers then lifted the girl in the air and slammed her face down into the pavement. The officer who started the altercation told her to ‘Get your dumb ass up,’ and called her a ‘stupid bitch’ as the girl was led away in handcuffs.”
When officers chased two Black boys, aged 15 and 16, who were suspected of a curfew violation, one officer, who had dropped his mobile phone in the chase, said, “I am fucking these little kids up, man. … I am fucking you all up. I just wanted to let y’all know that.”
In another incident, “One officer shot a teenager, and then another officer hit the teenager three times in the head with the butt of his handgun and at least 12 times with a closed fist. The teen was disarmed, seriously injured, and posed no threat at the time. Prosecutors later sent a letter to MPD stating that they ‘seriously considered recommending criminal charges’ against the officer because of the ‘more than one dozen closed fist punches to the face’ that the officer delivered. The prosecutors wrote, ‘We trust that you will handle this as an internal matter and leave it to your sound discretion.’ We saw no evidence that any further investigation took place or that any discipline was imposed. The officer remains employed at MPD.”
The report concludes, “Supervisors do not address these recurrent practices, and some at MPD defend these practices. As one field training officer told us, ‘We’re not excessive enough with these criminals. We baby them.’”
Officers use force as a first resort; MPD treats Black people more harshly. (Photo: Department of Justice)
Black People Bear the Brunt
On page 37 of the report, DOJ investigators write, “MPD’s own data show that across a range of different law enforcement actions, MPD treats Black people more harshly than white people when they engage in similar conduct.”
While 64 percent of Memphians are Black, 81 percent of the MPD’s traffic violations are issued to Black people. Officers issued 33.2 percent more moving violations in predominately Black neighborhoods than they did in predominately white neighborhoods. Black drivers were cited for equipment violations at 4.5 times the rate of white drivers; for improperly tinted windows, the rate was 9.8 times. Public health data indicates that both Black and white people use cannabis at the same rate, but MPD arrested Black people for marijuana possession at more than five times the rate of white people.
The report found that the MPD stopped and cited one Black man 30 times in three years. In another case, “MPD stopped a Black man outside a dollar store ‘due to multiple robberies of dollar stores in the area,’ according to the police report. The officers had no reason to suspect that this particular man took part in the robberies, and the man told them he was just waiting for a friend. When he didn’t leave or produce ID, police handcuffed him, beat him with a baton, and pepper sprayed him. The officers had no reason to believe that the man engaged in criminal activity and lacked reasonable suspicion to stop him. But they arrested him anyway, and he spent a night in jail. Prosecutors declined to pursue any charges stemming from the incident. After the incident, the man noted, ‘They had no reason to do this. And they’re out here doing this to people every day.’”
Mental Health Crisis
In 1988, after the MPD killed a mentally ill man who was cutting himself, the city founded the Crisis Intervention Team (CIT). Composed of officers who have specialized training in dealing with behavioral health issues, the CIT became a model other city’s police departments emulated. But the DOJ found “serious problems with the CIT program,” and that “officers often escalate behavioral encounters and use combative tactics almost immediately after arriving to behavioral health calls. … We observed CIT officers in Memphis belittle and mock people with behavioral health disabilities. In one incident, a CIT officer hit a man in the head and threatened him with a Taser while officers called him a ‘motherfucker,’ ‘bitch,’ and a ‘dumbass.’” One CIT officer earned the nickname “Taser Face.”
One 8-year-old Black boy with four behavioral health diagnoses encountered the MPD nine times between December 2021 and August 2023. He was threatened with tasing, handcuffed, and repeatedly thrown onto a couch. In one incident, when the boy stuck out his tongue, the CIT officer responded by bending his arm back and screaming, “I can break your arm with the snap of my wrist.”
The report says that while 75 percent of 911 calls involving people with mental illness are nonviolent, “MPD’s training on behavioral health primes officers to approach people with behavioral health disabilities with force and aggression, and our review revealed they often do. For instance, a training given to all new officers erroneously teaches that people with bipolar disorder do not feel pain.”
