Tag: consolidation

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News

5-Year Plan Presented to Law Enforcement Consolidation Group

Saying it was just a “starting point,” County Commissioner Mike Carpenter officially presented his consolidation proposal to the law enforcement consolidation task force on Wednesday.

“I don’t think this is an air-tight proposal. … This is open to discussion,” Carpenter said.

Carpenter’s plan suggests creating a Public Safety Commission that would guide a five-year consolidation process of the Memphis Police Department and the law enforcement duties of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. If, during that time, consolidation was not working or was costing too much money, the bodies involved could opt not to go forward.

But some task force members said they needed more time to come up with a viable proposal.

“If it takes five years to execute [the plan], we need to take longer than 90 days to choose that path,” said Mike Heidingsfield, head of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission.

The task force’s next meeting is November 28th.

Categories
Opinion

Batteries Not Included

Consolidating Memphis and Shelby County is the government equivalent of changing your phone service, Internet service, credit cards, bank, checking account, brokerage firm, home mortgage, termite contract, doctor, car insurance, utilities, club memberships, billing address, will, and marital status.

And it gets really hard if you have children.

Now that Mayor Willie Herenton has been reelected to another four-year term, consolidation is back in the news.

“We need to consolidate,” Herenton told a Memphis Regional Chamber of Commerce audience last week. “We’ve been singing that song, and we’re going to open that hymnbook again.”

In 1993, two years after he was first elected, Herenton floated the idea of consolidation by surrender of the city charter. The New York Times even did a story about it. The mayor appointed a committee to look into it. The committee included some familiar names. The chairman was Mike Cody, a Memphis attorney, former candidate for mayor, and former Tennessee state attorney general. Members included Herman Morris, who ran against Herenton in the 2007 mayoral election, John Ryder, who managed the Morris campaign, Charles Carpenter, who managed Herenton’s campaign, state senator Steve Cohen, who is now a member of Congress, Shelby County attorney Brian Kuhn, and others.

Their conclusion, in short: no way.

“You can say I’m in favor of it,” Cody said in a telephone call from Boston this week. “We tried to find some ways.”

There were 14 pages of analysis, to be exact.

The Tennessee General Assembly would have to pass an enabling law. If the law was amended to apply to the Memphis city charter, 10 percent of the residents of the city could petition for a referendum. The committee noted, however, that the state constitution apparently only envisions dissolving cities with a city manager and commission form of government.

“No dissolution method is provided by the General Assembly for cities organized as is Memphis,” the committee concluded.

As for legal and practical problems that might arise from charter surrender, the committee suggested a few: Suburban cities such as Bartlett, Collierville, and Germantown might use annexation to cherry-pick prime neighborhoods and pick up residents and/or retail. Or residents of a defined area in the suddenly unincorporated Memphis could hire a smart lawyer, incorporate, and invent a new city.

“Any contracts of the city of Memphis would survive a surrender of the charter and could be enforced,” the report said. Joint boards and commissions “would require some degree of restructuring.” Consolidation “would be further complicated for those authorities with holdings in their own names.” The city board of education would be abolished unless provisions were made to create a special taxing district. Both MATA and MLGW “would cease to exist.”

The committee fell back on the old, safe standby of “functional consolidation” of certain departments, which has been dusted off several times since then.

In 2002, Cohen requested an opinion on charter surrender from the state attorney general. The answer was no way once again.

“The General Assembly may not revoke the charter, the Memphis City Council is not authorized to surrender the city charter, and no statute authorizes the Memphis city charter to be revoked by a referendum election of the voters,” the opinion said.

Case closed? Not quite. Lawmakers can do almost anything if they put their minds to it, witness those lottery tickets on sale at your neighborhood convenience store. But the lottery had popular support, and other states had shown the way.

The city most often mentioned as a model for consolidation is Louisville, which has some similarities to Memphis: river city, big college-basketball town, long-serving mayor, air-cargo hub. The big difference is that Louisville was 65 percent white before consolidation and more than 80 percent white after consolidation, which took effect in 2003 after voter approval in 2000.

You don’t need 750 words to figure out that one.

Categories
News

Law Enforcement Consolidation Group Discusses Deadline

“I’m concerned about the time we have left to make a decision,� said Memphis Shelby Crime Commission director Mike Heidingsfield at a meeting of the Shelby County Commission’s Law Enforcement Consolidation Task Force Wednesday afternoon.

The committee has until December 15th to make a recommendation as to whether or not city and county police forces should consider consolidation. But Heidingsfield and other committee members expressed concern that the group, which has been meeting since August, has yet to determine whether they’re considering full consolidation (a complete merger of both police forces) or functional consolidation (a merger of individual units like a metro DUI squad or metro SWAT team).

“If we’re going to continue to talk and talk and talk, we need to decide what we’re talking about,” said Memphis Police director Larry Godwin.

“Meeting a December deadline would be very problematic for this body,” added deputy county attorney Danny Presley.

So far, the committee has heard presentations from consolidated departments across the country (like Las Vegas and Louisville, Kentucky), briefly looked at a cost analysis for full consolidation, and talked with representatives from the Memphis Police Association and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Deputies’ Association.

