A man who police say was armed with a knife was fatally shot by Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers Wednesday night shortly after 8 in Whitehaven.
Special agents with the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) are investigating the shooting, according to a tweet by the agency. MPD’s Violent Crime Response Team is also responding to the incident. TBI identified the deceased man as 20-year-old Abdoulaye Thiam Thursday morning.
TBI Special Agents are responding to a report of an officer-involved shooting on Timothy St in Memphis, involving officers with Memphis Police Dept. One subject is deceased at the scene. More info as it becomes available.
UPDATED: TBI Investigating Fatal Officer Shooting in Whitehaven
The shooting took place in the 1300th block of Timothy near Hermitage after MPD responded to a domestic disturbance call at 1317 Timothy. Once on the scene, Thiam allegedly confronted the officers with a knife, prompting the officers to fire shots fatally injuring the man, according to MPD. None of the officers were injured.
The three MPD officers involved have been relieved of duty pending the ongoing investigation. TBI nor MPD have released any additional information about the incident, including the names of the officers involved in the shooting. TBI said it does not “identify officers involved in these types of incidents,” but instead “refers questions of that nature to the respective agency.”
TBI was able to recover all three officers’ body cam footage during the time of the shooting, MPD said Thursday. As the investigation is still ongoing, the footage has not been released to the public.
It’s been a great year for Fly on the Wall’s fake news team Davis Christopher and Peripheral Gibson. Together our parodists covered everything from Senator-elect Marsha Blackburn’s hair being identified as a brain-eating alien parasite, to riverfront development. Here are the top 5 Fly on the Wall parodies of 2018, in no particular order.
1.Tom Lee Park Redesign ‘Totally Unrelated To Atlantis’ New Riverfront Chief Says
POSTED BY PERIPHERAL GIBSON
At a press conference in their Front Street headquarters on Tuesday, Carol Coletta, head of the Memphis River Parks Partnership (MRPP), previously called the Riverfront Development Corporation (RDC), told reporters that her organization’s plans to dramatically alter the landscape of Tom Lee Park have nothing to do with her predecessor’s ambitious project to raise the lost, subaquatic city-state of Atlantis from the depths of the Mississippi River.
“Our plan will activate the park space for all Memphians, and make it more attractive to Memphis In May festival goers,” said Coletta. “It’s totally unrelated to the RDC’s plans to raise Atlantis.”
Coletta joined the RDC in March, replacing Benny Lendermon, who had announced the public-private partnership’s multimillion dollar plan to spend millions of dollars on targeted nuclear explosives that would trigger powerful earthquakes bringing the long hidden city/state of Atlantis back to the Above World, presumably to rule over a golden age of peace and prosperity for Memphis and the Mid-South region. *CLICK TO CONTINUE READING*
2. Men at War
Old Friends Won’t Let Women Bring Them Down
POSTED BY DAVIS CHRISTOPHER
Gunner Armstrong shakes his head, and digs into his backpack to retrieve a freshly purchased bottle of pepper spray. “I don’t know how effective this stuff is,” he mumbles, pulling on his reading glasses and skimming the directions. “I had a friend in college who would get a couple of beers in him and squirt it in his mouth like it was breath freshener.”
Like many manly men today, Armstrong lives in abject terror. “You never can be too careful with women being what they are,” he says, expressing an increasingly common, and deeply masculine sentiment. At least twice a week Armstrong says he finds himself walking a block or more past his house, keys clenched firmly in his fist like claws, because he’s convinced a woman is following him home, possibly to accuse him of harassment. “At some point I’ll find a nice bright street light and stop there to pretend like I’m taking a phone call or something. I’ll just let them walk on past, you know?” Armstrong says. “It’s probably all in my imagination. But like dad always said: better safe than hungover and accused of some bullshit you totally don’t remember doing.” CLICK TO CONTINUE READING.
3. Great Works of Literature as Written by the Shelby Co. Election Commission
With Help from The Memphis City Council
POSTED BY DAVIS CHRISTOPHER
Emboldened by national attention resulting from the careful and creative wording of current ballot amendments, the Shelby County Election Commission has committed considerable time and evident talent to improving the greatest works of world literature. While Fly on the Wall has yet to see a completed text, 5 first line samples were leaked this morning, revealing the epic scope of the Commission’s City Council-aided writing project.