The City Responds
At a press conference on December 5, 2024, Mayor Paul Young responded to the DOJ’s findings — while repeatedly emphasizing that he had not read the report. “I believe that even one incident of mistreatment by the police is one too many. … The report the DOJ released last night is going to be difficult to read. Some of the incidents the DOJ report described are simply not acceptable, and our hearts go out to every person who has been impacted by those actions.”
In cities such as Seattle, New Orleans, and Chicago which have previously been the subject of DOJ investigations, city governments entered into consent decrees, negotiated with the DOJ, that outline the steps police departments must take to improve. At the press conference, Young ruled out signing such a decree. “We believe adjustments we’ve already begun making must continue, and that they must expand. It’s my job as mayor to fight for the best interests of our entire community. Every member. After carefully considering the information we received from DOJ, we didn’t believe that entering into any agreement in principle or consent decree right now, before even thoroughly reading the DOJ report, would be in the best interest of our community. It’s crucial that the city has the time to do a thorough review and respond to the findings before agreeing to anything that could become a long-term financial burden to our residents, and could, in fact, actually slow down our ongoing efforts to continuously improve our police department.”
Young cited recent statistics which show a 13 percent drop in crime overall, and a 19 percent drop in violent crimes. Police Chief C.J. Davis echoed the mayor’s position that the department is on the right track. “In some of the areas that have been outlined in the report, we have made significant changes aligned with the Department of Justice, getting their support with some of the training that has been ongoing, not just this year, but in previous years.”
In response to the sections of the report regarding the MPD’s treatment of children, Davis said, “We spend a lot of time with our children in our community. We graduated over a thousand children from our D.A.R.E./G.R.E.A.T. program, and work consistently to try to improve those relationships. We’re going to look through the report to ensure that we’re not missing anything.”
Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy has studied the full report. “I think it’s very concerning and shouldn’t be dismissed. I still think the vast majority of folks on the force are people of good faith. They have a hard job, having to make quick decisions in stressful, sometimes dangerous situations. But that doesn’t mean there can’t be systemic issues of culture, training, and supervision that cry out for reform.”
When Shahidah Jones of the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter read the report, she recalls thinking, “Not to be cynical, but it was just like, ‘Duh.’ We didn’t choose to target police because we didn’t have anything else to do or we were looking at these one-off instances. A very large part of organizing is for us to learn history and do our political study. … This is not something new. This is the way police have been taught to operate.”
Josh Spickler, executive director of criminal justice-reform nonprofit Just City, agrees. “I’m not particularly surprised by the report. I recognize some of these stories, some of the examples from media reports. Many of these things are well-documented and well-known incidents. And the findings are bad and awful, and as even Mayor Young said, hard to read, but they are not surprising.”
For Amber Sherman, who lobbied the city council for reform in the wake of the Tyre Nichols killing, the report felt like vindication. “My immediate action really was that it just corroborated everything that, you know, we as organizers here in Memphis have been saying for so long, especially with Decarcerate Memphis, where we’ve been really pressing the issue about pretextual stops and how dangerous they are.”
Decarcerate Memphis’ Alex Hensley, who drafted the reform ordinances which were passed by the city council in reduced forms after the Tyre Nichols killing, says she, too, feels vindicated by the report. “Activists and organizers have been saying all of these things for years on end, and then to have the DOJ — which is a policing entity, by the way — to say that, yeah, we need to not prioritize these low-level violations.”
DA Mulroy says, “We need to rethink about using specialized units for routine enforcement. And distinguish between traffic stops that actually affect safety or real crime, like moving violations and drive-out tag fraud violations, which make sense. But some of these minor equipment violations, the data shows the hit rate on those is very low — you’re talking like 2 to 3 percent of the time do you find weapons or drugs or somebody that’s wanted on a serious charge. But the data also show those are precisely the types of offenses that are associated with racial profiling. You really have to think about what kind of a bang you’re getting for your buck. You’re potentially alienating the community that you most want to cooperate with law enforcement because they’re the ones who see the crime.”
