Tag: Jim Strickland

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Politics Politics Feature

Tami Sawyer Won’t Wait; Enters Memphis Mayoral Race

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

It has been no secret that Tami Sawyer is disinclined to wait on events. Clearly, the progressive activist and first-term Shelby County commissioner would rather influence events — or, even better, take charge of them. She was that way about the lingering problem of monuments to the Confederacy, she is that way about social-justice issues on the commission, and, most recently, she is that way about advancing her own political star (though she would prefer to see her impatience as being directed at a cluster of pending civic issues rather than at her own ambitions).

In any case, after taking the counsel of numerous acquaintances, including several established figures who advised her to hold up until she at least acquired more experience in public office, the youthful commissioner has now declared her candidacy for mayor of Memphis.

Although she had leaked the information beforehand, Sawyer made her declaration most vividly and formally at a public rally on Saturday night, billed appropriately under the head “Memphis Can’t Wait,” at the highly symbolic Clayborn Temple Downtown. It was there that sympathizers with the goals of striking sanitation workers and of Dr. Martin Luther King gathered before marching in 1968. And it is there that Sawyer hopes to have begun her march to power.

The venerable old church was nearly filled with enthusiastic supporters chanting “We Can’t Wait!” Alison Smith, a senior at White Station High School, said she couldn’t wait. So did veteran activists Mike Moseley and Danny Song. So did the self-identified “queer woman” who got cheers for that acknowledgment and cheers again for the declaration that she couldn’t wait for the development of a truly viable transit system because, among other things, she was tired of the lack of one making her late to work.

And there was TaJuan Stout-Mitchell, the former Memphis City Council member and veteran of local government who was the closest thing to a senior political eminence on hand. She couldn’t wait, either, and threw her support to the young “flipper” she described this way: “She is unbought, she is unbossed, she is uncompromised!”

And then the stage was all Tami’s … There is no doubting Sawyer’s appeal as a change agent, proven during her direction of the long and ultimately successful Take ‘Em Down 901 campaign to divest the city of its most prominent Confederate memorials. It remains moot whether that is translatable into an ability to marshall a majority of eligible Memphis voters, across all sorts of age, gender, class, racial, and political lines, on behalf of an agenda that would necessarily be far more sweeping and diffuse.

Although “she’ll split the black vote” was one of the tease lines sent up for disbelieving ridicule by Sawyer’s supporters at the rally, that concern is part of the reckoning, old math or not, that has to be applied to her effort. After all, the field of mayoral candidates already includes, besides the established Mayor Jim Strickland, another challenger whose relationship to the African-American majority of Memphis is nothing less than historic.

That would be Willie Herenton, a pathfinder twice over, as the first black superintendent of Memphis public schools, and then, as the man who in 1991 broke the racial barrier with his election as mayor, an office he would hold for for 18 years.

Granted, Herenton’s mayoralty had lost luster toward the end, as his enthusiasm for the job and his attention to it both dissipated. Granted, too, his attempt to mount a political comeback by running for Congress in 2010 floundered in the wreckage of a 4-to-1 loss to incumbent 9th District Representative Steve Cohen. It remains a fact that, even at 78, Herenton retains an innate formidability and an eminence, however tarnished, that make it hard to estimate his vote potential.

There is no doubting one thing: The Herenton camp has already evinced its displeasure at Sawyer’s entry and no doubt will continue to. Thaddeus Matthews, a free-booting critic in the black community of all things establishmentarian, has been both off and on an ally of Herenton. Right now he is on, and is using his various cyber and broadcasting platforms on behalf of the once and would-be future mayor.

In a recent online post, Matthews treated it as a given that Sawyer has been “put in the race by current mayor Jim Strickland to take votes away from his most formidable opponent, W.W. Herenton.” Matthews posits a sibling relationship between Sawyer and Michael Hooks Jr., a contractor who, he says, has been the beneficiary of city contracts. “Now I understand why she wants to run,” says Matthews, “to make sure that her brother continues to be fed by Strickland and other power brokers.”

The credibility of a putative hand-in-glove collusion between candidates Sawyer and Strickland would seem to be undermined by the all-too-obvious tension between the two during the runup to the final uprooting of the statues of Nathan Bedford Forrest and Jefferson Davis, when Strickland was challenged to act, relentlessly and not always with tender respect, by Sawyer and her Take ‘Em Down 901 movement.

