Tag: Crime

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News The Fly-By

Watching Crime

CREDIT: Dreamstime Agency | dreamstime.com; Andrew Kazmierski | dreamstime.com

Right before Labor Day, almost 400 residents of Colonial Acres received a disturbing e-mail. One of their neighbors, grandfather Rick Green, had been run over — in broad daylight — near his house.

Over the next few days, the neighbors received updates on the situation the same way:

that Green was at the Med; that it looked like he had been hit intentionally; that he had suspected drug dealing at a nearby home and had started taking pictures of visiting cars; that he had been released from the Med; and, sadly, that he passed away September 3rd at home.

The Colonial Acres Neighborhood Association (CANA) has been using e-mail updates for four years, but the bulletins traditionally detailed property thefts and suspicious activities, not violent crimes.

“There’s no question that there was a common sense of anger and outrage and sympathy. It was a violation of the whole neighborhood,” said Ron, CANA Neighborhood Watch and Safety co-chair. (Citing safety concerns, CANA leaders asked that their last names not be used.)

The e-mail list, which began with about 50 subscribers, helped to disseminate the information as quickly and as accurately as possible.

“I believe in sharing information,” said group founder David, a middle-age man with curly, light-colored hair. “I saw an unmet need.”

David now acts as the group’s “switchboard operator,” taking tips about suspicious activity and sending them — along with information on upcoming events and possible developments — to the entire group. The end result is a virtual neighborhood watch that supplements traditional efforts.

“In any neighborhood watch,” David said, “ideally you have block captains, and it’s really localized. If you don’t have that, this is the next best thing.”

Networking by e-mail also seems a natural extension. CANA isn’t the only local neighborhood group online, but one of the reasons they agreed to be interviewed was to share the idea with groups that aren’t. If people can fall in love via the Internet or have MySpace friends, why not connect with your neighbors the same way?

“People don’t go out and meet their neighbors like they should. This is a way of doing it virtually,” Ron said. “I think it adds a sense of connectivity.”

Though a live neighborhood watch includes seeing someone going into your neighbor’s backyard and calling police, the e-mail group serves more to identify crime trends within the neighborhood. In one case, residents started seeing several people in a pick-up truck driving through the neighborhood. They shared their suspicions via e-mail, and then other people noticed the truck, too.

“As a result, they were stopped by police,” David said. “They got them for an expired license, and they were told they were being watched by the police as a result.”

CANA leaders also use local law enforcement databases to “watch” known criminals who have a history of targeting Colonial Acres.

“The public is the first line of defense. I think David’s list makes use of that aspect of awareness,” Ron said. “We have three tools other than the police: awareness, prevention, and self-defense. Sans police, you have to take care of yourself and your neighbors.”

Unfortunately, that seems to be what Rick Green was trying to do.

After Green’s death, driver Untonio Ratliff was charged with vehicular homicide and leaving the scene of an accident involving death, both felonies.

When the coroner’s report came back last week, however, it determined that Green’s official cause of death was cardiac arrest. Ratliff’s charges were amended to aggravated assault and leaving the scene of an accident involving injury.

“It’s had me pretty upset that they lowered the charges,” Wanda told attendees of a CANA neighborhood meeting last week, citing the statements of two witnesses. “It was obvious that it was intentional. The car went down the street, did a U-turn, and then came back at him.”

The three acknowledge that in the wake of Green’s death, they have some safety concerns.

“There were five young men out there watching this happen,” said Wanda, a slim woman with short brown hair. “I wouldn’t want to see a dog run over, much less a human. There are five young men out there who obviously thought nothing of injuring someone like that. That’s a scary thought.”

But, even in a city recently named by the FBI as the worst metro area for violent crime, the group says the potential of their virtual neighborhood watch far outweighs the risk.

“We’re angry, sad,” Ron said. “It’s natural to feel some sense of fear. But that’s not going to keep us from continuing to do what we need to do to keep our neighborhood safe and watch out for each other.”

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News The Fly-By

Bottoming Out

CREDIT: Photoshow | dreamstime.com

When the local Crime Commission looked at crime data from January to June 2004, they found a surprising fact: Christie’s — an adult nightclub that boasts hot girls and one-cent drafts — accounted for only 0.1 percent of all crime in its ward.

During that same period, however, nearby Hickory Ridge Mall accounted for 7.5 percent of the crime in the area. In fact, even Ridgeway Middle School reported more crime than Christie’s.

But for Eric Damian Kelly, the strip-club-ordinance specialist, even those numbers suggest the city needs to change its relationship with sexually oriented businesses.

Both the City Council and the County Commission are considering new restrictions on sexually oriented businesses, including a ban on alcohol sales and stricter licensing requirements.

“The Memphis Shelby Crime Commission did a study with the records to show adverse secondary effects on the community,” Kelly told a recent City Council committee. “They found high schools and convenience stores were more of a detriment to the community than strip clubs.”