City council member Dr. Jeff Warren said he had not yet read the report. “If you remember, around the time that Black Lives Matter occurred after the George Floyd killing, the council began a process where we were involved with the police department, trying to initiate reforms. Some of the reforms that we actually initiated were negated by the state legislature. … I think we’ve been in the process of reform since this current police chief came on board; we’re doing that right now. That’s one of the reasons I don’t really think that the city needs to be entering into a consent decree that will cost taxpayers multiple millions of dollars, when it’s something we’re already trying to do.”
When asked about the DOJ’s finding that MPD recruits are taught that people with bipolar disorder cannot feel pain, Warren, a family physician, responded, “I don’t know where they got that from. Just because it’s written in a report doesn’t mean that’s the truth.”
The treatment of what the MPD calls “mental consumers” is one issue where there may be consensus on reform. The DOJ report cites multiple high-ranking MPD officers, as well as Memphis Fire Department officials and 911 call-takers, who believe that a new department specializing in mental health situations is needed to shift the burden from the MPD.
“We should listen to them on that,” says Hensley. “If this city is so pro-police, listen to them on this subject. Clearly, there are a lot of mental health calls and a lot of mental health issues within our community that I think tie back to these issues of poverty, lack of housing, lack of investments in basic necessities. We have to come up with something different.”
Spickler says, “There’s data that shows that most interactions with people in mental health crises are not violent. There are ways of responding that wouldn’t lead you to have to tell people falsely that people with bipolar don’t feel pain. One of the great suggestions of this report is that we don’t have to send an armed person to some of the things that we send them to, like a stranded motorist, traffic accidents, and mental health calls. These are all things that can be handled with someone who has safety and resolution as their mission and not what we have in this police department — and most police departments, frankly — and that is a warrior mentality. There’s an arrogance to it, and there’s an offensiveness to it.
“There’s nothing about policing that should be offensive. It’s ‘to protect and serve,’ right? Many police departments across America have tried to shift to a guardian model, which is how policing, I think, is most effective. But throughout that report, you see very clear evidence that that is not the case at the Memphis Police Department. There is no guardian mentality. It’s not taught; it’s not modeled. It’s really not expected. What is expected is that you get what you want by whatever means necessary.”
Will Anything Change?
The election of Donald Trump, who has promised a “brutal approach” to law enforcement, has brought the next steps into question. Whether a future DOJ would sue to impose a settlement with the city is an open question.
“I’m not gonna speculate about their motivations, but I think it’s obvious to anybody that there’s a very good chance that a lot of this will be dropped or, at a minimum, they’ll be less aggressive about enforcing it with the new administration,” says DA Mulroy. “We’ve seen that before with the prior Trump administration. That could be anyone’s calculus in dealing with the aftermath of November 5th.”
At his press conference, Mayor Young said, “We would have the same position regardless of the outcome of the presidential election.”
A consent decree with the DOJ would result in federal monitors being assigned to the MPD in order to ensure that they do not violate citizens’ constitutional rights. In his regular Friday email on December 6th, Young wrote, “Instead of a broad and potentially prolonged federal oversight via a consent decree — which could impose millions in costs on our residents — we believe by taking a holistic, community-focused approach we can move further and faster toward the change we need with less cost to our community.”
These costs must be weighed against the costs of not acting, says Hensley. “I think they’re going to pay for it one way or another. First of all, they’re bloating the costs. We’ve looked at other cities, some of them have been high, but it’s spread out over time. There are just all these other elements that are being left out to make it seem like we’re going to go bankrupt next year. That’s disingenuous. Tyre Nichols’ family is suing them for $500 million — and that’s just one person. I’m not their chief financial officer, but you can look at that clearly and see the costs are going to be far worse if they don’t sign the consent decree, or if they don’t do these reforms.”