And it is clear that Sawyer’s base constituency is made up of individuals, black and white, who have modest regard for Strickland and his accomplishments and whose claims of “we can’t wait” as applied to their personal and politically progressive goals seem real enough. The fact is that, while Herenton’s electoral base is obviously the most likely to suffer drainage from the Sawyer candidacy, Strickland’s is, to some degree, vulnerable as well.

In getting 81 percent of the vote in the 7th County Commission District against moderate Republican Sam Goff in 2016, Sawyer more than held her own in the upscale Evergreen area, and her enthusiastic audience in Clayborn Temple on Saturday was more than moderately impacted with pockets of white Midtowners.

Still, name-recognition polls — hers and Strickland’s, for sure, and perhaps even by Herenton — indicate a serious deficit on her part. It’s a problem that this race will help resolve for the long run. In the shorter run — which is to say, by October 3rd, it’s chancey, especially since her dollar deficit to the well-funded Strickland is enormous.

Still, Tami Sawyer has chutzpah, she has ideas, she has some quality midway between charm and charisma. She has determination, and she has a following. She and they can’t wait to see how this turns out, and neither can we.

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News News Blog

City Council to Take Final Vote on Pre-k Fund

CREDIT: bbbskw.org

bbbskw.org

The Memphis City Council is scheduled to take its final vote Tuesday on an ordinance solidifying funding for county-wide, universal-needs pre-Kindergarten here.

The joint ordinance between the council and the Shelby County Commission would call for the appointment of a fiscal agent to manage and raise additional dollars for the pre-k fund. The fiscal agent will also be tasked with creating high-quality pre-k classrooms.

The move comes as a 2014 grant totaling $8 million which funds 1,000 county pre-k seats in 50 classrooms is set to expire at the end of June.

Now, city and county officials want to invest $16.6 million in pre-k by 2022, which will sustain the existing 1,000 seats and create 1,000 new seats. Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said the funding will have an “enormous” impact on the community.

“Nearly a year ago, we worked with city council, previous Shelby County administration, and county commission to find a way to provide funds for pre-k, and I’m proud to say we did it,” Strickland said in a Monday statement. “This vote solidifies future funding that will have an enormous impact on our community. Thanks to Mayor Harris and his administration for helping continue this progress.

“Pre-k means literacy in 3rd grade. If every 3rd grader can read at grade level, they have a 90 percent chance of graduating, even if they grew up in poverty.”

Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris said the funding will allow every child who qualifies for pre-k to have access to it for free, which city council chairman Kemp Conrad said is one of the most important things we can do for the future of children.

“There are academic, physical, and social-emotional advantages when a student arrives in Kindergarten ready to learn,” Conrad said. “Pre-k provides that foundation.”

Officials said pre-k funding will increase by $5 million in 2020, $6 million in 2021, and then $5.6 million in 2022, totaling $16.6 million. This will fund a total of 8,500 ongoing seats beginning in 2022.

The city began looking at funding county-wide pre-k last year, putting $3 million of excess city revenue as seed money into a dedicated fund. Additionally, a portion of city property tax revenue and taxes paid by companies whose PILOT (pay-in-lieu-of-taxes) incentive has expired began going to the fund.

The council will take its third and final vote on the ordinance during its meeting Tuesday (today), which begins at 3:30 p.m. at city hall. The county commission is scheduled to vote on a similar ordinance on March 25th.

The fiscal agent will be selected by Harris and Strickland pending the final approval from both bodies.

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Politics Politics Feature

Memphis as Vietnam: Richard Smith Urges Kumbaya in Nashville

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Bet you never heard this said before: “Memphis is to Nashville as Vietnam is to China.”

Huh? That dandy little syllogism was stated on Saturday by an influential person in a position to know: Richard Smith, son of FedEx founder Fred Smith, and the current president and CEO of the Memphis-based shipping and logistics giant.

For the record, Vietnam to one Fred Smith — once upon a time, at least — was where the senior Smith served as a Marine Corps officer during one of the most bitter, demanding, and ultimately frustrating wars in American history. Vietnam to this Richard Smith, a hands-on corporate executive whose style of leadership involves a fair amount of world traveling, is a rapidly industrializing Pacific-rim nation whose modernizing landscape includes a generous number of beachfront resorts.

