Tag: Bill Gibbons

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Memphis Crime Rate Falls In First Three Quarters of 2024

Photo by Martin Podsiad on Unsplash

The Memphis crime rate showed a “very significant drop” from January to September of 2024, according to new data from the Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute. 

Credit: Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute

The major property crime rate fell more than 20 percent in the first nine months of 2024, compared to the same period last year. These crimes are burglaries, vehicle thefts, and other felony thefts (like thefts from vehicles). The biggest drop came in the vehicle theft rate, down more than 35 percent. Burglaries were down nearly 20 percent. Other felony thefts were down nearly 13 percent. 

The major violent crime rate fell, too, in the first nine months of the year. Though, they did not fall as dramatically as property crimes. 

Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute

The murder rate fell by more than 11 percent. Rapes were down nearly 9 percent. Robberies were down by more than 22 percent. However, aggravated assaults rose more than 2 percent. 

Crime Commission president Bill Gibbons said there were nearly 10,000 victims of aggravated assault in the first nine months of the year, making up over 80 percent of all reported violent crimes. 

“Until we reduce significantly the number of aggravated assaults, we will not be able to have a significant reduction in the overall violent crime rate,” Gibbs said in a statement. “And, of course, an aggravated assault can become a murder in a split second. All it takes is the offender being a good aim.”

Crime Commission and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute

The overall crime rate in Memphis dropped more than 10 percent in Memphis from January to September. 

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News News Blog

INFOGRAPHIC: Memphis Crime Rate (Slightly) Down

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INFOGRAPHIC: Memphis Crime Rate (Slightly) Down

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News News Blog

Report: Violent Crime Numbers ‘Moving In the Right Direction’

Memphis and Shelby County have seen declines in three major categories of violent crime so far this year, and leaders say that while citizens “probably don’t yet feel or sense it,” the needle is moving in the right direction.

Numbers for murders, rapes, and robberies were all lower in Memphis and Shelby County in the first three quarters of 2018 compared to the same time last year, according to new figures released Wednesday by the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute and the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission. However, aggravated assaults rose in both the city and the county.

Here’s the basic breakdown of the numbers in Memphis so far this year (compared to last year):

• Reported murders — 112 (down from 136)
• Reported rapes — 378 (from 462)
• Reported robberies — 2,255 (down from 2,574)
• Reported aggravated assaults — 6,970 (up from 6,843)

Here’s the basic breakdown of the numbers in Shelby County so far this year (compared to last year):

• Reported murders — 118 (down from 138)
• Reported rapes — 437 (down from 524)
• Reported robberies — 2,367 (down from 2,668)
• Reported aggravated assaults — 7,723 (up from 7,513)

“One violent crime will always be one too many, but these numbers indicate the needle is moving in favor of increased public safety,” said Shelby County District Attorney General. Amy Weirich. “My hope is that this momentum will continue and result in even better numbers by the end of the year.”

Crime Commission executive director Bill Gibbons said violent crimes need to “decline significantly more, but we are moving in the right direction.”

“The declines are significant, even though most citizens probably don’t yet feel or sense it,” Gibbons said.

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News News Blog

Drug and Weapons Violations Up in Memphis

Bill Gibbons

Weapon and drug charges are on the rise in Memphis this year, according to new statistics from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

The two likely go hand in hand with the city’s higher-than-usual homicide rate, which is up about 72 percent over this time last year. 

For the period between January and April 2016, weapons violations were up 17 percent in the city and 16 percent countywide. Drug violations were up 25 percent in Memphis and 21 percent countywide for that same period. The overall major violent crime rate to date is up 9 percent in Memphis and 11 percent countywide. Major violent crimes include murder, rape, aggravated assault, and robbery.

Despite the high numbers, the Crime Commission says major violence crime is still down 11 percent in Memphis and 14 percent countywide when compared to the same time in 2006, the year the commission launched its massive crime-fighting strategy, Operation: Safe Community (OSC). OSC includes the Memphis Police Department’s data-driven policing model Blue CRUSH, efforts to reduce truancy and gang crime, and several other initiatives.

Also, major property crime rate is on the decline. Burglaries, auto thefts, and other theft offenses have dropped by 5 percent in Memphis compared with this time last year and 40 percent compared with the first four months of 2006. The countywide rate dropped 7 percent from last year and 41 percent from 2006.