Moby- Dick
Herman Melville with the Shelby Co. Election Commission
“Shall Ishmael serve as a common spoken or chirographic signifier not expressly for greeting, but sometimes for gaining the narrator’s attention?” CLICK TO CONTINUE READING
4. Consultants Plan Monument To Consultants On Memphis Riverfront
POSTED BY PERIPHERAL GIBSON
Claiming they have “bridged the gap between perception and reality,” a group of consultants has proposed Consultants’ Park, which will be dedicated to the many consultants hired to determine what Memphis should do with its riverfront.
“Since 1924, the city of Memphis has been trying to figure out what to do with this unique space, which overlooks one of the largest, brownest bodies of water in the world, and also Arkansas,” says the Preamble to the Executive Summary of the 2,667-page report issued by the Memphis Riverfront Consultants’ Coalition (MRCC). “Like the hundreds of consultants who came before us, we puzzled about how to polish Mud Island into a Mud Diamond. Then, three days into our recent ayahuasca trance charette, it suddenly hit us. What is more dependable and integral to the Memphis Riverfront experience than the Big Muddy? For the last century, the answer has been, consultants. That’s why we are executing Consultants’ Park, a reminder to all Memphis and the world that consultants matter, and that they must be paid.” CLICK TO CONTINUE READING
5. Citizens Organize to Protect Neighborhood Bar With Wall, Moat
POSTED BY DAVIS CHRISTOPHER
Community organizer Bing Hampton knows his audience. “Big Development’s not gonna get their grubby paws on Alex’s Tavern,” he shouts into his trusty bullhorn. There’s no reason to believe developers of any size are looking to acquire the Jackson Avenue institution, but that did not allay the concerns of roughly two-dozen Midtowners who waved signs with all-cap messages like “THE DIVE MUST SURVIVE,” and answered back, “Hell no.” CLICK TO CONTINUE READING
FATHER-SON COMBO: Once and possibly future City Councilman Myron Lowery (l) with current County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son, at the Lowerys’ annual New Year’s prayer breakfast.
The Memphis City Council took some serious licks Tuesday at the annual New Year’s prayer breakfast, presided over for a quarter-century by former Councilman Myron Lowery, and this year, by County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son.
The upshot was that several of the event’s principal speakers — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, and finally former Councilman Lowery himself — expressed some of the negative views that have been circulating in the community at large during weeks of gridlock over the appointment of new council members, following months of other questionable actions by the council.
Part of the fallout was the suggestion by the senior Lowery at the event’s conclusion that he had given thought to putting his name up for appointment to the “fractured” council, now three members short. Lowry went on to say he had discarded the idea, but added, as a parting tease: “I am giving consideration perhaps to another run this year.”
Earlier, Cohen had included a dig at the council amid kudos for County Mayor Harris and members of the Shelby County Commission in attendance: “The county commission seems to be doing a little better than the city council,” the Congressman said.
When it came his time to speak, Harris extolled both Lowerys for their service and quipped, “Some of y’all remember when we had a city council in Memphis.”
All of which led to the piece de resistance, Myron Lowery’s floated idea of another council run.
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With the adoption of brother kittens, Rudy and Ricco, last week Memphis Animal Services (MAS) reached its goal of processing more than 7,000 adoptions and rescue transfers in 2018.
The agency also ended the year with an all-time high save rate of 88 percent, officials announced Wednesday.
“7,000 was a stretch goal, and we honestly weren’t sure if we would hit it this year, but we wanted to try anyway and see if we could save more lives than we thought possible,” MAS director, Alexis Pugh, said in a statement. “But thanks to so much wonderful support from our community, we hit the goal on December 28th and still had several days to add to it.”
MAS
The 7,000th and 7,001st adoptions of 2018 were brother kittens who were adopted by the Miles family.