Looking for unique gifts this giving season? Here’re a few posted recently on Facebook Marketplace Memphis.
“Homemade Iron Throne chair. Made for a murder mystery party and used during that night. It is crafted from a plastic Adirondack chair, wood supports, and different types of foam. $100.
Posted by Charlie Barnett
One of two oil paintings on offer; $150 for both.
Posted by Sky Sirling
Banksy Keep It Real graffiti sign original, 2004. $3,000.
“A holy grail piece for any street art collector.”
Posted by David Comstock
Autographed photo of Dr. Phil with the quote: “Walking around with a stick up your butt will not make you a corndog!” $20.
The Velsicol plant in North Memphis (Photo: Ashli Blow)
Velsicol, a legacy polluter that manufactured pesticides, is proposing to hand over its 83-acre defunct facility in North Memphis to Tennessee as an environmental response trust. Should the Tennessee Department of Environment and Conservation (TDEC) accept a settlement agreement from the company, the state will be left to determine what to do with wide-ranging contamination including a baseball diamond-shaped pile of hazardous waste and a fluctuating groundwater plume of chemicals beneath it.
The proposal comes after the company faced questions this fall from environmental regulators and bankruptcy attorneys about inappropriate management and potentially fraudulent activity.
These new allegations shocked environmental justice advocates and residents in the historically Black community neighboring Velsicol. They have long expressed frustration over the company’s slow efforts to clean up, now more than 20 years in the making.
The North Memphis plant’s closure in 2012 was already a staggering delay compared to the nationwide action prompted by Rachel Carson’s 1962 book Silent Spring, which exposed reckless pesticide production and application. As environmental policy changed and Velsicol plants shut down nationally in response, the Memphis facility continued creating these chemicals from a bygone era through the turn of the 21st century.
But even without a plant, the company has continued brokering chemicals in Memphis under the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act (RCRA), a federal law designed to protect human health and the environment from hazardous waste disposal. Over the last few months, Velsicol has been undergoing its once-in-a-decade renewal process for its RCRA permit.
In September, the TDEC sent a “Notice of Deficiency” to the company that their RCRA application was incomplete, followed by 36 pages outlining missing data and unsatisfactory plans for soil contamination across its property. Now, Velsicol is proposing that it pay a $3 million settlement to TDEC over five years in exchange for a release of their permit obligations. TDEC estimates the company is still responsible for between $137 and $143 million in cleanup costs, according to claims it has filed as part of Velsicol’s Chapter 11 bankruptcy case. Velsicol did not respond to the Lookout’s request to comment, and TDEC declined citing pending litigation.
Velsicol disputes TDEC’s and other claims brought forth in its bankruptcy case, in which nearly 600 organizations allege that Velsicol owes them money. Among them is the District of Columbia, whose Office of the Attorney General sued Velsicol in 2022 for contaminating local waterways and wants them to be held financially responsible.
The District of Columbia’s legal counsel filed a motion to investigate Velsicol’s financial condition in October. They presented evidence that company leadership received $10.6 million in salaries, expense reimbursements, bonuses, and consulting fees from 2012 to 2023.
“Investigation is needed to review the excessive transfers made to the shareholders over the past five years,” the counsel wrote in the motion, signed by attorney Kevin Morse. “In addition to potential fraudulent transfers prior to the bankruptcy, the District is very concerned about the viability of [Velsicol] moving forward.”
Paying for contamination
Moving forward, Velsicol as a company will no longer be in Memphis, should things go according to its plan of reorganization as filed in bankruptcy court this November. But its toxic legacy will be long felt.
It’s still deep in the Wolf River, where fish absorb chlordane as they swim through waters contaminated with the chemical, which doesn’t break down easily. If people eat these tainted fish they could experience tremors, convulsions, or even death. Velsicol produced chlordane — a by-product of a WWII nerve gas used by the Army — for commercial use starting in 1945. Although the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) banned its use in the 1980s, the Memphis plant continued to manufacture it as the sole producer in the U.S. through the 1990s for international export.