“The level of violent crime in Memphis and Shelby County is unacceptable. We must continue our commitment to the implementation of Operation: Safe Community, including data-driven deployment of police, vigorous prosecution of convicted felons who persist in toting guns, effective drug treatment and breaking the cycle of domestic violence,” said Tennessee Commissioner of Safety and Homeland Security Bill Gibbons, who will take over as president of the commission on September 1st. “We have planned our work. We need to keep working our plan.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

Bill Gibbons’ Return

Bill Gibbons, the current commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security and a former Shelby County district attorney general, will soon join the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis to lend his expertise to the study of protecting the public. He’s also re-taking the helm of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission — a post he held until he joined state government in 2011.

Some see Gibbons’ imminent return as an encouraging move to combat rising violent crime. But it is abundantly clear to me that the prescriptions advocated by Gibbons and other members of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, dating back to the 2006 inception of Operation Safe Community (OSC), have done little if anything to combat crime.

The crime commission continues to use 2006, a high-water mark for violent crime in Shelby County, as a benchmark to measure violent crime. This is where politicians get their numbers when they say “crime is down.” But by any real measure, crime isn’t down, especially not this year, which has seen more murders in the first four months of the year than any time since OSC began.

In fact, the rate of violent crime in Shelby County has stayed largely the same in every year except 2006. As defined by the FBI Uniform Crime Report and reported by the various law enforcement agencies in the area, the county rate has remained in a range of 15 to 20 crimes per 1,000 people.

OSC says they use 2006 because that’s when the program began. It then releases reports that show decreases in crime on a particular month of the year. But in reality, no real progress has been made since a dramatic — and temporary — drop in violent crime nationwide in the 1990s.

This is exactly why no one believes the crime numbers, and they shouldn’t.  

As it stands, local law enforcement acts as a reactionary force. Part of that just comes with the territory. But there are preventive measures that the police can employ that build trust from the public, and build stronger ties with communities without imposing a military-style occupation on every high-crime neighborhood.

While the Operation Safe Community 2012-2016 plan continues to talk about pilot programs for community-oriented policing, there’s no guarantee that with the departure of former Memphis Police Department director Toney Armstrong, their strongest local advocate, these programs will continue.

One good thing in the OSC plan is that it calls for more supportive services outside of law enforcement, like mental health treatment access and job training. These are absolutely necessary tools, but there’s little talk of funding sources.  

At the same time, the plan pushes for harsher sentences and mandatory minimums, which have been repeatedly shown to disproportionately impact racial minorities and the poor, at a time when such strategies are falling out of favor, to say the least.

There’s no question that organizations like the crime commission can be effective tools to help bring together for a common cause disparate groups that otherwise wouldn’t talk to each other. To the extent that this has happened, the crime commission has been successful.

The plan the commission has laid out has lofty goals. But with such scarce communication with the public, there’s little hope of building the kind of buy-in that would help achieve them. The commission has mostly been used as a PR tool to pump up the stats of politicians rather than to bring these and other diverse groups together or educate the public in a real way. 

Gibbons was involved in the commission’s creation. This pattern started with him at the helm. So there’s little reason to believe it will change now that he’s back.

Good intentions notwithstanding, the crime commission, which includes a host of “community partners,” suffers from the same problems other such boards do: The people who serve on them may be stakeholders, but they are not representatives of the community, and so reaching out to the community is virtually impossible, making improbable at best the goal of achieving the consistently moving target of truly reducing crime in Shelby County.

There’s no question that Shelby County has a huge task in working to reduce crime in our community. But let’s be real about it, and talk about the warts at least as openly as we talk about the successes. Give people actionable things to do before a call to 911 is necessary rather than relying solely on the constant drumbeat of “report the crime.”

And make sure law enforcement is building lasting relationships with communities of need.

Steve Ross is proprietor of vibincblog, where a longer version of this essay first appeared.

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Politics Politics Feature

Gibbons Ready to Run for Governor

CREDIT: jb

Bill Gibbons is running for governor in 2010, IF:

There’s really only one “if” that could forestall a
gubernatorial campaign by the long-term District Attorney General – and that’s
the likelihood of former U.S. Senator Bill Frist making a run for it.