During December, the shelter offered adoption specials “in order to place as many pets as possible in homes for the holidays.” Adoptions of all cats and dogs were $18 compared to the regular fee that ranges from $40 to $80. MAS officials said the promotion led to 16 percent more public adoptions than during same time period last year.
Though intakes increased by 8 percent over 2018, the agency’s year-end save rate was 88.2 percent — compared to 84.8 percent in 2017.
MAS saved 7,712 pets in 2018, as it processed 3,911 public adoptions, 3,172 rescue transfers, and reunited 629 lost pets. Euthanasia was down 21 percent as a result.
Offering a wide range of programs and services, including sheltering lost or homeless animals, pet adoption and placement, handling animal control reports, dog licensing, cruelty investigations, and humane education, MAS is working toward saving every healthy, adoptable pet.
Interested in adopting from MAS? Visit their website for more info.
The group advocating for a re-opened MidSouth Coliseum hopes to host events inside the now-shuttered building sometime this year.
The grassroots Coliseum Coalition began work to save the building in 2015. Last year, they proclaimed the Coliseum to be officially saved after state officials approved a city plan for the Fairgrounds, which included the building’s preservation. In between, the group led tours through the building to show that the building is in “excellent shape,” they said.
“Our VIP tours have been packed and are drawing people who’ve shied away in the past,” said Coliseum Coalition spokesman Marvin Stockwell. “A lot of people are realizing that the building’s issues are solvable, and that the opportunities that the Coliseum presents are too good to be held back by old narratives.”
This year, the Coliseum Coalition plans to continue the tours and is planning another Roundhouse Revival event. So far, the group has hosted three of the Revival events, all of them outside the Coliseum.
Coalition president Roy Barnes said that with the city’s Fairgrounds plan approved, he hopes this fall’s Revival event will be inside the building. Further he said that this year’s bicentennial celebration’s for Memphis and Shelby County “represent a great opportunity to celebrate a place that has brought so many Mid-Southerners together for decades.”
“What a tremendous opportunity to welcome Memphians back into their building,” Barnes said. “We look forward to putting on another great community event that celebrates the authentic talent, creativity, and athleticism that put Memphis on the map. But this time, wouldn’t it be cool if we were under the dome!”
We can all agree the City Council is going through a rough patch right now — in fact, a rough year. From unpopular charter amendments to unpopular refusals to resign to unpopular (and potentially illegal) public expenditures on the recent referenda to an inability to appoint a successor to Bill Morrison, I must admit I have some sympathy for the remaining 10 members of the council.
It’s still our duly elected and sworn municipal government, however, and it has plenty of work to do. Voters spoke loudly and clearly in the last election: We want instant runoff voting (IRV). Voters have run the gauntlet twice on the issue, but there are certain members of the council who would prefer to drag their feet rather than enact policy to provide for a smooth transition.
The 2008 IRV charter amendment directs the Shelby County Election Commission to “adopt regulations consistent with the procedure above to facilitate implementation of instant runoff voting.” Still, elections administrator Linda Phillips has indicated that there are some issues on which she’d like official guidance from the city council. Whether that’s really a legal requirement, it would still be good to get the council to weigh in on these issues, rather than letting the Election Commission, or a judge, make the call.
These issues are all merely technical, and none are complex. They include how many candidate rankings are allowed; what to do in the case of a tie; and how to handle such obscure technical matters as “batch elimination.”
None of these issues is terribly complex. Both the 2008 and 2018 IRV campaigns described the voting process as including only three rankings, instead of allowing as many rankings as there are candidates. Indeed, that’s all that’s technically feasible using the current machines. So we can conclude that the voters contemplated the choice of ranking up to three candidates. This will save time and money while still giving voters greater choice than is currently available in the traditional runoff system.
Tie-breaks, thankfully, are incredibly rare. In fact, we’re not aware of any instance in the last few decades where an American IRV election resulted in an exact tie. But just in case, the city council can decide what to do. The options can be grouped under two category headings: random and non-random. Many municipalities draw lots or flip coins in order to determine who can proceed from a tied position.
Tennessee law, however, directs municipal governing bodies, here the city council, to cast deciding votes in the event of a tie. IRV allows for other methods, as well, including counting the votes those candidates received in prior rounds to determine which is most preferred.