Of course, if that were true, Memphis would be in more trouble than a cheating husband. Local strip clubs have a reputation for being raunchy, as well as havens for illegal activity. The so-called Mt. Moriah Performing Arts Center, Platinum Plus, where Kelly witnessed a live sex show, was shut down last December because of drugs and prostitution. The Black Tail Shake Joint, known for its “back door,” was closed in February under a public nuisance complaint.

But the numbers — or lack of them — are somewhat telling. The Crime Commission noted that most strip clubs have a “do not call” policy when it comes to law enforcement; generally, schools and convenience stores do not.

Currently, the city handles violations at sexually oriented businesses in three ways: beer board fines for the establishment, fines for individual dancers, and nuisance complaints.

But those options provide about as much coverage as a G-string.

The business fines are too small to matter. Brief suspensions of beer licenses have little impact, and within recent history, the beer board hasn’t revoked anyone’s license.

A fine might make a dancer think twice about hopping back on stage — if her establishment doesn’t pay it for her — but there are always other girls to take her place. And the nuisance complaints take months, if not years, to develop a solid case.

“You need to shift enforcement,” Kelly said. “Cite the establishment instead of the performers. It’s worth going after the back rooms.”

In a report to the council, Kelly recommended banning back rooms that are not visible to the public and utilizing penalty provisions with fines up to $2,500 and possible jail time.

Though the report suggests citing owners and managers, dancers could face stricter penalties, too. The report said dancers should be prosecuted for prostitution since the penalties for that are more serious than penalties for “being bottomless.”

And let’s be honest. Being bottomless is one thing. Being bottomless and on top of someone giving you dollar bills is another.

More importantly, Kelly recommended keeping a record of every citation or violation for alcohol, drugs, nudity, and sexual activity and tracking it by establishment, owner, and entertainer.

In the past, clubs have changed names — even their holding companies have changed names — while the owners and the establishment remain virtually the same. There are several clubs in town, but only a few owners.

For Kelly, a tough licensing ordinance would go a long way in eliminating repeat offenders.

“You [should be] able to pull [an owner’s] license and he wouldn’t be able to get another one,” Kelly said.

County commissioner Mike Ritz, sponsor of the county proposal, agreed. “Everybody who works in the clubs and all the owners would have to get a license. It doesn’t take long to say you’re going to be out of here.”

Not that everything is a done deal. The county is expected to hold a public hearing later this month, and new council member Henry Hooper II is working with Ritz on a joint city/county proposal. City Council members were interested in the implications of a ban on alcohol sales and the legal challenges they would encounter.

(Apparently, “birthday” aren’t the only suits club owners are familiar with.)

“They’re going to sue you as a matter of principle if you take a hard line,” Kelly told council members, “because you’re threatening their income.”

I know there are people out there who think regulating sexually oriented businesses is a waste of time. Maybe it is. The city has let shake joints get away with so much for so long, it might be better off creating a strip-club district and taking the local industry from infamous to just plain famous. Doing that, however, would still require more regulation.

On its own, a tougher licensing ordinance — along with a better relationship between club owners and operators and police officers — could forgo the need for undercover operations, such as the 24-month investigation that succeeded in closing Platinum Plus.

Veteran councilmember Jack Sammons said he’d rather see police officers fighting crime than staking out the shake joints.

“I want to see our police resources on the ground dealing with the crime issues we have,” Sammons said. “When we have officers measuring if someone is 12 inches away from Pamela Anderson, then I think we have a problem.”

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News

Wrestler Jerry Lawler Accused of Assault in Mississippi

Back in his glory days , Jerry “The King” Lawler came up with a lot of moves that were, shall we say, less than legal. He used to hide brass knuckles in his tights and surprise his opponents, causing the audience to boo or cheer, given the circumstances. Sometimes, he’d even throw fire. Such is wrestling.

Now, he’s in in trouble for throwing punches. An affidavit was filed late last week claiming that Lawler punched wrestling manager Sal “The Big Cheese” Corrente three times on June 15th.

Keep in mind though that this alleged assault happened at a wrestling event in Tunica. According to the complainant, Lawler (who was not scheduled to make an appearance) punched Corrente when he was on his way to the locker room. There was another fracas later in the parking lot afterwards.

According to Rasslin’ Riot News (and if you can’t believe them, then something’s just wrong in this world), Lawler was under the impression that Corrente had hit a fan. During the alleged assault, he yelled, “You stupid mother f***er, don’t you ever hit a fan!”

Now the legal s**t may be hitting the fan, but Lawler isn’t concerned about the charges, saying that being punched is a part of the business.

Lawler cannot be served until he makes another appearance in Mississippi. The trial is scheduled for August 1, but only if Lawler gets served on time.