Jackson Baker

Richard Smith and friends.

Smith’s remark was made to a mixed Memphis-Nashville audience gathered for a post-gubernatorial reception sponsored by the Memphis/Shelby County legislative delegation at B.B. King’s in Nashville. The Nashvillians present included several legislators — notable among whom was House Speaker Glen Casada of Franklin.

The thrust of Smith’s impromptu remarks, as a whole, was that the long-running rivalries between the two Tennessee cities should be shelved and subordinated to an era of cooperation and mutual support. And the aforesaid analogy to far-Eastern nations amounted to an acknowledgement that Nashville is the economic pathfinder in Tennessee, as China is in Asia.

“When I come here and see all those cranes,” Smith said, his hand making a circuit meant to encompass the ever-burgeoning spread around him of metropolitan Nashville, “I think, ‘We’re next!'” In his home base, Smith doesn’t just run a mega-company. He is one of his city’s apostles of economic expansion and is highly involved in its politics behind the scenes. He acknowledges, for example, a working relationship with Memphis City Council chairman Berlin Boyd, an African American whose close ties to the the city’s business elite have made him controversial with inner-city Memphians and declared social progressives.

Smith was not the only speaker at the reception, which was a spur-of-the-moment brainchild of the Shelby delegation, in tandem with such fellow Memphians as David Upton and city council chair Kemp Conrad.

Others from Memphis included Mayors Jim Strickland and Lee Harris; Democratic House leader Karen Camper; state Representative Antonio Parkinson, the delegation chair; state Representative G.A. Hardaway, legislative Black Caucus chair; Children’s Services Commissioner Valerie Nichols; and Lang Wiseman, deputy to Governor Bill Lee.

Among the Nashvillians were state Representative Jerome Moon; state Senator Jeff Yarbro; and the aforementioned Casada. The tone of kumbaya across racial, party, and regional lines was unmistakable, reflecting what one might hope is an augury of things to come.

Casada, for one,  had spent several days in Memphis the previous week in consultation with local business, civic, and government leaders about ongoing and potential undertakings. Whatever divisions may come with the forthcoming legislative session, they were not in evidence on Saturday.

• The special election for the vacant District 32 state Senate seat was due to end on Thursday of this week, with Shelby Countians George Chism, Heidi Shafer, and Steve McManus competing with each other and with Tipton Countian Paul Rose for the Republican nomination. Democrat Eric Coleman is unopposed in the Democratic primary. General election date is March 4th. A week of early voting concluded on Saturday with an unexpectedly high vote total in Tipton County.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

No Surprise: Strickland Announces for Reelection

CREDIT: JB

JB

Mayor Strickland

The least surprising piece of news, surely, of this still young century was officially communicated to the Memphis public Tuesday morning with the announcement that Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland will … run again.

The word “officially” is no metaphor. Strickland’s intent to seek reelection was delivered via a full-page (and front-page) article in The Commercial Appeal complete with a flattering portrait-sized photograph and a respectful recitation of the mayor’s claimed accomplishments in office that might as well have been written by His Honor himself. The total effect was that of a souvenir guide to a ceremonial coronation.

This is not a “sour grapes” response. Regret at not being first with a significant announcement — even a long-anticipated one — is an acknowledgment of the inherent priorities of the news-gathering profession. Nor is it a dis of the lucky reporter who harvested this item; a capable pursuer of information, she is not to be faulted merely because this story was delivered to her via the proverbial silver platter. When asked at a lunch meeting with this runner-up scribe later on why he opted for this means of revelation — as against, say, an open-to-all-comers press availability  — Strickland answered simply, “We judged this to be the best way of getting our story out.”

Which is something to keep in mind the next time we are expected to cluck away in compassionate sorrow at the supposedly dwindling fortunes of our city’s long-lived morning daily — still in possession, apparently, of a circulation list to be envied, and shepherded by the big-bucked Gannett operation against the prospect of corporate adversity.

And despair not. The rest of us will still have some scraps to share — like the poll results of a fresh sampling of voter opinion taken for the mayor by Public Opinion Strategies.

