Tag: Crime

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Detroit Ranked “Most Dangerous” City in Controversial Report; Memphis 8th

AP – In another blow to the Motor City’s tarnished image, Detroit pushed past St. Louis to become the nation’s most dangerous city, according to a private research group’s controversial analysis, released Sunday, of annual FBI crime statistics.

The study drew harsh criticism even before it came out. The American Society of Criminology launched a pre-emptive strike Friday, issuing a statement attacking it as “an irresponsible misuse” of crime data.

The 14th annual “City Crime Rankings: Crime in Metropolitan America” was published by CQ Press, a unit of Congressional Quarterly Inc. It is based on the FBI’s Sept. 24 crime statistics report.

The report looked at 378 cities with at least 75,000 people based on per-capita rates for homicide, rape, robbery, aggravated assault, burglary and auto theft. Each crime category was considered separately and weighted based on its seriousness, CQ Press said.

Last year’s crime leader, St. Louis, fell to No. 2. Another Michigan city, Flint, ranked third, followed by Oakland Calif.; Camden, N.J.; Birmingham, Ala.; North Charleston, S.C.; Memphis, Tenn.; Richmond, Calif.; and Cleveland.

The study ranked Mission Viejo, Calif., as the safest U.S. city, followed by Clarkstown, N.Y.; Brick Township, N.J.; Amherst, N.Y.; and Sugar Land, Texas.

CQ Press spokesman Ben Krasney said details of the weighting system were proprietary. It was compiled by Kathleen O’Leary Morgan and Scott Morgan, whose Morgan Quitno Press published it until its acquisition by CQ Press.

The study assigns a crime score to each city, with zero representing the national average. Detroit got a score of 407, while St. Louis followed at 406. The score for Mission Viejo, in affluent Orange County, was minus 82.

Detroit was pegged the nation’s murder capital in the 1980s and has lost nearly 1 million people since 1950, according to the Census Bureau. Downtown sports stadiums and corporate headquarters – along with the redevelopment of the riverfront of this city of 919,000 – have slowed but not reversed the decline. Officials have said crime reports don’t help.

Detroit Deputy Police Chief James Tate had no immediate comment on the report. But the mayor of 30th-ranked Rochester, N.Y. – an ex-police chief himself – said the study’s authors should consider the harm that the report causes.

“What I take exception to is the use of these statistics and the damage they inflict on a number of these cities,” said Mayor Robert Duffy, chairman of the Criminal and Social Justice Committee for the U.S. Conference of Mayors.

The rankings “do groundless harm to many communities,” said Michael Tonry, president of the American Society of Criminology.

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News

New “Blue Law” Passes Memphis City Council

When they say Memphis is the Home of the Blues, they’re not talking about blue laws. But maybe they should be. The City Council voted last week to prohibit beer sales for off-premise consumption within 500 feet of churches, schools, and most residential areas. Though stores currently selling beer will be grandfathered in, any new stores wanting to locate within the 500-foot restriction will have to be located on a state or federal highway.

“We’ve got a crime problem, and this is the catalyst,” Councilman Joe Brown said during a recent committee meeting, adding that he was speaking from a moral perspective. “That’s why this is so important.”

But the ordinance wasn’t easy for everyone to swallow …

Read the rest of Mary Cashiola’s In the Bluff column on the possible repercussions from Memphis’ newest blue law.

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News The Fly-By

Blue City

CREDIT: DORIY | dreamstime.com

When they say Memphis is the Home of the Blues, they’re not talking about blue laws. But maybe they should be. The City Council voted last week to prohibit beer sales for off-premise consumption within 500 feet of churches, schools, and most residential areas. Though stores currently selling beer will be grandfathered in, any new stores wanting to locate within the 500-foot restriction will have to be located on a state or federal highway.

“We’ve got a crime problem, and this is the catalyst,” Councilman Joe Brown said during a recent committee meeting, adding that he was speaking from a moral perspective. “That’s why this is so important.”

But the ordinance wasn’t easy for everyone to swallow.

“As I understand it,” said Councilman Dedrick Brittenum at a full council meeting, “the existing stores that sell beer have a problem with people loitering around those establishments and selling beer to minors and that sort of thing. The original ordinance on the floor would do nothing to stop that.”

As initially proposed by Brown, the ordinance banned off-premise beer sales at stores near single-family homes and duplexes, as well as near schools and churches. Under that scenario, only 8,000 parcels of land would qualify for off-premise beer consumption, compared to more than 25,000 currently eligible.

“It tended to exclude a large portion of the city,” said Brittenum.

Citing economic and development reasons, Brittenum offered an alternative that removed residential areas from the ordinance but added a penalty phase.