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News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

Wendi’s City

Commercial Appeal columnist Wendi Thomas is to be commended for her noble attempt to rescue the city of Memphis from all the terrible plagues that have descended upon it. Thomas, turning her pen against hip-hop, the true source of all harm, has called for a boycott of North Memphis’ Three 6 Mafia. After all, it was DJ Paul who taught residents of the Hurt Village housing projects how to smoke crack back in 1983. It was his partner, Juicy J, who convinced all local banks to pull their branches from Memphis’ poor black neighborhoods while Three 6 alum Gangsta Boo worked a deal to bring in more predatory lenders. It should be pointed out that Three 6 had almost nothing to do with spreading the fetid garbage that litters the streets of South Memphis. That work was accomplished by Orange Mound’s DJ Squeaky with a little assistance from Al Kapone and II Black. According to an anonymous source, the master plan for filthifying Memphis was originally developed by Project Pat in the early ’90s, based on his firm conviction that if our once paradisiacal city becomes a truly shitty place to grow up in, then the next generation of rappers will bust positive-themed rhymes about Jesus, butterflies, and how to treat a lady.

Arkansas Follies

The following letter was printed in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette on April 16th: “You may have noticed that March of this year was … the hottest March since the beginning of the last century. … As you know, Daylight Saving Time started almost a month early this year. You would think that members of Congress would have considered the warming effect that an extra hour of daylight would have on our climate.”

The letter, a bit of satire written by prankster attorney Connie M. Meskiman, accused liberals in Congress of trying to fool people into believing in global warming. It ran in the ADG‘s Letters to the Editor section under the presumably misspelled headline “Daylight Exacerbates Warning.”

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Cover Feature News

Blue Crush

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Thirty-four turned out to be Mario McNeil’s unlucky number. The 34-year-old African-American man and a friend headed to a favorite hangout, Divine Wings and Bar, the afternoon of March 16th. As the men entered the restaurant, an assailant opened fire on them. According to eyewitness accounts, the gunman jumped into the passenger seat of a Chevy Lumina and sped off. McNeil’s friend survived the attack. Paramedics rushed McNeil to the emergency room at the Med, but McNeil died as the result of gunshot wounds. He was the city’s 34th homicide victim of 2007.

Justin Fox Burks

Operation Blue Crush targets crime hot spots around the city and uses police resources to reduce illegal activity.

Police describe the suspect in the shooting as an “unknown black male.”

The vast majority of murders in Memphis are of the so-called black-on-black variety. The annual number of these crimes has grown from 83 in 2004, to 99 in 2005, to 106 in 2006. These totals account for 65 to 70 percent of all homicides in the city each year.

The Memphis Police Department (MPD) made a staggering 102,000 arrests last year. Yet the homicide statistics as a whole, and the black-on-black murders in particular, have swelled. MPD has instituted a new, technologically sophisticated strategic tool. Now Memphians will see if a new system of crime-fighting can suppress an old problem.

The city has battled its bloody image for over a century. An editorial in the October 10, 1870, edition of the New York Sunday Mercury included the line “to those desirous of shuffling off this mortal coil, to those weary of life, but who have not the courage to shoot or hang themselves, we recommend a trip to Memphis.”

In the early 1920s, a statistician for the Prudential Life Insurance Company named Frank Hoffman dubbed Memphis “murder-town.” Mayors Rowlett Paine andS. Watkins Overton financed research and publications debunking both the claim and Hoffman’s annual rankings of America’s bloodiest cities. While the mayors found plenty of caveats to attach to Hoffman’s numbers, neither could dispute the high total of homicide victims in the city.

Unable to solve the problem of violence, the city’s public-relations efforts turned to consolation. A headline in The Commercial Appeal in September 1928 spoke directly to the fears of a violent, racially split city: “Few Negroes Kill Whites.”

Justin Fox Burks

Richard Janikowski

That trend has held firmly. The stubbornness of residential segregation and the nature of crime in general, and of homicide specifically, have kept interracial murder rates relatively low in Memphis. MPD statistics list 15 homicides involving white victims and black suspects in the three years from 2004 to 2006.

Public attitudes on the issue of black violence in Memphis can be difficult to gather. Reporters asking questions tend to put folks on their best behavior. In the relative privacy of online communication, however, observers of black violence in Memphis speak openly.

An article on WREG.com entitled “Black on Black Crime Growing in Memphis,” which included homicide statistics for the first half of 2006, was posted on the American Renaissance Web site last year. American Renaissance is a self-described “publication of racial-realist thought.” Readers of the site are able to leave comments about articles posted. The responses to the black-violence article revealed a wide range of reactions to the problem.

One post reflects a misperception: “[B]lack on white crime is actually more common … nobody ever even mentions black-on-white crime.”

Another says, “It’s because of the stats like this that the locals near Memphis call the place ‘Memphrica.'”