By the time the EPA banned it, more than 30 million homes and commercial buildings had been treated with chlordane, with the chemical washing into streams and rivers throughout the country like in Memphis and Washington, D.C., as detailed in the District of Columbia’s first complaint against the company. The District anticipates spending over $35 million to address contamination throughout the city.
The art crawl will go to four venues. (Photo: Holtermonster)
Before Covid postponed events or canceled them altogether, Marshall Arts hosted an open studio event each December, welcoming the public into makers’ creative spaces and boosting the artistic community’s spirits. But the gallery hasn’t hosted one since 2019 — a fact that wasn’t lost on Lauren Holtermann, aka Holtermonster, who started renting studio space from Marshall Arts post-pandemic.
In fact, Holtermann didn’t even know about the previous open studio events until gallery manager Anthony D. Lee mentioned it one day. “I was like, ‘Let’s do that again,’” she says. “And then it turned into a whole thing.”
By “whole thing,” she means the first-ever Edge District Art Crawl. With Holtermann’s excitement to motivate him, Lee wanted to make the usual open studio event bigger. “Now, it’s not just us, Marshall Arts,” he says. “We extended the invite to all the new guys [Sheet Cake, Ugly Art Co., and Solid Ground Studio]. So it takes it from us, an isolated venue, and now we kind of have a district. I always kind of knew that was coming because I’ve been here for 20 years, and Marshall Arts has been for 32 years.”
The “new guys,” as Lee calls them, have all opened their spots in the past year or so. Sheet Cake, owned by Lauren Kennedy, celebrated its first year with a party on December 14th, and Anderson Goin’s Ugly Art Co. opened this spring. Solid Ground Studio is artists Jodi Brewer, Pam McDonnell, Lisa Williamson, and Paul Behnke’s private studio that’ll be open to the public for the art crawl. These four artists just closed their show, “Something Solid,” on December 14th at Marshall Arts, the gallery’s first show since Covid.
For the art crawl, guests can expect special gallery hours as they take a self-guided tour of the four arts venues. Marshall Arts will have work on display by its artists, plus open studios by Lee, Holtermann, Emma Self, Wiley Bros Music, and others. Sheet Cake’s new exhibitions “Loose Ends” and “Back for Seconds” will be on display with work by Brittney Boyd Bullock, Roger Allan Cleaves, Melissa Dunn, Stephanie Howard, and Clare Torina. Meanwhile, Ugly Art Co. will have an exhibition by Sam Reeves Hill.
“We want to let people know that the Edge is an active third space,” Lee says of his hopes for the art crawl. “The district’s still in its formation, but it’s a walkable locale with interesting things to do.”
“And it’s cool to show off that we have a blooming arts district popping up with some old heads, like Marshall Arts, and all these new bloods,” adds Holtermann. “It’s really exciting.”
Edge District Art Crawl, Marshall Arts, 639 Marshall | Sheet Cake, 405 Monroe | Ugly Art Co., 635 Madison | Solid Ground Studio, 669 Monroe, Thursday, December 19, 5-8 p.m., free.
Héra (Gaia Wise) rides into battle. (Courtesy New Line Cinema)
Before Peter Jackson convinced New Line Cinema to back his Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in 1999, lots of people had tried to adapt J.R.R. Tolkien’s fantasy epic. Stanley Kubrick though about it, and decided it was unfilmable. John Boorman tried in the 1970s, but when he got bogged down, he sold his screenplay to an unlikely entity. Animator Ralph Bakshi is, today, a legend. In the mid-’70s, he was the guy who made Fritz the Cat, a gleefully obscene animated film based on the work of counterculture cartoonist R. Crumb, notorious for being the first animated film to ever receive an X rating.