“We’re trying to go to a more livable, walkable, smart-growth city. If that’s the case, we may need some stores close to residential areas,” Brittenum told fellow council members.

Under smart-growth principles, developments are often built as mixed-use, with residences near, next to, or even above retail stores. A draft of the new Unified Development Code, which lays out zoning and subdivision regulations, has provisions for just such mixed-use areas. In addition, many smaller stores see a large portion of their profit from beer sales.

“If you don’t leave out [residences],” Brittenum said, “no new stores will open in residential areas that will sell bread, sugar, your staples. The economics just won’t work.”

Brittenum also pointed out that the ordinance — as originally proposed — would essentially create a territorial monopoly for existing stores.

“We would be forever grandfathering in those businesses because they will be so valuable they’ll never go out of business. Ever,” he said.

To solve that particular problem, he suggested a penalty phase to the ordinance: If a store gets three violations in two years, it would lose the privilege of having a beer license. The licensee would lose the right to apply for a new beer license anywhere in the city for the following two years.

Other council members liked the penalty provision but could not be convinced to remove residential areas from the ordinance. In fact, when it was pointed out that the ordinance inexplicably left out a distance requirement for apartments, those areas were added, too.

“I do understand that we’re talking about livable communities and walkable communities, but we’re also talking about communities where our children are,” said Barbara Swearengen Ware during a committee meeting.

Brown said he thought the council was “in the business of eliminating crime.”

“There is a lot of criminal activity [at convenience stores]. People who walk to stores for beer have [alcohol and drug] problems,” Brown said. “Let’s stop this thing, and we can live in a good city.”

In a compromise, Brittenum suggested that the ordinance exempt those stores on interstates and state and federal highways, and the measure passed. The ordinance also gives applicants who are rejected by the beer board a chance to appeal directly to the City Council.

Even so, adding residential to the ordinance is an extensive change. Frankly, considering how many areas are now off-limits, I’m surprised that the measure didn’t meet with more resistance.

Just two years ago, after a Wal-Mart opened in Whitehaven and wasn’t allowed to sell beer at that location, the council considered lowering the distance requirement from schools and churches because members felt it was hampering economic growth.

There might be a lot of churches in this city, but there are a lot more houses, duplexes, and apartment buildings. The stores I can think of that sell beer for off-premise consumption — gas stations, drug stores, places like Miss Cordelia’s on Mud Island — are often located close to residential areas.

And for many areas, it’s already last call.

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News

Goodwyn Street Closure Is Rejected

CREDIT: photo: Mary Cashiola

The Land Use Control Board voted overwhelmingly this morning to reject a proposal by the Midland Goodwyn Neighborhood Association to close off Goodwyn Street to vehicular traffic.

About 30 or 40 residents of Midtown neighborhoods surrounding Goodwyn Street were present to oppose the closure. Most cited concerns of diverting traffic to other neighborhood streets, such as Haynes and Greer. They were also concerned about hindering fire department response times.

Midland Goodwyn Neighborhood Association members filed an application in August proposing a brick masonry wall with a wrought-iron gate that would seal the 27-home street away from through-traffic.

Currently, drivers use Goodwyn as an artery to travel from Southern to Central. Association members claim vehicles often speed down Goodwyn, posing a safety risk to kids and pedestrians. Goodwyn does not have sidewalks.

Lawrence Wade has lived in the Glen Eagles on Southern Avenue, a condo complex about 200 feet west of Goodwyn, for 17 years. He drives down Goodwyn to access Central on a daily basis. Wade presented the board with a petition from neighbors opposing the street closure.

“On Haynes, kids regularly play in the street. If Goodwyn is closed off, Haynes would be used as an alternate,” said Wade. “That could result in children being seriously hurt or even killed [by speeding traffic].”

Another neighbor pointed out that the large homes on Goodwyn arebset further back from the street than the more modest homes on Haynes, and therefore pose less of a safety risk for children since they’re not as likely to play in the street on Goodwyn.

The Office of Planning and Development had already recommended rejection of this proposal, citing diverted traffic issues and slower fire response times. They also said closing off the street would create an illegal cul-de-sac because the new dead-end street length would exceed what is currently allowed.

For more background, read Mary Cashiola’s “In the Bluff” column in this week’s Flyer.

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Film Features Film/TV

Unoriginal Gangster

David Simon, the creative force behind HBO’s The Wire, once wrote a memo to his boss that argued the merits of his show’s deep-focus approach to the problems of drug dealing and law enforcement, claiming that “no one who sees HBO’s take on the culture of crime and crime fighting can watch anything like CSI or NYPD Blue or Law & Order again without knowing that every punch was pulled on those shows.”