Among its findings:

*That, contrary to what might be assumed, this male white mayor has his lowest approval rating — at 68 percent — among white men and his highest among African-American women, at 74 percent. (Other approval numbers: 73 percent among white women; 72 percent, among black men).

*That Strickland’s “job rating” is adjudged at essentially the same level of approval by almost all sectors of the population. To wit: 71 percent by Republicans, 73 percent by independents, and 72 percent by Democrats; 67 percent by conservatives, 78 percent by moderates; and 66 percent by liberals; 71 percent by Memphians with no college experience and 73 percent by those who have such experience; 72 percent by those whose origins are in the North and 72 percent among native Southerners.

The poll also assigns an ever-rising percentage figure, from 2014 onward, to those who regard Strickland favorably: 33 percent in November 2014; 45 percent in August 2015; 48 percent on September 8, 2015; 56 percent on September 22, 2015 (these last two figures were arrived at just before Strickland’s first election as mayor); and 78 percent in December of 2018.

The Public Opinion Strategies poll was taken of 400 likely voters between December 11th and December 14th and claims a margin of error of plus-or-minus 4.9 percent. The polling group is the same one that provided what turned out to be on-target samplings for Strickland four years ago, and it was arranged, as in 2015, through the auspices of consultant Steven Reid.

In lunch conversation on Tuesday, both Strickland and Reid laid special stress on such talking points as the upward trend of police and fire hires and the administration’s plans to achieve universal pre-K instruction within two years without need of a tax increase.

For all his polling numbers, Strickland seems to have maintained an unassuming attitude toward his image in the community. Asked whether he thought he was readily identifiable by the public, he gave the matter a test, asking the waitress at Tug’s, where we ate, if she knew what he did for a living. “You’re the mayor of Memphis,” she answered, bearing the smile of one who had just answered successfully on a quiz show.

Strickland seemed pleased, but not overly so. He reiterated a statement he has made previously — to the effect that he rarely reads the resident media, except in the case of informed commentary regarding an issue laid before him for action. And he maintains that he never reads social media at all.

That means he would have missed a Facebook thread from last week, one featuring a chorus of criticism from a corps of the the mayor’s designated dissenters. In the case at hand, their complaint was not so much with Strickland per se, as with the reportage of what he said at his annual New Year’s Eve prayer breakfast — specifically the mayor’s verbal embrace of causes and occasions close to the hearts of many of his African-American constituents.

To the dissenters, this was all malarkey, and to report it without a litany of clarifying dispraise amounted to giving Strickland, in the words of one kibitzer, a “big wet sloppy kiss.” If the Public Opinion Strategies poll is as accurate an eye on reality as those done by the same firm for Strickland during his successful campaign of 2015, the would-be debunkers might owe the world a re-think.

They will, of course, have the available put-up-or-shut-up remedy of disproving the poll by providing a viable opposing candidate to Strickland, who vows that this year’s election contest will be his last one, ever.

We’re open to being convinced as to alternate outcomes. And, as noted in its opening paragraphs, this article does not purport to be an official or semi-official account from the horse’s mouth. To embroider upon the elegant metaphor of the aforementioned critic, it is but a case — with no salacity intended — of sloppy seconds.

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Politics Politics Beat Blog

Myron Lowery for City Council (Again)?

CREDIT: JB

JB

FATHER-SON COMBO: Once and possibly future City Councilman Myron Lowery (l) with current County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son, at the Lowerys’ annual New Year’s prayer breakfast.

The Memphis City Council took some serious licks Tuesday at the annual New Year’s prayer breakfast, presided over for a quarter-century by former Councilman Myron Lowery, and this year, by County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, his son.

The upshot was that several of the event’s principal speakers — 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen, Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris, and finally former Councilman Lowery himself — expressed some of the negative views that have been circulating in the community at large during weeks of gridlock over the appointment of new council members, following months of other questionable actions by the council.

Part of the fallout was the suggestion by the senior Lowery at the event’s conclusion that he had given thought to putting his name up for appointment to the “fractured” council, now three members short. Lowry went on to say he had discarded the idea, but added, as a parting tease: “I am giving consideration perhaps to another run this year.”