Many commenters left messages similar to this one: “Well, white folks certainly DO have a stake in this, but how is it their responsibility? How is the weight on them? What are they supposed to do, walk around the city waving their fingers sayin’, ‘Now, now — don’t you go killin’ nobody.'”

Another sums up the frustration with standard — albeit disempowering — explanations: “It’s been said before but deserves to be said again. You can’t put all the blame on poverty, that’s way too simple.”

Richard Janikowski chairs the criminology and criminal justice department at the University of Memphis. As the architect of the much-ballyhooed operation Blue Crush, Janikowski hopes to bring Memphis policing strategy from behind the curve to the cutting edge.

Blue Crush is the local version of data-driven policing programs like CompStat in New York City and I-Clear in Chicago. MPD implemented Blue Crush operations beginning with a pilot program in August 2005, and the program went citywide last October. “The entire guiding principle behind Blue Crush is to get the right resources into the right place at the right day and right time,” Janikowski explains.

“There are criminologists around the country who say that the only way to cure crime is to cure all social problems,” Janikowski says. “This is the old ‘root causes’ thing. The lesson of the last two decades is that we can affect crime without affecting the root causes. Police make a difference. We can use innovative techniques to suppress crime.”

Blue Crush takes a geographic approach to fighting crime. It locates concentrations of offenses in a given area and charts the day, time, and nature of offense. “We track arrests … and look at Part I crimes [murder, rape, aggravated assault, robbery, burglary, motor vehicle theft, and arson], the most serious offenses, reported to the FBI,” explains Janikowski, though Blue Crush does not target homicide.

The program also does not track the race of an offender. “[Ethnicity] doesn’t directly figure in the data,” Janikowski says. “The reality is that [with] arrests in Memphis, just like nationwide, the overwhelming number identified in criminal activity are young African-American men.

“Geography trumps ethnicity,” he says.

Justin Fox Burks

Larry Godwin

The Blue Crush program generates weekly crime reports that identify hot spots — zones of heavy criminal activity within a precinct — to MPD, which then focuses resources on where police are most needed. Police inspectors — the rank of most precinct commanders — can decide the day, time, and tactics to launch a Blue Crush operation on a hot spot. Patrolmen credit Blue Crush with getting the proper number of officers on the street during operations.

Blue Crush also supplies MPD with the finances necessary to keep extra manpower in the hot spots. Officers work Blue Crush operations on their days off and earn overtime without costing the city. “Because we are the university, we have access to grants. Part of our job is to push the edges,” Janikowski explains.

The hot-spot approach feeds off of criminal psychology, which, as Janikowski explains, is not unlike regular human behavior.

“We tend to go to work the same way every day, go to the places we know and are comfortable in,” Janikowski says. “Offenders are the same way. They’ll offend in the neighborhood they’re used to.”

Janikowski has taken the geographic approach to reducing crime in Memphis due in part to some of the city’s unique historical and demographic features.

Urban renewal and the abandonment and reclamation of downtown in the past half-century have shaken up the city’s residential and criminal patterns. “As public housing closed down, we dispersed people,” Janikowski explains. “Offenders became more mobile than they used to be, and crime has expanded into areas that weren’t necessarily targeted before.”

While the idea that Memphis crime is expanding its horizons may not reassure residents, Janikowski insists that the situation aids crime-fighters. “The advantage to having offenders operating where they aren’t comfortable is that that’s when they make mistakes and get caught,” he says. “A group started doing robberies in Collierville. They robbed a woman in her driveway. Collierville PD got them because those fools got themselves lost in the subdivision.”

Susan Lowe

On the scene: an MPD officer at work fighting crime.

Every Thursday morning, high-ranking officers from each of the city’s police precincts gather at Airways Station to discuss the results of the previous week’s Blue Crush operations and announce plans for the next.

Director of Police Services Larry Godwin and 20 lieutenants, majors, and inspectors from across the city sit at a horseshoe-shaped table that faces a screen and podium. The scene recalls DC Comics’ Justice League of America, albeit with more guns and less colorful costumes. Another 50 police personnel sit at rows of tables to observe. One officer likens it to a scene from the TV series The District.

Janikowski welcomes a couple of guests to the meeting, pointing out that they can help themselves to a cup of coffee “and — of course — there are donuts.”

Godwin kicks off the meeting with a general address. He’s nothing if not concerned with the public perception of his officers. After receiving complaints about cops talking on cell phones while on duty, he urges greater discretion. “I could pull up beside an officer on the phone [in his car] and put a bullet in the back of his head, and he’d never know it,” he told those gathered at the meeting.

After Godwin’s address, those in the horseshoe take turns giving PowerPoint presentations from the podium detailing statistical breakdowns of particular crimes in their respective precincts. They flash graphs and tables on the screen. They compare the given week to the three leading up to it, as well as the same week in the previous year. If certain tactics fail to suppress a problem in a hot spot, they try something else. “Precinct commanders have to decide where police will operate in their precincts based on the [Blue Crush] data packages they receive. They know their area. They’ve got to decide how to best use their resources,” Janikowski says.