But Heidingfield says the group has yet to consider the additional cost of adding the 600 Memphis Police officers requested by the mayor earlier this year. And they haven’t spent much time on discussing whether a sheriff or appointed director should run a new consolidated force. Nor has the group spoken with representatives from neighboring towns, like Arlington and Lakeland.

“We haven’t even discussed a rationale for changing from the status quo,” said Heidingsfield.

Task force chair and county commissioner Mike Carpenter reminded the group that they should only be thinking about making a general recommendation as to whether the forces should or should not consolidate. That recommendation will be studied in greater detail by a new committee formed after the December deadline.

Said Carpenter: “After December 12th [the date of the last meeting], if we need more time, we can go back to the council and ask for more time.”

–Bianca Phillips

Categories
News The Fly-By

Serve and Protect

When the Las Vegas Police Department merged with the Clark County Sheriff’s Office 35 years ago, departmental pride kept some officers apart.

“You’d go into a room and the city guys would be on one side and the county guys would be on another side,” said Tom Roberts, director of intergovernmental services for the Las Vegas metro department. “But that problem fizzled out over time.”

Roberts presented an overview of Las Vegas’ consolidated city and county police force to the Shelby County Commission’s law enforcement task force last week. The task force, headed by Commissioner Mike Carpenter, also heard from representatives of the Shelby County Sheriffs’ Association.

“Our investigators and specialists are concerned that consolidation would cause there to be too many people in investigator positions,” said association vice president Dan Chapman. “They’re afraid they’d be put back into patrolmen positions after they’ve worked years to get the jobs they have.”

Other association members are worried that consolidation would concentrate more resources on crime inside the city limits, leaving residents of Arlington, Lakeland, and other unincorporated areas with less police protection.

“Some of our guys have worked in the same areas for a long time, and they’ve developed relationships with the people who live there,” Chapman said. “We’re afraid the people they’ve faithfully served over the years would find they’re no longer enjoying the level of service they’re accustomed to.”

But not all sheriffs’ association members are against consolidation. Association president John Kraemer said he’s heard several members say they wouldn’t mind consolidating the two departments because Memphis police officers get better benefits.

“Many of our members have made it clear to me that they’re all for consolidation, but they don’t want [Sheriff Mark Luttrell] in charge,” Kraemer said.

County police officers have had two significant pay cuts in the last two years, Chapman said. “So our guys think, if we consolidate, at least we’ll get a raise.”

Tommy Turner, president of the Memphis Police Association, said his group will only support consolidation if the Memphis department is the lead agency.

“Our contract is with the city of Memphis and the police department, and we will not relinquish it,” Turner said.

Turner said the agreement with the city provides better compensation when officers have to go to court or work overtime than the sheriff’s office. MPD officers also make higher wages.

The task force has four more meetings before it is expected to make any proposal for or against consolidation. Carpenter says the commission will keep all issues in mind.

“If we decide to go in this direction [toward consolidation], we can balance those concerns,” Carpenter said. “Is everybody going to be happy? No, they never are. But I think we can make sure the officers are taken care of.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Who’s the Boss?

When city and county police forces in Charlotte, North Carolina, merged 15 years ago, someone was forced to give up his title.

The city police chief was granted the highest role in the consolidated force, while the county chief (similar in role to Shelby County’s elected sheriff) was moved to the position of “deputy chief.”

“The former county chief became deputy over police services in the unincorporated areas of the county,” says Darrellyn Kiser, assistant to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief.

Earlier this month, Shelby County commissioner Mike Carpenter and Memphis city councilman Jack Sammons co-sponsored resolutions to form a joint city/county committee to look into consolidating the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO). That committee will be charged with deciding if consolidating is a good idea and, if so, who should lead a merged force.

“The [new head] should be an appointed position. It should be a part of the executive branch, as it is now,” says MPD director Larry Godwin.

Godwin, himself an appointed official, says appointed officials cannot sue the city when problems arise.

But Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell sees things differently.

“The head of a new organization needs to be directly accountable to the people, not buried two or three steps down in a bureaucracy,” says Luttrell, an elected official.

Though full consolidation has never been tried in Shelby County, the departments attempted some merging of units several years back (called functional consolidation). The former metro DUI unit and the gang unit pulled officers from both city and county police forces, but those were disbanded under Godwin’s leadership.

“Those fell by the wayside because the city doesn’t think functional consolidation is the way to go,” Luttrell says. “I think it’s still valid.” But Godwin says consolidation is an all-or-nothing issue.

“With functional consolidation, you’re working for two agency heads,” Godwin says. “When you need those resources, they’re already committed, and you don’t always have the control to yank them away.”

Full consolidation of the departments would also mean a merger of tactics. Currently, the MPD focuses much of its attention on crime hotspots. The SCSO puts more emphasis on building relationships with community members and faith-based organizations.

“If you were to combine the two forces, you would have to combine those philosophies as well,” says Mike Heidingsfield of the Shelby County Crime Commission.

“There’s a huge number of issues to be worked out,” Kiser says. “Does everyone keep their same rank and position? How do you consolidate salary schedules? What about benefits packages? All of that took us about two years to iron out.”