Earlier, Cohen had included a dig at the council amid kudos for County Mayor Harris and members of the Shelby County Commission in attendance: “The county commission seems to be doing a little better than the city council,” the Congressman said.

When it came his time to speak, Harris extolled both Lowerys for their service and quipped, “Some of y’all remember when we had a city council in Memphis.”

All of which led to the piece de resistance, Myron Lowery’s floated idea of another council run.
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News News Blog

Strickland Says Trenary’s Death Hits Close to Home

CREDIT: Memphis Magazine

In the wake of the fatal shooting of Greater Memphis Chamber president and CEO Phil Trenary, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said Friday that gun violence is a problem in Memphis, as it is across the country.

Memphis Magazine

Phil Trenary

“I will say, this particular one hits a little closer to home because I knew Phil,” Strickland said in a Friday morning press conference. “We were friends and we worked so well together for the last two and a half years.

“Phil loved Memphis. He was one of the best cheerleaders this city had and he contributed so much to our community. I mourn his death.”

Strickland said he also mourns the deaths of the other Memphians who’ve lost their lives to gun violence. Like many big cities, the mayor says Memphis has too much of it.

Strickland said the city has a long-range plan to tackle gun violence in the city. A large piece of that plan is hiring more police officers, offering more jobs, and giving offenders second chances.

“We’re making progress on that,” the mayor said. “But, it’s a tough, American problem.”

Strickland said MPD is “working very hard to find the perpetrator or perpetrators” involved in Trenary’s death. Trenary was shot at 579 South Front Street Thursday evening after attending a charity event at Loflin Yard.

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The suspect is a black male with dreadlocks who was wearing a blue shirt at the time of the shooting, according to MPD. Lt. Karen Rudolph said Friday morning that investigators are still working to gather details relative to this investigation.

“At this point, it does appear that the victim was alone when the shooting occurred,” according to police.  “The suspect, a male black wearing a blue shirt parked along the sidewalk on South Front, got out of his vehicle and approached the victim at which time the victim was shot. It is still unknown whether if this was a robbery or a personal vendetta.”

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Politics Politics Feature

Herenton and Others Look to Challenge for Mayor

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

It would seem to be a fact that former Mayor Willie Herenton, who headed city government from his election in 1991 as Memphis’ first elected black chief executive until his retirement in 2009, amid a fifth term, will make another try for the office in 2019.

Earlier this month, Herenton, who first announced he was considering another mayoral race in the wake of the MLK commemorations of April 4th, made things semi-official with a formal statement of candidacy on Facebook. The venue was modish for a political figure of Herenton’s vintage, who made a point of saying, in his online announcement, that “age is just a number, and I am physically fit, mentally sharp, and quite healthy.”

Justin Fox Burks

Willie Herenton

Still, circumstances beyond those of age would not seem exactly propitious for the former mayor, who just learned that three of his remaining four charter schools will be forced to close, having landed on the Priority List of schools unable to meet state standards for two years running. Two other Herenton-operated schools were closed earlier, and the net result of it all would seem a crippling omen for the onetime city school superintendent’s desire to rekindle his educationist’s vocation.

The school closures give a sense of irony to the statement, “My record of achievement speaks for itself,” Herenton made in his announcement remarks. Indeed, Herenton had much to boast of from his 17 years of ascendancy in government, although much of the positive aura attaching to his tenure had dissipated toward the end of his mayoralty, and a run for Congress in 2010 against incumbent 9th District U.S. Representative Steve Cohen ended disastrously.

Aside from other factors, that loss, in which Herenton’s share of the vote was only 20 percent, owed much to Herenton’s painfully obvious lack of resources, and it is difficult to see where his money would come from in a challenge to Mayor Jim Strickland, who is sure to be well-funded. (The current mayor has not yet declared for reelection, but no one seriously doubts his intentions to run again.)

The chief effect of a Herenton candidacy — should it come to pass — would be to inhibit the likelihood of another serious opponent to Strickland’s reelection. As of now, the only known challengers are Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams, a 2015 candidate who has indicated he will run again, and a relative unknown named Lemichael Wilson.

Others who have received at least tangential mention as possible mayoral contenders in 2010 include Harold Collins, director of community engagement for the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission; City Councilman Martavius Jones; and the Rev. Keith Norman, a prominent clergyman with numerous civic and political connections, including the past chairmanship of the Shelby County Democratic Party.