Since Simon wrote this, The Wire has rendered most television crime shows absurdly two-dimensional. But did he ever imagine that his show would cast long, imposing shadows onto the crime movie landscape?

For anyone familiar with The Wire, watching director Ridley Scott’s plodding, generic American Gangster is like perusing a child’s flip book after reading an epic novel. Seen through cinematographer Harris Savides’ grimy, de-saturated urban lens, the film’s simplistic police-procedural details, sophomoric political insights, and facile capitalist ironies are nothing more than a collection of garage-sale leftovers from some low-rent screenwriters swap meet.

American Gangster is based on the true story of Frank Lucas (Denzel Washington), a Harlem thug who, inspired by the rise of the big-box retailers in the late 1960s, decides to cut out the middle man and import heroin from Thailand with a little help from his cousin (a spooky Roger Guenveur Smith). As Frank’s empire grows, he attracts the attention of Richie Roberts (Russell Crowe), a New Jersey police investigator whose devotion to duty destroys his marriage and draws the concentrated ire of NYPD detective Trupo (Josh Brolin) and his leather gang of Prince of the City goons. These characters sidle around and among each other in a New York/New Jersey crowded with new and leftover consumer goods, garbage, and human casualties from the drug trade.

Aside from implicit storyline comparisons to The Wire, American Gangster has an explicit connection to the show: Former Wire star Idris Elba appears briefly as a rival to Lucas and his expanding empire. Together, Elba and Washington exude gunfighter bravado in a pair of tense street scenes. Yet such pimpalicious behavior is no longer fresh. And is it finally okay to say that Denzel Washington is a tiresome anti-hero? He’s been working his calm charm and devil’s-advocate verve for quite a while now, but he’s one “hooah!” and one more “intense,” nobody’s-home glower away from permanent membership in the Pacino-De Niro Ridiculous Actor Hall of Fame — where he can join Armand Assante, whose buffoonish performance in American Gangster as a skeet-shooting mafia don is what should (but, sadly, won’t) be the movie goombah’s death rattle.

Lucas’ cutthroat business policies are never questioned. His nascent drug empire is justified as vengeance capitalism; he came from hard times, so he’s out to get his, and who’s to blame if most of the damage his business does is equivalent to black-on-black crime? Is the unquestioned law of the expanding corporation so ingrained in our consciousness that even illegal enterprises are glorified if they are effective? Is there no courage left in movies for any critical look at the disastrous effects of free-market madness? Short answer: not during Oscar season, my man.

American Gangster

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News

Controversial Goodwyn Street Closing Proposal Nears Hearing

A controversial proposal to close Goodwyn Street at Southern Avenue (near the Memphis Country Club) to through traffic gets a hearing at City Council next Tuesday, November 8th.

Residents of the area are sharply divided over the issue, with proponents claiming the move will stop excessive speeding on Goodwyn and reduce crime.

Opponents of the closing say the measure is all about race and class and that the closure is to keep residents of the poorer neighborhood south of Southern from being able to enter the exclusive Chickasaw Gardens area.

Last May, a highly publicized rape occurred on Goodwyn. Since then, some residents have been pushing for more crime control, including closing Goodwyn at Southern.

But Gwen Lausterer, who lives in condos at Southern and Goodwyn, questions how the proposal will affect traffic on Haynes, Greer, and other side streets that run between Central and Southern, especially those that don’t have a traffic light (as Goodwyn does) to control traffic.

Activists on both sides of the issue are gearing up to attend a hearing set for next Tuesday, November 8th at 10 a.m.

For more information about the street closing and the hearing, contact city planner, Carlos McCloud, at 576-6619 or carlos.mccloud@memphistn.gov.

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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.”

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News

Fight Over Chickasaw Gardens Street-Closing to Go to Hearing

Last May, a highly publicized rape occurred on Goodwyn Street in Chickasaw Gardens. Since then, area residents have been pushing for more crime control, including closing the entrance of Goodwyn at Southern Avenue.

However, others who live in areas adjacent to Chickasaw Gardens are fighting the street closing. Gwen Lausterer, who lives in condos at Southern and Goodwyn, questions how the proposal will affect traffic on Haynes, Greer, and other side streets that run between Central and Southern, especially those that don’t have a traffic light (as Goodwyn does) to control traffic. The intersection is near the entrance to Memphis Country Club.

Activists are urging residents to attend a hearing about the street closing. It’s currently set for November 8th at 10 a.m. Says Lausterer: “I do firmly believe that if we start blocking streets we are not helping the situation on crime. Getting out and meeting our neighbors can help more than blocking ourselves off. Community spirit and knowledge is what will bind us together as a city.”