Bakshi’s Lord of the Rings was sorely undercapitalized, so he was forced to innovate. He drew over test footage of people in costumes, a time-saving technique known as “rotoscoping,” and slyly mixed live-action with animation. As with all of Bakshi’s nine feature films, the results are a mixed bag. There are moments of brilliance, and moments of “WTF was he thinking?” Bakshi’s film was a financial success, but even though it ended with the siege of Helm’s Deep, his studio never greenlit the promised sequel, which would have taken the Hobbits to Mordor.
After the Best Picture triumph of Return of the King, Jackson produced three Hobbit movies that were of, let’s say, declining quality. Noted Tolkienista Jeff Bezos paid $750 million for the The Rings of Power TV series on Amazon Prime, which has been dodgy, at best, and a crushing bore at worst.
Now New Line, in a bid to retain the rights to Tolkien’s works, has gone back to LOTR’s cinematic roots and produced an animated film. Produced and co-written by Philippa Boyens, who was one of Jackson’s main creative collaborators, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim is directed by Kenji Kamiyama, an acclaimed anime artist whose credits include the groundbreaking cyberpunk series Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.
The Rohirrim royal family: Héra (Gaia Wise), King Helm Hammerhands (Brian Cox), Hama (Yazdan Qafouri) and Haleth (Benjamin Wainwright) — (Courtesy New Line)
The War of the Rohirrim is based on a tidbit of Middle Earth history mentioned in one of Tolkien’s exhaustive appendices. It’s a couple of centuries before Bilbo Baggins discovers the One Ring, and the no-nonsense King Helm Hammerhands (voiced by Brian Cox) rules the kingdom of Rohan. His daughter Héra (Gaia Wise) is not content to be a beautiful princess tucked away in a castle. Raised by her martial father and two brothers, while her mother died in childbirth, she learned to ride a horse before she could walk and is as handy with a short sword as any Rider of Rohan.
But, as you would expect, it’s an uphill battle for a woman to get respect in a feudalistic, patriarchal society. Overshadowed by her brothers Hama (Yazdan Qafouri) and Haleth (Benjamin Wainwright), she’s so out of the loop that when rival horse lord Freca (Shaun Dooley) shows up, demanding an answer to his son Wulf’s (Luke Pasqualino) proposition for a dynastic marriage, it’s all news to her. Her father wants her to marry a Gondorian, thus cementing the loyalty of a powerful ally. But Héra’s ambition is to resurrect the tradition of the Shield Maidens, a group of female warriors who took up arms to save Rohan when the riders were decimated in battle.
When Freca won’t take “no” for an answer, and gets uppity with the King, Helm says he won’t abide fighting in the mead hall, and suggests they take it outside. Freca proves no match for the guy they call “Hammerhands” and dies after only one punch. The king immediately regrets his rage, but feels he has to exile Wulf as a precaution.
Years later, Wulf returns at the head of an army of Dunlending wild men to claim the throne of Rohan, and the king must fight through betrayal in his own ranks and a long, cold winter of pitched battles to save his throne. When Hama and Haleth fall on the field of battle, it’s up to Héra to save her country and secure her family’s legacy.
Kamiyama is a product of the Japanese anime machine, but like Bakshi’s LOTR, this transcontinental production is hodgepodge of techniques and styles from the entire world of animation. Héra, with big eyes, flowing gowns, and flashing swords, is as much Sailor Moon as she is Tolkien. Modern digital tools open up possibilities Bakshi never had, and the line between animation and heavily processed video blurs. In places, Kamiyama appears to be deliberately aping Bakshi’s rotoscoping style. While this is clearly Peter Jackson’s version of Middle Earth, with familiar sets like Helm’s Deep and Isengard, Kamiyama avoids Jackson’ addiction to slo mo, while delivering the big set piece battles the series is famous for.
The writing, however, is bit of mixed bag. I appreciated the lack of heavy sorcery, and the choice to focus on a human story of jealousy and ambition gone wrong. But The War of the Rohirrim never feels more important than a footnote to the Lord of the Rings story, which is exactly what it is. But hey, at least it’s more entertaining than those Hobbit movies.