Collins, however, has just accepted an appointment by county Mayor Lee Harris to become Director of Re-entry for Shelby County government. Jones seems satisfied to explore the potential of his council career, and Norman would presumably have to vacate a well-paid position with Baptist Hospital to make a run.

Two other local figures with acknowledged interest in the mayoralty are, almost by definition, future-tense in their ambitions. They would be Van Turner, chairman of the Shelby County Commission, and uber-activist Tami Sawyer, a newly installed member of the commission.

Turner, who at 43 has the right balance of seasoning and relative youth to make a race, acknowledged to the Flyer that a mayoral run has crossed his mind, but says his candidacy is more likely to occur in 2023, when he will have concluded his permitted two terms on the commission. At the moment, he is still classified as a Strickland supporter and, as head of Memphis Greenspace, which purchased and removed the city’s downtown Confederate monuments, is an effective partner of the mayor.

Sawyer, who, as Turner notes, “has a great following among millenials,” is also apparently looking down the road to 2023, when the mayor’s race will seemingly be wide open.

Meanwhile, for Herenton and whoever else might be thinking about running in 2019, Strickland’s camp is floating a recent poll showing the incumbent mayor’s favorable rating among whites to be 66 percent, and that among African Americans to be 68 percent.

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News News Blog

Strickland Asks For Trust On Banks’ Shooting

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said he “completely backs” Memphis Police Department (MPD) director Michael Rallings’ decision to involve the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) in the investigation of Martavious Banks’ shooting.

Strickland said at a Friday press conference that the administration is pledging its full cooperation with the investigation into the officer-involved shooting of Banks.

“The notion that cameras were turned off before the shooting is disturbing to me,” Strickland said. “It’s unacceptable, inexcusable, and it will not be tolerated.”

While TBI is investigation the shooting itself, MPD is leading an internal investigation on the violation of the body-camera policy.

Typically, TBI will only step in when an officer-involved shooting is fatal. But when MPD realized there was a violation of department body-camera policy, Strickland said it was the right call to turn the investigation over to TBI.

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At this point, Strickland said it is still unclear whether the officers never had their cameras on or if they were turned off. When asked if this was the result of a lack of officer training, Strickland said it’s not, but rather a lack of following the policy. He said the department needs to “double down” to ensure all of the policies are being followed.

The names of the officers involved have not been released yet. Strickland said releasing the names is now up to TBI and that he can’t give a detailed description of them as it might interfere with the bureau’s investigation. However, Strickland did said they “weren’t seasoned” and were “relatively new” officers.

Strickland said the community should “trust this full, honest investigation that’s going to go on both at MPD and the TBI.”

“We will get to the bottom of this,” Strickland said. “I’m directing our entire city hall staff and all of our resources to get the answers to the questions that we all have.”

Moving forward, some city officials want TBI to investigate all officer-involved shootings, not just the ones that result in death. Memphis City Councilman and Shelby County Commissioner Edmund Ford Jr., along with Commissioner Tami Sawyer, announced Wednesday that they would introduce a joint resolution asking TBI to respond immediately to officer-involved shootings that are both fatal and non-fatal.

Ford said people shouldn’t have to die in order for a thorough investigation to take place.

“I get tired of hearing about officer shootings locally and nationally,” Ford said. “Hopefully, the joint legislation will be one step of many to get justice for those who end up in this situation.”

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Ford said he will present the resolution to the council on Tuesday, September 25th along with a list of questions for law enforcement, such as what the disciplinary measures are for an officer who turned off their body camera.

“I hope my colleagues will unanimously support this legislation,” Ford said. “I hope it’s not a polarizing issue. Any issue like this should be investigated and justice should be served.”

Mayor Strickland said he is “totally open” to the legislation, but that the TBI would have to be invited into that conversation in order to make sure they have the resources to be able to do that.

In a statement released Thursday, council member Patrice Robinson said she believes “we need to allow the system to work.”

Here’s her full statement:

“It is an unfortunate situation and my heart goes out to Martavious Banks’ mother and family. I pray that Martavious heals quickly.