It is no secret that Frist is thinking about a race. The
former Senate Majority Leader and (for a time) presidential wannabe has said
so, and he’s making the kinds of speaking rounds across Tennessee that only a
serious aspirant for statewide office would commit himself to.

Frist’s timetable for deciding would seem to be set for
late this year or early next year. In the meantime, he’s the elephant in the
room that other Republican gubernatorial hopefuls have to worry about. Among
those others: 7th District congressman Marsha Blackburn of Brentwood;
Lt. Governor Ron Ramsey of Blountville; 3rd District congressman
Zach Wamp of Chattanooga; and Mayor Bill Haslam of Knoxville.

Whatever course the others may take, Gibbons is explicit
about one thing: “If Frist runs, I’ll support him.!” But he’s equally
insistent that, otherwise, he’s likely to be in the running. “I make no bones about it. I’m serious about this,” he said at Saturday’s “Bob Patterson Barbecue” event, sponsored by
the Shelby County Young Republicans and held at Kirby Farms in honor of the late
Trustee, who died unexpectedly early this year.

Patterson held such an event annually at the same venue,
and this year’s commemorative affair drew a fair number of local office-holders
and candidates, just like the ones presided over by Patterson himself.

Gibbons has almost always been in attendance at those
events, and the subject of his potential further political ambitions has
occasionally come up in conversations. Usually, what he told questioners was some
variation on the theme that he was concentrating on his current duties. That’s
right out of the political playbook.

No doubt he is still taking care of business, and but he’s
no longer reticent about wanting to move on. After service on both the Memphis
city council and the Shelby County Commission, Gibbons was named in 1996 by
former governor Don Sundquist to fill a vacancy in the District Attorney
General’s office. He has since been reelected twice.

Gibbons also served in the administration of former
governor (now U.S. Senator) Lamar Alexander, and he chanced a run for Memphis
mayor in 1987.

The hustings two years hence will probably be crowded, as
is always the case after a two-term governorship. Democrat Phil Bredesen is now
completing the second of his two terms permitted by the state constitution.

Among the possible gubernatorial candidates so far
mentioned by themselves or others on the Democratic side are former 9th
District congressman Harold Ford, former state House of Representatives majority leader Kim McMillan, former Nashville mayor Bill Purcell, and 4th
District congressman Lincoln Davis.

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Editorial Opinion

Where the Buck Stops

It turns out that District Attorney General Bill Gibbons and U.S. Attorney David Kustoff are in the habit of talking daily. And, though some small talk gets in once in a while (the two are longtime acquaintances who share a background as Republican activists), most of their conversations involve decidedly serious matters — such as who gets to handle which cases.

The fact is, several of the high-profile recent prosecutions of prominent political figures involved potential violations of both state and federal law and could have been investigated and gone to grand jury and subsequently to trial either way. One such is the ongoing case of former MLGW president Joseph Lee and retiring councilman Edmund Ford, charged with trading political and financial favors. Another is the forthcoming prosecution of former county commissioner Bruce Thompson for allegedly doing something similar in lobbying the Memphis school system on behalf of a high-stakes contractor.

In one sense, there is no mystery as to why both these cases are scheduled for federal court. The preliminary investigations were done by the FBI, in tandem with the U.S. Attorney’s office, and the normal handoff is from one set of feds to the other. But that’s not the only consideration, according to Gibbons, who has at least a nominal claim to prior intervention and ultimate jurisdiction on these and other prominent cases that end up being dealt with at the federal level. The D.A. says there’s another issue involved: the well-known fact that punishments in federal court, subject to fixed sentencing guidelines, tend to be more severe.

For one thing, Gibbons notes, there are fewer sidetracks like early parole or even outright diversion, both of which are available in the state system. As Atlanta Falcons quarterback and dog-murderer Michael Vick discovered only this week, the maximum early release he might expect from his federal sentence of 23 months incarceration is fixed by established practice at 15 percent of that time — three months. Had he been tried in state court in Virginia, where his crimes were committed, Vick might somehow have wangled a way to cop a plea and get suited up for the current football season. And that, given widespread public revulsion to Vick’s deeds, would not have gone down well.