New Superintendent Marie Feagins engages with students during her visit to Northhaven Elementary School on April 23, 2024.. (Ariel J. Cobbert for Chalkbeat)
This story was originally published by Chalkbeat. Sign up for their newsletters at ckbe.at/newsletters
The Memphis-Shelby County Schools board has called a special meeting for Tuesday evening to discuss terminating the contract of Superintendent Marie Feagins, who officially started in the position just eight months ago, after a protracted search.
The board in February voted to hire Feagins away from a leadership position at the Detroit Public Schools Community District, making her the first outside leader to direct Tennessee’s largest school district since it was created through a merger a decade ago.
However, tensions emerged quickly between the board and Feagins over staffing issues and plans to close and consolidate schools as part of a sweeping facilities plan.
The special meeting — scheduled for 5:30 p.m. Tuesday — caught at least one board member off guard.
“I’m just as stunned as the public,” said Michelle McKissack, who represents District 1 and has been a strong supporter of Feagins. “I learned about this at about the same time as everyone else. There has been no discussion, at least with my presence there, to warrant this meeting.”
Other school board members could not be reached or declined to comment Monday night.
Another leadership shakeup could be a jarring setback for a district that took more than a year to choose and install Feagins and faces a series of significant academic and financial challenges.
It also could put the board at odds with community leaders, many of whom were glad to see Feagins taking steps to shake up a district they viewed as top-heavy and in need of significant reforms.
After Feagins started, tensions with the board developed quickly over her decision to eliminate around 1,100 positions over the summer, her allegations of overtime abuse by some district employees at a cost of $1 million, and her administration’s slowness to address air-conditioning and other school building needs before the start of this academic year.
There were also missteps over school safety in August, just after the school year began, as Feagins narrowly avoided a walkout by school resource officers and accepted the resignation of the district’s new security chief just days after he started.
The relationships didn’t seem to improve after school board elections that replaced four of the board’s nine members.
Tensions grew over the facilities plan Feagins’ administration was developing to close or consolidate schools — a blueprint that likely would affect nearly every board member’s district.
There was also anger after the Memphis City Council rejected the district’s planned site to build a new high school in Cordova to replace Germantown High School under a 2022 agreement with Germantown and state officials. Several board members said Feagins should have leaned more on board members to lobby council members for the new site.
Feagins came to Memphis well aware of the risks of a strained relationship with board members. Her 2020 doctoral dissertation, Chalkbeat reported in May, noted that a lack of trust can prompt superintendent departures.
At a tense school board meeting on October 21, after a brief discussion with members about building challenges, Feagins became emotional when board member Amber Garcia-Huett asked her what she was most proud of so far in her brief tenure.
Her voice breaking, Feagins said: “People — leaders who keep showing up every day, committed to something they can’t see.”
Marta Aldrich is a senior correspondent and covers the statehouse for Chalkbeat Tennessee. Contact her at maldrich@chalkbeat.org.
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
The Memphis economy grew to a record high of $102.9 billion last year.
Credit: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
The Greater Memphis Chamber announced the landmark last week, calling it “impressive” and a ”historic milestone.” It was the first time the Memphis Gross Regional Product (GRP) pushed over $100 billion. GRP is the total value of all products and services sold in a metro area.
The Memphis economy increased by nearly 6 percent from 2022 to 2023, growing by $6 billion. Over the last five years, the economy grew by 32.3 percent, which closely aligns with the national Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth of 34.1 percent.
“Breaking through the $100 billion GRP barrier is a remarkable milestone for Memphis,” said GMC president and CEO Ted Townsend. “This achievement, along with our record employment numbers, really highlights what we’ve always believed — Memphis is a place where business thrives. … We’re not just growing; we’re truly transforming our economy and opening up exciting new opportunities for our region.”