Crime does go down in the hot spots. The question remains whether or not Blue Crush reduces crime across the board.

Through these snapshots of weekly Part I crimes in the city, one learns that residential burglaries occur in nearly epidemic proportions. If “epidemic” seems too strong a word, ask yourself if 82 new cases of avian flu in a month in Hickory Hill would alarm you. Residential burglaries outnumber every other crime in virtually every precinct in the city.

Blue Crush in action deploys combinations of visible patrolmen to suppress criminal activity and plainclothes officers to gather intelligence on the street. Though officers are generally pleased with the extra manpower that Blue Crush operations mobilize, some wonder if full-time undercover officers could enhance results.

A white officer joked that he and his partner going plainclothes had little to no effect in their predominantly black precinct. He mocked the idea of two whites driving around asking groups of young blacks, “Got any dope?”

Street cops have other concerns. Some say that attrition in their numbers from retirement and relocation outpaces the number of new recruits. One officer said that he counted only 40 graduates from the MPD training academy since Mayor Willie Herenton’s call for an expanded force last fall. (The idea of a new publicly funded football stadium is unpopular among those who have not received a pay raise in two years.)

Janikowski explains that increased efficiency and proper usage of resources could address some of the force’s manpower issues. “Blue Crush is reengineering the entire police department and restructuring things,” he says.

“The TAC unit [the Memphis equivalent of a SWAT team] does barricade and hostage situations and dignitary protection. The rest of the time, they’re working out and shooting, and they look really tough while they’re waiting to get called out. They’re the best trained, in the best shape. Give them warrants each day to go and chase some folks. This has been happening over the last six months,” Janikowski explains.

While the issue behind much of the city’s crime is easily identifiable, it remains difficult to solve. “If I was going to pinpoint a particular problem, it would be gangs, because it relates guns, drugs, robberies, and burglaries,” Godwin says.

Janikowski adds that predominantly African-American gangs drive crime statistics disproportionately. “The gangs are making their money in the drug market, in guns, and in stolen goods,” he says.

Godwin notes some incremental progress: “About eight months ago, we locked up 55 known gang members. That doesn’t sound like a lot when you’ve got 5,000 gang members [in the city]. But when you’re hitting the upper echelon in those gangs, it puts them in turmoil.”

Janikowski, however, says that Memphis gangs are highly fluid institutions with high turnover rates and no hierarchy. “They’re not these solid, corporate structures like the Mafia. Even gang allegiance changes. Some guys have tattoos from the Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords,” he says, adding that they show resilience to arrests, deaths, and defections from within the organizations. “They’re like any other employer. When they lose an employee, they hire another one,” he says.

Gangs’ modi operandi feed the police strategy for fighting organized crime. “We embed undercover officers in the gangs,” Godwin says. “I’m a firm believer in the undercover program in the gangs. I don’t think going around in a car that has ‘gang unit’ written on it is going to get you into the gangs and get you those good arrests. You’ve got to be one of them. You have to buy the guns, buy the drugs, and watch them deal in prostitution. Then build cases that way and make them stick.”

“Good arrests” for the police are federal crimes, since state-level convictions seldom result in more than half of a sentence served.

“We get a lot of information from being embedded [in gangs]. We’re living with them. It’s like any other rumor mill. You hear things within the gangs. We start to try to verify those things and substantiate whether or not it’s a possibility that a hit is coming down here,” he says, adding: “I’m all for reaching out to gangs and saying, ‘One of your members was shot. Let the police handle this instead of retaliating.’ I wish we could reach out more and make that arrest before the other gang can retaliate.”

Which brings us back to unlucky 34. The proverbial word on the street says that an organized crime outfit wanted Mario McNeil dead. McNeil was, by various accounts, a devoted father, a small-business owner, and a singer in his church’s choir. Those mourning McNeil’s murder left 15 pages of remembrances on his online obituary guestbook.

Whether McNeil’s murder was the result of gang activity or a random act of violence against an innocent, his story is symptomatic of an old problem that could prove immune to new cures.

“There’s no magic bullet. I think that is something that the media tries to feed [people]. ‘If we had this, it would solve it,'” Janikowski says.

No one disputes the prevalence of black-on-black violence in Memphis. The numbers don’t lie. MPD strategy, however, is, technically speaking, color-blind.

“We don’t address [black violence] in any way different from any other crime. We look at areas. Some of those may be predominantly African-American [parts of the city], but we address them all the same. A crime is a crime to us,” Janikowski says.

The future of crime-fighting might also be impacted by this year’s Memphis mayoral election. Though Herenton stands firmly beside Godwin, mayoral candidate Carol Chumney promises to devote fresh energy to the issue of crime. Though Janikowksi favors the long view of crime statistics and advocates patience with the progress of any crime remedy, Chumney says that Blue Crush should be scrapped if it isn’t working.