Batch elimination simply describes the process where candidates who have no mathematical chance of winning are, in the event of a second round of counting, eliminated all at once rather than one at a time, with all of the ballots for those candidates automatically assigned to the voters’ second choice. This is merely a procedural decision; it would not actually affect the outcome of any election. But until we have voting machines that will do the counting for us, the city council may wish to err on the side of too much transparency and require that, in hand-counted IRV elections, candidates are eliminated one at a time, according to the IRV formula. (By the next council election in 2023, we will have new machines and could choose to opt out of hand-counting ballots.)
These are some of the biggest issues that the council must address. Save IRV Memphis stands ready to assist the Election Commission and the council by connecting them with experts on best practices that have served municipalities using this voting method. There is no need to reinvent the wheel: We have the option of adopting policies that have proven successful nationwide.
In the past year, we learned that the city council used our tax dollars to pay for, among other things, a lobbyist to try to get IRV outlawed statewide. They also granted themselves nearly $40,000 to engage in a directed and biased political campaign masquerading as a public education effort.
It doesn’t matter. The people have spoken. Now is the time to put past campaign acrimony behind us and proceed with the people’s business. The Memphis City Council should provide any necessary guidance. Please call the council at (901) 636-6786 and demand they implement instant runoff voting for the next council election, and commit at least $40,000 to educating voters about IRV in the 2019 election.
Memphis music was vibrant as ever in 2018. Every week, the Memphis Flyer brings you the latest and best video collaborations between Bluff City filmmakers and musicians in our Music Video Monday series. To assemble this list, I rewatched all 34 videos that qualified for 2018’s best video and scored them according to song, concept, cinematography, direction and acting, and editing. Then I untangled as many ties as I could and made some arbitrary decisions. Everyone who made the list is #1 in my book!
10. Louise Page “Blue Romance”
Flowers cover everything in this drag-tastic pop gem, directed by Sam Leathers.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (13)
9. Harlan T. Bobo “Nadine” / Fuck “Facehole”
Our first tie of the list comes early. First is Harlan T. Bobo’s sizzling, intense “Nadine” clip, directed by James Sposto.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (11)
I used science to determine that Fuck’s Memphis Flyer name drop is equal to “Nadine”.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (12)
8. Aaron James “Kauri Woods”
The smokey climax of this video by Graham Uhelski is one of the more visually stunning things you’ll see this year.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (10)
7. Daz Rinko “New Whip, Who Dis?”
Whaddup to rapper Daz Rinko who dropped three videos on MVM this year. This was the best one, thanks to an absolute banger of a track.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (9)
6. (tie) McKenna Bray “The Way I Loved You” / Lisa Mac “Change Your Mind”
I couldn’t make up my mind between this balletic video from co-directors Kim Lloyd and Susan Marshall…
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (7)
…and this dark, twisted soundstage fantasy from director Morgan Jon Fox.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (8)
5. Brennan Villines “Better Than We’ve Ever Been”
Andrew Trent Fleming got a great performance out of Brennan Villines in this bloody excellent clip.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (6)
4. (tie) Nick Black “One Night Love” / Summer Avenue “Cut It Close”
Nick Black is many things, but as this video by Gabriel DeCarlo proves, a hooper ain’t one of ’em.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (4)
The kids in Summer Avenue enlisted Laura Jean Hocking for their debut video.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (5)
3. Cedric Burnside “Wash My Hands”
Beale Street Caravan’s I Listen To Memphis series produced a whole flood of great music videos from director Christian Walker and producer Waheed Al Qawasmi. I could have filled out the top ten with these videos alone, but consider this smoking clip of Cedric Burnside laying down the law representative of them all.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (3)
2. Don Lifted “Poplar Pike”
I could have filled out the top five with work from Memphis video auteur Don Lifted, aka Lawrence Matthews, who put three videos on MVM this year. To give everybody else a chance, I picked the transcendent clip for “Poplar Pike” created by Mattews, Kevin Brooks, and Nubia Yasin.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018
1. Lucero “Long Way Back Home”
Sorry, everybody, but you already knew who was going to be number one this year. It’s this mini-movie created by director Jeff Nichols, brother of Lucero frontman Ben Nichols. Starring genuine movie star (and guy who has played Elvis) Michael Shannon, “Long Way Back Home” is the best Memphis music video of 2018 by a country mile.