Conversely, we suppose, there are instances in which the wider discretions available to jurists in state prosecutions might be more suitable to a specific kind of crime by a specific kind of criminal.

An instructive saga is that of the late Mafia chieftain John Gotti, who escaped conviction several times before finally being nailed — at least partly because New York and federal courts competed for the honor of trying him and got in each others’ way. So if our two chief local prosecutors do in fact coordinate policy on criminal prosecutions — if each occasionally, and for good reason, agrees to pass the buck to the other, as it were — the ends of justice will presumably end up being well served. But it is an aspect of the judicial process that bears continued scrutiny.

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News The Fly-By

Q & A: Bill Gibbons

New Orleans has made some recovery since Hurricane Katrina ravaged the city in 2005. The population is almost 70 percent of what it was before the hurricane. In some parts of the city, especially in the tourist-friendly French Quarter, the only evidence of the storm are T-shirts that say, “I survived Hurricane Katrina.”

But the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office has yet to bounce back. In the first half of this year, many felony cases were dismissed, due in part to inadequate staffing levels. In other cases, key witnesses never returned to the city after Katrina.

Then last month, after a federal judgment levied $3.7 million against the office for firing 42 white employees, New Orleans district attorney Eddie Jordan resigned.

Shelby County district attorney Bill Gibbons and four other D.A.’s from across the country spent November 12th to 16th in New Orleans evaluating the local office and meeting with judges, community leaders, and law enforcement. In the next 60 days, the group will recommend how to repair the Orleans Parish office.

— Bianca Phillips

Flyer: How did Katrina affect the Orleans Parish office?

Gibbons: In the first half of 2007, over half of their homicide cases were dismissed, as well as over half of their robbery cases. A lot of those were pre-Katrina cases.

[Missing witnesses] ranged from people who were on the scene and needed to testify about a particular crime, to former police officers no longer on the force. On the other hand, the office did not have the adequate staff and resources to locate witnesses who may still be in New Orleans.

Is crime on the rise in New Orleans?

They have a very high homicide rate and a fair amount of drug trafficking. The levee issue [people not returning because they aren’t sure the city is safe from storms] has been replaced by the crime issue as the major hurdle in persuading people to come back to New Orleans.

Was the D.A.’s physical office destroyed in Katrina?

The office was about six feet under water. Since then, it has been closed, and it’s my understanding that there’s a serious mold problem. It’s probably going to need to be gutted and totally redone.

For now, they’re in temporary office space. They don’t have an office-wide e-mail system. They have three to four employees sharing telephones. They don’t have enough computers for the office staff. The office is operating off of folding picnic tables.

On top of all that, the D.A. resigned.

[New Orleans D.A. Eddie Jordan] had been sued for race discrimination as a result of terminating a fairly large number of employees when he took office. They were primarily investigators and victims-service assistants, as well as support staff. The federal district court recently ruled that the assets of the office could be seized to satisfy that judgment.

Who’s running the office now?

An interim D.A. was appointed, Keva Landrum-Johnson. I’m pretty impressed with her. I think she’s smart, tough, and savvy. She faces more challenges than any D.A. in America right now.

A federal judge froze six of the office’s bank accounts this month as the first step in seizing the $3.7 million. Is that having any effect?

They had great difficulty making payroll last week. They’ll face the same problem at the end of this month. My guess is that they will end up securing a loan to pay off all or part of the judgment.

Why did you go to New Orleans?

The National District Attorneys Association was looking for D.A.’s from cities similar in size to New Orleans, as well as cities that may have something in common with New Orleans. In our case, we’re larger in city population than New Orleans, but our metropolitan area is about the same size. And Memphis has so many commercial and cultural ties with New Orleans.

What did you do?

We interviewed as many stakeholders as we could. We talked to the interim D.A. and to her key staff members. We talked to the police chief and other key people in the police department, Mayor Nagin, various judges, and representatives of the business community.

We’re not trying to come up with some five-year strategic plan for the D.A.’s office. We were more of a MASH unit that comes in and identifies some specific things that could be done in the immediate future.

Could New Orleans’ problems affect Memphis?

New Orleans is our sister city, so what happens down river affects us here. If New Orleans can make some headway on its crime problem, I think that will benefit us in the long run.