“Nothing’s immune to politics,” Janikowski says. “As it becomes ingrained in the police department, as the public sees effects over time, it’s going to be the way we do business in the future. It may not be called Blue Crush, but this idea of data-driven policing is here to stay.”

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News The Fly-By

Police Posers

When the Memphis Police Department (MPD) announced they were looking for more officers a few months ago, they hoped people would fill out an application.

But a couple of would-be officers have taken matters — and uniforms — into their own hands, posing as police and committing crimes. Early this month, two police impersonators were arrested in Memphis, while two others went free. MPD officials do not believe there’s any connection between the cases.

Rene Montgomery, 44, was arrested in Midtown on February 3rd after MPD officers spotted an unmarked Crown Victoria with Tennessee government tags entering the IHOP parking lot on Union.

As he stepped out of the car, the officers noticed Montgomery was wearing a blue police-style uniform. He wore a pistol and a badge, but his uniform lacked an MPD-logo patch.

“We had a couple of incidents reported late last year and early this year in regards to individuals posing as police and attempting to stop females,” said MPD spokesperson Vince Higgins. “We had one incident where a person was reportedly raped.”

The officers ran the car’s tags and determined the plate was stolen from a St. Jude vehicle. When they approached Montgomery, he flashed an ID from the Jericho, Arkansas, police department.

“We were able to debunk that,” said Higgins. “We even had Jericho officials come to the scene.”

Montgomery was arrested and charged with impersonation and driving with a suspended license, but Higgins said he’s under investigation for rape.

Less than a week later, MPD officers arrested 23-year-old Bartlett resident Ronnell Lawson in connection with a robbery in which he posed as a cop.

Lawson handcuffed a Latino victim, demanded his cash and car title, and threatened to have him deported.

“The victim was suspicious. We’ve been trying to educate the Latino community to report these incidents,” said Higgins. “Our police officers are not going to shake you down for money, and they’re not going to threaten to send you back to Mexico.”

Lawson is under investigation for involvement in similar robberies.

On February 15th, two men in plain clothes knocked on the door of a Whitehaven home and claimed to be officers sent there to search the house for drugs.

By the time the homeowner had been summoned, the men were in a 2000 Chevy Impala. The homeowner then noticed that the car did not have any police radios or equipment and called the police. The suspects drove off and were not apprehended. In all, nine police-impersonation cases have been reported in the past three months.

“We’ve had people use this M.O. in rape cases. We’ve had it used in robbery cases,” said Higgins. “Some people even use it to get free food.”

According to Higgins, police uniforms can be purchased at some local shops without proper police identification. Badges and equipment purchases, he said, usually require an ID.

“If you’re being pulled over and you don’t believe the car that’s pulling you over is being driven by a police officer, drive to the nearest precinct,” said Higgins. “Or utilize your cell phone and contact the police. Then, we’ll send real police.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

When Is It a Crime To Lie?

I once had a colleague who thought it was clever and funny to ask people, “Do your parents know you’re gay?”

The point, if you can call it that, was that you couldn’t answer this tricky question without falling for the “joke” and incriminating yourself, ha ha.

This is not a column about gays or jokesters. It is about liars and trick questions and, specifically, about people who are criminally charged with lying. There seems to be a lot of that going around lately. On the national scene, Scooter Libby, the former chief of staff for Vice President Dick Cheney, is on trial for lying, among other things, and some famous journalists have taken the stand to refute him. A few years ago, you may remember, Martha Stewart got sent to prison for lying about her stock trades.

On the local scene, former state senator Roscoe Dixon was convicted last year of bribery, but he compounded his problems — and lengthened his sentence by several months — by lying to FBI agents in an 11th-hour interview two weeks before he was indicted. The agents knew he was lying because, unknown to Dixon, they had him on tape. Gotcha.

Memphis police officer Orlando Hebron was indicted last month for lying to FBI agents about a drug deal and theft at a Budget Mini-Storage. The agents had Hebron and an undercover informant on tape. But Hebron didn’t know it. A few days before the trap was about to close, he compounded his problems by lying about something the FBI knew perfectly well was true. So prosecutors tacked on another count of making false statements to U.S. investigators in their indictment. Gotcha.

Former Memphis Board of Education member Michael Hooks Jr. is also charged in a federal indictment with lying. In documents filed this week, attorneys for Hooks and the government argue about whether the lying count in the indictment should be dropped. The offense that Hooks is charged with — participating in a scheme with Tim Willis and Darrell Catron to fraudulently get payments from Shelby County Juvenile Court — happened nearly six years ago. The feds found out about it after Willis and Catron began cooperating with them in 2003. That led to Operation Tennessee Waltz. Of course, Hooks didn’t know they were cooperating until it was too late. Gotcha.