Music Video Monday: Top 10 Memphis Music Videos of 2018 (2)
Thanks to everyone who submitted videos to Music Video Monday in 2018. If you’d like to see your music video appear on Music Video Monday in 2019, email cmccoy@memphisflyer.com.
Politics as such went largely unspoken of at Mayor Jim Strickland’s annual New Year’s prayer breakfast on Monday morning — the 2019 edition on New Year’s Eve, actually — at the University of Memphis-area Holiday Inn on Central Avenue.
Dignitaries of all sorts — past, present, and on-the-way-to-being-future — were on hand for the event, which included some extraordinary singing and preaching, the latter notably including a passionate impromptu sermon on the value of persistence through adversity from the Rev. J. Lawrence Turner of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church, who was filling in for the absent Rev. LaSimba Gray.
Another absentee was former Mayor Willie Herenton, who was the keynote speaker and guest-of-honor two years ago at Strickland’s New Year’s event, where Herenton called for “10,000 black men” to serve as mentors for the city’s youth population. Two years later, the call for mentors was reiterated by Strickland, who in brief remarks asked for volunteers to commit “one hour a week” to a variety of uplift activities, including “Team Read” and “Rise to Read,” two programs aimed at increasing youth literacy.
The 79-year-old Herenton, meanwhile, has demonstrated his own persistence by becoming a declared challenger for the mayoralty again in this year of city elections. The only reference Strickland made on Monday to any previous mayor was indirect and early in his remarks, when he was celebrating the contributions to the city by its faith community, members of which, he noted, had been key supporters of those who “struck against my predecessor [Henry Loeb] 50 years ago.”
By such verbal means, the current mayor deftly put himself on the side of the angels — which is to say, in line with the aspirations of the city’s African-American majority, whom Strickland, who is white, successfully courted in his 2015 victory over then-incumbent Mayor A C Wharton.
The courtship continued through part one of Strickland’s address on Monday, the aforementioned celebration of the Memphis faith community — on the job, he said, “day in and day out” — and extended through part two, which was dedicated to the proposition that Memphis has “momentum” and which allowed the mayor to recount some of what he put forth as recent successes during his administration.
Some of these were the expansion at St. Jude and new jobs through the auspices of Amazon and Indigo, plans for universal pre-K education within two years, reduction of the city’s poverty rate, and increased hires and contracting with the Memphis minority community.
“My job is to celebrate our successes and to be clear-eyed about our challenges,” Strickland summed up in the third and concluding part of his remarks, wherein he issued an appeal to his audience to “get involved” in the task of dealing with the challenges.
On New Year’s Day, the Second Line is serving breakfast for anyone in need.
Details below …
For the second year in a row on New Years Day morning, Second Line Memphis will open its doors for breakfast to people who need a hot meal free of charge, from 9am to noon. They will serve breakfast, give free haircuts, and hand out coats to the guests alongside a team of volunteers and city officials.
MATA buses will have two pick up locations in midtown (Living Hope Church 815 North McLean) and downtown (The Carpenter’s House Room in the Inn 212 N Second Street Memphis) starting at 8:30AM (last shuttle at 11:30). Any mission group, ministry, etc. (who work with the homeless community) that would like to be involved that day should bring people to one of those locations. Anyone wanting to donate coats, jackets, socks, etc. can bring them to the Second Line now until the New Years Eve.
“Everyone deserves to feel special, to be given the basic dignity we all deserve. We want to be a part of spreading that kindness to others.” – Chef Kelly English
Stepping out for New Year’s Eve tonight? Think before you drink.
The Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) is planning an “aggressive traffic safety enforcement plan” for Monday evening. The plan will blanket all 95 Tennessee counties with “bar/tavern checks” sobriety checkpoints and more.
JB 
Facebook- MAS 
MAS 
Brandon Dill 
JB 