I am personally watching this process and at this point, I believe we need to allow the system to work. We will review the contract with the Memphis Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation as well as the Memphis Police Association’s Memorandum of Understanding as it relates to disciplinary actions.

As representatives of the citizens of Memphis, it is our responsibility to ensure the fair and adequate treatment of all Memphians.

It is my desire that the citizens of Memphis will be patient and show concern for one another by forming more neighborhood watch groups and resolving to support one another by demanding respectful actions by all.”

Councilman Kemp Conrad said in a statement Friday that the officers’ actions were “inexcusable,” but that he trust the administration to handle the investigation.


Here is his full statement:


“First, I want to say that my thoughts are with the family of Martavious Banks. Words can’t describe the horrific nature of this incident. I hope that he makes a full recovery.


While I support the men and women in blue, it is inexcusable that three officers directly involved did not have cameras turned on during this incident. I recognize that officers have a tough job and incidents like this make it even harder, which is why I am a long-time supporter of this tool of transparency. They protect our officers and the citizens of Memphis.


Furthermore, I support the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation investigating officer-involved shootings in the City of Memphis.


I have full faith that our Mayor and his administration will handle this investigation efficiently, swiftly, fairly, and with the utmost care.”

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Opinion Viewpoint

MPD Overtime Costs Unlikely to Shrink in Current Political Climate

On July 9, 2017, roughly 80 people gathered in Tom Lee Park for street theater skits and speeches that focused on social injustices, including state-sanctioned police killings of unarmed black Americans. The societal ills addressed in the gathering were the same as those that drove thousands of protesters to shut down the I-40 bridge one year earlier.

That gathering was small potatoes for the Memphis Police Department when stacked against other thousands-strong protests in Memphis spurred by either the election of Donald Trump (the satellite Memphis Women’s March) or his policies (the now-legal travel band on majority Muslim nations).

Yet, the few dozen folks that gathered in the stifling heat were under the gaze of the MPD all the same, a gaze that included one helicopter, three mounted officers, one police van equipped for multiple arrests, and several officers either on foot or driving through the park.

Currently, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland finds himself defending more than $200,000 in police overtime for his personal security detail for the 2018 fiscal year. The amount is nothing to sniff at, but it’s a small sliver of the $20 million in overtime for the MPD during the 2018 fiscal year.

Both the mayor and MPD Director Michael Rallings cite the need for millions in police overtime as an effect resulting from a two-pronged cause — dire understaffing of the police force and political protests.

The former is an issue entirely too complex for this little space, but the latter can be boiled down to a question of police presence at protests. How much is too much?

Strickland points to a December protest in 2016 wherein seven protesters staged a “die-in” on his front lawn in East Memphis as one of the events that would usher in a new era of 24-hour security detail for the mayor and his family.

Some of the seven or so protesters appeared to be peering into the home’s windows, causing alarm for the mayor. His security detail is an expense Strickland begrudgingly accepted when the political turned just a little too personal for his or Rallings’ comfort.

The mayor also faces online threats that threaten violence against him and his family routinely, many of them spurred by those furious at the thought of a monument to slave trader, founding Ku Klux Klan member, and Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest being removed from his place of honor in a public park.

The few-dozen people monitored by a disproportionate police presence at the Bridge Protest reunion were nonviolent. Protests in front of McDonald’s that call for an end to the poverty wages they pay their employees are nonviolent. The 2017 August rally at Health Sciences Park calling for the removal of the Forrest monument was nonviolent, in spite of the police-incited chaos that ensued once protestors were randomly pulled from the crowd for arrest.

It’s a verifiable truth that organized protests in Memphis since the 2016 Bridge Protest have not resulted in violence against persons or property. On occasions that protestors are arrested, their charges of disorderly conduct or obstruction of a highway are usually dropped the next morning.

It’s also a verifiable truth that police often respond to protests, even ones that have a city-issued permit, with expensive tactical resources such as helicopter surveillance and Blue Crush vehicles.

Rallings and Strickland must reevaluate the degree of police response to peaceful protests. Because in the months or years to come, it’s unreasonable to expect anything other than more organized actions from Memphis communities directly threatened by the Trump administration. The GOP’s rush to replace Justice Anthony Kennedy’s Supreme Court vacancy is already stoking fear among Americans concerned for abortion access, equal marriage, labor unions, or affirmative action.