Former U.S. attorney Hickman Ewing Jr., who is now retired, says there’s a lot of law about lying. In a nutshell, courts have decided there is something called an “exculpatory no” that is not perjury. In other words, defendants can assert their innocence in broad terms but they cannot, say, lie to a grand jury about specific events.

From reading the transcript of the tape, it seems like FBI agents were giving Roscoe Dixon a chance to confess. He didn’t take it, he went to trial, and he got convicted. He got hammered by both the jury and the sentencing judge for lying. On the one hand, Dixon was guilty. On the other hand, if you’re a defendant in a criminal case and you’ve pleaded innocent, aren’t you in the in-for-a-penny-in-for-a-pound position? And could the government not indict people in wholesale lots for lying when they have problems with the more serious issue in the underlying criminal offense?

The Michael Hooks Jr. case will be interesting if it goes to trial. He is represented by Glen Reid, a former federal prosecutor in Memphis 30 years ago. In his motion, Reid argues that the alleged Hooks “lie” was immaterial to the underlying offense. According to the indictment, Hooks got an unspecified amount, possibly as little at $1,500, for his participation. It seems his more serious crime was refusing to cooperate with the government, as Willis and Catron did. If the case goes to trial, Reid will be opposed by his former colleague Tim DiScenza, who is 2-0 in Tennessee Waltz trials so far.

And the answer to the question is “no.”

John Branston is a Flyer senior editor.

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Brooks Road Back

When Memphians think of the “professionals” working on Brooks Road, executives at multi-national corporations are not the first people who come to mind. Working girls are.

“You think prostitution,” says Maggie Conway, with the Memphis Shelby County Office of Economic Development. Conway was one of 60 public- and private-sector representatives participating in last week’s task force on the Brooks Road corridor, an area that includes Smith & Nephew, Graceland, and the Black Tail Shake Joint. But seizing upon the idea that the Brooks Road area is key to the city’s economic growth, local leaders are formulating a plan to reduce crime, as well as revitalize and beautify the area.

The session was led and paid for by Johnson Controls’ MetroMarket program, a strategy to rejuvenate inner-city areas. The Fortune 100 company has led similar initiatives in Detroit, Chicago, and New Orleans. Because of the potential for both the biotech industry and an aerotropolis, Johnson Controls actually chose two areas in Memphis — Brooks Road and the Medical District — on which to focus.

“In many cities, it’s disconnected,” says Eric Reisner, vice president for strategic programs. “There are charter schools doing great things, but they’re over here. There’s a redevelopment zone, but it’s over there.”

Judging by all the people who attended at least portions of the meeting — mayors A C Wharton and Willie Herenton, regional chamber head John Moore, City Council members, district attorney general Bill Gibbons, Memphis police chief Larry Godwin, as well as representatives from Medtronic, Smith & Nephew, and MLGW — this group is pretty well connected.

After identifying several problems with the area — pockets of blight, a culture of crime, too many empty buildings, and incompatible land uses — the group narrowed its focus to a few things they want to see happen soon: reducing crime in the corridor, dedicating resources and a staff to the task, and rebranding and revitalizing the area.

Brooks Road has been down this path before. Almost a decade ago, city leaders tried to deal with crime and blight, but efforts fizzled. Now, however, Brooks Road seems to be of vital importance to the city.

“This area has to change,” says Moore. “We hope this leads to a 25-year plan on what the aerotropolis is going to look like. Twenty-five years ago, we said we wanted to be America’s distribution center, and we did that. But it’s not just America anymore. It’s the world.”

The aerotropolis is an economic model focused around the airport city. Developed by University of North Carolina professor John Kasarda, the theory is that in a world where speed and logistics are paramount in business, the area around an airport can be the heart of a growing economy. As the world’s busiest cargo airport, Memphis is currently the nation’s best example of an aerotropolis but will have to fight to stay that way.

“It stands to reason that we should have the safest and most beautiful environment around that global asset,” says Moore. “We need to move more goods faster and cheaper. The question is: Are we going to let it evolve on its own or are we going to plan it? … The Brooks Road corridor is a huge piece of the puzzle.”

At the meeting, I heard that when Smith & Nephew brings visiting surgeons to their campus on Brooks Road, they pick them up at the airport and instead of driving straight down Brooks, they use the highway.

Smith & Nephew spokesman Victor Rocha asked the group responsible for the company’s VIPs and found out that wasn’t the case … currently. “When I told the visiting surgeons unit about it, they said, ‘That’s a great idea. We may start doing that,'” says Rocha. When asked why, he says, “Have you seen Brooks Road lately?”

Between the airport and Smith & Nephew on Brooks, there are a number of adult establishments — including the Black Tail Shake Joint which used to have a large telltale tail as its entrance — and an adult bookstore.