Key highlights:
• Memphis ranked 6th among peer cities in GRP in 2023.
• 5 percent average annual GRP growth over the past five years
• Record employment levels reaching 656,600 jobs
• Unemployment rate of 4.3 percent, nearly matching the national average
“This economic milestone aligns with the region’s strong employment recovery, as Memphis surpasses its pre-pandemic employment levels, showcasing the market’s vigorous recovery and ongoing growth trajectory, “ the Chamber said in a news release.
For context, the Nashville metro, which includes the large suburb of Murfreesboro and the wealthy suburbs of Franklin and Brentwood, had a GRP of $204 million last year. The figure made it the largest economy in Tennessee, followed by Memphis.
Credit: Federal Reserve Economic Data (FRED)
As for the rest of the top five economies in Tennessee, the Knoxville MSA ranked third with a GRP of $64.3 billion last year.
Community organizations are urging Memphis Mayor Paul Young to enter a consent decree with the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) in the aftermath of the agency’s findings on the Memphis Police Department (MPD).
The Black Clergy Collaborative of Memphis, Memphis Interfaith Coalition For Action and Hope (MICAH), and Just City released a letter urging Young to sign the agreement. They said the DOJ’s findings found MPD to have consistent practices of discrimination and civil rights violations – many of which citizens had advocated against for years.
In hopes of remedying these issues, the organizations said the city should include the DOJ in its next steps with an “independent monitor.” They also noted Young’s concern for the financial risks a consent decree would impose, which is why he said the city will not enter an agreement.
“[Mayor Young] thinks the city and MPD can correct these abuses without DOJ involvement,” the letter said. “We can think of no instance when a just society allowed the abuser of others to determine how they would fix their behavior. Just societies always intervene and prescribe what the abuser must do, monitors the abuser, and decides when the correction has occurred, which is precisely what a consent decree would aim to do.”
The letter said while they support the mayor, they don’t believe he would be able to supervise officers and conduct and review incident videos while carrying out his mayoral responsibilities.
“We have no trust or confidence in leaving corrections to the people involved in the unlawful conduct, the persons who failed to supervise them, or those who stood by and said nothing while the unlawful conduct occurred. We need DOJ involvement,” the letter said.
Young reported that several cities, such as Chicago and New Orleans, have consent decrees that have cost them millions of dollars with crime rates still on the rise. Organizers said these references imply “ a connection without data or proof.”
While the letter said they don’t know how decrees are calculated or other factors contributing to these numbers, they cannot “use these numbers to compare or estimate the cost of a consent decree in Memphis.”
Organizers said under a consent decree the city must pay a monitor and their team to track their compliance with the DOJ’s plan and recommendations while also providing regular updates based on “agreed-upon metrics.” Memphis will also be required to cover any fines and fees imposed by the federal court if the MPD repeatedly fails to adhere to the consent decree.
“Memphis can limit the financial cost of the decree simply by complying with its requirements,” officials said. “Regardless of the cost, we know that protecting the lives of Memphians, especially persons with disabilities and children is priceless, too valuable not to sign the decree.”
They also referenced citizens who voiced their concern for MPD as they said they work hard with a “short staff” and they are “underpaid, outgunned on the streets, and continue to be beaten down (low morale)” as criminals are emboldened in their practice.
Organizers said there may be validity in these statements, but that doesn’t mean MPD’s behavior described in the report is justified.
“It is possible and necessary to address abusive conduct and establish lawful and effective public safety practices while acknowledging the challenging nature of the work and respecting officers who perform the job well,” they said.
In addition to urging the mayor to sign the agreement, the letter also recommends developing a peacekeeping force to aid in police reform.
“Our confidence in affecting positive, lasting, tailored change is grounded in the DOJ’s authority to secure the reforms of unconstitutional patterns and practices identified within MPD,” the letter said.
Organizers are currently asking citizens to sign a petition to urge Young to enter a decree which can be found here.