Should MPD continue with the same level of police response to nonviolent protests, it’s likely that overtime woes will continue to strain the city’s budget. And though MPD recruitment efforts have earmarked funds, the staffing goal of 2,300 officers by 2021 may offer little relief in overtime expenses amid the political climate that is driving Americans into the streets in numbers not seen in decades.

No one should hold their breath waiting for any easement of the two primary causes of police overtime according to Rallings, but everyone who pays city taxes should ask Rallings to reevaluate the use of already strained police resources to monitor non-violent protests.

Micaela Watts is a Memphis-based freelance reporter.

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Politics Politics Feature

Truce, Sort Of, Between Luttrell and County Commission

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Anyone who attended the regular committee meetings of the Shelby County Commission last Wednesday, May 9th, and followed that up with a visit to the full commission’s regular public meeting on Monday, May 14th, might be mildly confused about the resolution of a long-running power struggle between the commission and the county mayor’s office.

Jackson Baker

Shelby County Mayor Mark Luttrell

At the Wednesday meeting, Mayor Mark Luttrell, term-limited and experiencing what he called his “long goodbye” to public office, heard himself applauded by commissioners in attendance and extolled by one commissioner after another for his achievements over his eight years in office, in maintaining essential county services while at the same time lowering county debt to a significant degree — by as much as a billion dollars, to a level below $900 million.

Given that May 9th was also the day on which Luttrell chose to present a $1.254 billion budget for the coming year that, if executed, would shave the county’s recalculated  tax rate by a penny, to a target rate of $4.05, which is six full cents off the current rate, the hosannas might seem very much in order — especially since the proposed Luttrell budget also contains more money for schools, law enforcement, and employees at large, the latter to be provided with the $15-an-hour minimum wage which was at such extended issue during the 2016 presidential campaign.

There was none of the truculence from dissenting commissioners that had become a regular chorus during the past two years, although, as commission budget chairman Eddie Jones and others pointed out, there would be ample opportunity during the next couple of months to make such revisions as might be worth debating.

In prior weeks, and again, to some degree, on Monday, notes were sounded that were at variance with the Hakuna Matata of the May 9th meeting.

A regular feature of recent commission meetings has been a series of votes on expenditures in proposed county  contracts greater than $50,000 in value. Several weeks back, the commission voted to impose the $50,000 limit as a way of limiting the mayor’s spending power and curbing his general contractual authority, in line with a charter for county government that, unlike that for the city of Memphis, restricts the chief executive to a “weak mayor” role.

That action was one outcome of the power struggle that began with disagreements during budget deliberations in 2015. In that budget year, several commissioners, dealing with what they were told would be a projected surplus, insisted on using it to fund a tax decrease. Luttrell, pleading a concern for unanticipated infrastructure needs as well as the need to reduce the county debt, resisted and ultimately prevailed. What followed was a commission resentment that would increase as members learned that the surplus was far greater than expected — a discovery that led to ever more demands for a greater share of fiscal oversight.

Other matters of contention included the commission’s desire to hire former Commissioner Julian Bolton as its own attorney. After much fuss and bother and argumentation, Bolton was allowed on as a “policy advisor,” but the official legal representative for all organs of Shelby County government would remain, under the provisions of the county charter, the mayor’s  appointee as county attorney, currently, Kathryn Pascover.

At the moment, Bolton’s status is in limbo, with Luttrell poised to veto an ordinance for his reappointment — something he did once already but will have to repeat because the ordinance he received, due to a clerical error, was not the one ultimately adopted by the commission.

Starting again from scratch, the commission completed work Monday on a correct version of the reappointment ordinance that would extend Bolton’s tenure through September 30th, leaving it to a newly reelected group of commissioners to decide what to do next.

Meanwhile, the most spectacular show of commission independence was evinced just before Monday’s meeting, in a ceremony in the Shelby County Building, in which commission Chair Heidi Shafer — joined by Luttrell, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, and representatives of local law enforcement and medical interests — announced an ambitious $2.5 million task force plan for combating the county’s current opioid epidemic. (See Editorial, p. 8) The plan is the outgrowth of a commission initiative that Luttrell, though initially claiming authority over the matter, was induced to become a party to, via a series of court tests.