There has been a lot of discussion recently about strip clubs and their effect on the city. Using nuisance ordinances, attorney general Gibbons has waged a very public campaign against adult entertainment. A case against Black Tail is pending from an August raid, and Gibbons’ office is seeking a temporary restraining order to close the club pending trial. Meanwhile, the city has been criticized for spending a lot of singles on a strip-club study.

Generally, land near airports is a catchall for uses that no one else wants. In pursuing the idea of the aerotropolis, we need to think about that land as a very valuable commodity.

For many people, the Brooks Road corridor is their first, and sometimes only, impression of Memphis. With a little work, we can show them an asset, instead of asses.

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No Vacancy?

Petty criminals — shoplifters, vandals, the drunk or disorderly — are getting a slap on the wrist as the county jail nears capacity.

Last week Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell asked the County Commission to build a new jail with 3,500 to 4,000 beds. Luttrell indicated that the jail at 201 Poplar is almost full, and to prevent overcrowding, the county is only holding people for serious crimes.

“There’s more scrutiny to determine whether or not a crime can be dealt with as a misdemeanor as opposed to a felony charge,” said Luttrell. “If you didn’t have the pressures of a crowded situation, you might easily write people up for some felony offense and put them in jail. But these are people who don’t really need to be in jail.”

As of last Wednesday, the county jail population was 2,360 inmates, and the facility can only house 2,500. If the population rose above 2,500 inmates, Luttrell would have to mix dangerous criminals with minimum-security inmates.

“When you start mixing minimum-security with maximum-security, you’re talking about a higher-level, more predatory inmate dealing with a lower-level, less predatory inmate. You’ll run into some real risky behavior,” said Luttrell.

The sheriff’s office is using other tactics to keep jail space available for dangerous criminals. About 200 inmates are being held at a satellite facility at the County Corrections Center at Shelby Farms, but that building has nearly reached capacity as well. About 37 juveniles have been diverted to the women’s facility near Shelby Farms. The District Attorney’s Office has been weeding out arrest warrants that involve crimes that may not stand the test of prosecution.

“We’ve got to have some relief,” said Luttrell. “At the Operation Safe Community summit in November, we laid out 15 initiatives to aggressively fight crime. That means we’re going to be locking more people up, which means we’re going to need a new facility.”

Not all county commissioners backed Luttrell’s plan, however. Commissioner Mike Carpenter suggested Luttrell look into having the Corrections Corporation of America build a satellite facility to hold extra inmates. Luttrell expressed his opposition to privatization but said he’ll “discuss it as long as anyone wants to.

“I’m not convinced that privatization will save us that much money without impacting operational efficiency,” said Luttrell.

Commissioner Mike Ritz suggested housing more inmates at the Penal Farm.

“The County Correctional Center can’t hold too many more,” said Luttrell. “They’ve told us they can’t afford to give us any more buildings.”

Luttrell said he’ll begin requesting proposals from architectural firms in the next couple weeks. He expects to present a final proposal to the County Commission by July or August.

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Hitting Home

A flashy car and a cool badge apparently aren’t enough to attract a sufficient number of applicants to the Memphis Police Department (MPD), currently understaffed by about 100 officers.

But police officials hope the Memphis City Council’s recent decision to allow officers to live outside the city limits will help find applicants for vacant positions.

“For the past three to five years, we’ve just barely been keeping up with attrition, and if you add in the fact that we’ve been annexing and we just opened up a new precinct, we’re somewhere on the order of 90 to 125 officers short,” said Vince Higgins, public affairs officer for MPD.

The City Council voted last week to temporarily exempt police officers and paramedics from a 2004 referendum requiring all city employees to live within the city of Memphis. Officers and paramedics hired in the next two years can live anywhere in Shelby County.

Higgins says the problem isn’t finding applicants but rather finding qualified applicants who can pass the academic requirements, physical demands, and firearms tests required by police training. By expanding residential boundaries for new officers, MPD hopes to avoid lower training standards.

“In the past, [the department] has lowered the standards by giving waivers to felons, but we’ve found that to be counterproductive,” said Higgins. “I don’t think the citizens of Memphis want the standards lowered.”

Currently, the department doesn’t hire anyone with a felony background or anyone who has a DUI conviction on their record. Applicants must have completed two years of college or active military duty, pass a psychological exam, and be at least 21 years old.

Because the department is understaffed, some officers due for a promotion haven’t received it yet.

“We can’t promote sergeants because we’d be depleting uniform patrol,” said Higgins. “It’s a domino effect. Once we get more officers, we’ll have more latitude with the promotional process.”

But not everyone’s pleased with the change. City Council member Joe Brown voted against the measure because he didn’t feel comfortable changing something the citizens enacted by referendum.

He also worries that hiring outside the city limits will affect the applicant pool for positions at the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.

Before the 2004 referendum, Memphis police officers could live anywhere inside the county line. Officers hired before 1980 can live anywhere within a two-hour drive.