She doubts claims by Goodwyn residents that drivers speed up to 75 mph on their street. “I drive Goodwyn [several] times a day and have never seen that,” she says. “We have suggested they use speed bumps like most streets in this area.”

For more information about the street closing and the hearing, contact Lausterer at lausterer3@comcast.net or the city planner, Carlos McCloud, at 576-6619 or carlos.mccloud@memphistn.gov.

–Marilyn Sadler

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News The Fly-By

Top Priority

It didn’t take immigration officials long to nab fugitive immigrants after setting up a new local office.

On September 25th, the second day of operations for the Memphis-based U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) Fugitive Operations Team, Romanian citizen Gheorghe Turcas was arrested for failing to comply with a deportation order stemming from a 1996 sex offender conviction.

The local ICE team, which serves Tennessee, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, was created last month to assist the region’s New Orleans-based office in tracking down illegal immigrants who have committed crimes or have failed to comply with deportation orders.

Of the 62,000 illegal aliens apprehended by the effort since the teams began in 2003, more than 17,000 had convictions for serious crimes, such as homicide, robbery, sexual exploitation of children, and other aggravated felonies.

“We prioritize our fugitives and try to get criminal aliens first,” says Philip Miller, assistant field office director. “There’s a number of reasons a person can be deported from the United States. One is based on their criminal history. Those people are our number-one priority.”

Besides setting up the local federal office, ICE has also partnered with the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office to start a Criminal Alien Program (CAP), which focuses on singling out inmates who may be in the country illegally.

CAP requires jail intake officers ask each inmate three questions as they’re being booked: 1) Where were you born? 2) Of what country are you a citizen? and 3) Do you claim citizenship with another country?

“If they say they’re foreign-born, we call ICE and alert them that we have a potential illegal,” says Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell. “They come down and see if the person is deportable. If so, we hold them until they’re moved out.”

Luttrell says criminal aliens aren’t a huge problem in Shelby County. Only 4 percent of the current jail population is foreign-born, and about half of those people are illegal immigrants. By comparison, 10 percent of the jail population in Nashville’s Davidson County are foreign-born.

Pablo Davis, executive director of Latino Memphis, hopes the regional effort will focus only on fugitives who commit serious crimes.

“We are very concerned that ICE’s work to apprehend immigrant fugitives truly be targeted, rather than a net that ends up catching people who are living orderly lives, working, paying taxes, and so forth, but who happen to be undocumented and driving to work … without a driver’s license,” Davis says. “[We don’t want those people] to suddenly find themselves on a fast train to deportation.”

Davis says surveys of Latinos living in Nashville, where a similar criminal alien program already has been implemented, indicate less confidence in local police. Though an immigrant may not be committing a crime, stricter measures targeting undocumented workers cause some to fear calling the police even when they need help.

“We hear frequently from immigrants in Memphis who are less willing to report crimes or otherwise seek police assistance due to their perceptions of the overall climate,” Davis says.

The Fugitive Operations Team focuses solely on immigrants who are fugitives from the law, and Luttrell says the CAP program will only target illegal immigrants who commit crimes.

“We’re not going to start driving around looking for illegals,” Luttrell says. “But if they commit crimes, we’re set up to handle that.”

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Kicking Butts

Why are citizens who are old enough to smoke losing their jobs in bars and restaurants? Because of the recent ban on public smoking, bars and restaurants that do allow smoking must now deny access to anyone under 21. That means bar backs, waiters, and hosts who are at least 18 (the legal smoking age in Tennessee) can fire up at home, in the car, on the sidewalk, or anywhere else smoking is permitted. They just aren’t allowed to have their jobs anymore.

Earlier this week, WKRN news of Chattanooga quoted a 20-year-old former bar employee named Rena Doss who complained, “I don’t smoke, and nobody was blowing smoke in my face. … This was a good-paying job for me, and I have bills to pay.” Experts have since suggested that Rena and others like her could relocate to Memphis, where the recently reelected Mayor Willie Herenton has stated that he can do nothing to stop crime, in order to pursue careers in professional thuggery.

The Dismal Life

In a recent column, The Commercial Appeal‘s managing editor Otis Sanford informed CA readers that there is (“sadly”) a “dismal side of Memphis.”

“It’s thrust on us regularly,” Sanford claims, “thanks to a large criminal element and some in the media who believe discord should lead the news. It also comes to us courtesy of a few self-serving politicians, their enablers, and charlatans posing as Internet bloggers.” Although it’s never surprising to hear a representative of mainstream media lumping bloggers into the same category of blight as criminals and cancer, it’s particularly troubling in this case. After all, the CA has repeatedly front-paged negative political stories broken by charlatan bloggers days earlier. Perhaps Sanford, following another dismal trend, no longer subscribes to his own paper.