Categories
News News Blog News Feature

“Excessive Force:” Leaders React to DOJ Findings on Memphis Police Department

Reactions are pouring in after a blistering report from the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) Wednesday detailed the agency’s findings from an investigation into the Memphis Police Department. This probe was launched in the aftermath of Tyre Nichol’s death following his deadly beating after a traffic stop.

“Based on this investigation, we found that the police in Memphis use excessive force; that they stop, search, and arrest people unlawfully; that their policies have a discriminatory effect on Black people; and that they discriminate against people with behavioral health disabilities,” the DOJ said in a statement. “Furthermore, we are concerned that Memphis police officers unnecessarily escalate encounters with some of the most vulnerable members of the community — its children.”

The DOJ found that the agency used excessive force, discriminatory practices against Black people, and imposed harsh and “aggressive” tactics on children.” The agency found these to consistent practices where they “violat[ed] people’s rights.”

Career attorneys and staff from the Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney’s Office, and “more than a dozen experts who specialize in police department management, use of force, statistics and other areas,” were consulted in what the Justice Department called  a “comprehensive and exhaustive” investigation. They also interviewed police officer, city employees, community members and more.

“We received hundreds of incidents, watched hundreds of body-worn camera videos, read thousands of documents, and conducted statistical analyses of the department’s data regarding officer activities and enforcement,” the statement said.

U.S. Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said MPD’s practices do not make Memphis safer and urged the city to intervene in terms of police reform and consent decrees. They said they are also committed to working with the city to remedy these patterns.

“Achieving meaningful constitutional policing reform costs time and resources,” Clarke said. “ But not implementing systemic reforms also imposes enormous costs — cost in terms of citizens’ rights that are trampled, personal, and financial costs in injuries and deaths due to excessive, unnecessary use of force, costs in diminished public safety, and millions of dollars in legal judgments against the city due to constitutional violations.”

During a press conference Mayor Paul Young said for those who had not read the report that it would be “difficult to read” and that some types of incidents are “not acceptable.”

“Policing in Memphis must always be ever-evolving, constantly improving, and I’m confident that our team is ready to further the work of creating ongoing change,” Young said. “We believe that adjustments we’ve already begun making must continue and that they must expand.”

In a letter addressed to Justice Department officials, Tannera Gibson, city of Memphis attorney and Chief Legal Officer, said the city will not willfully enter a consent decree based on the report. She said a legal process is required for them to question how they evaluated information, witnesses, and facts used to reach their conclusions.

“Until the city has had the opportunity to review, analyze, and challenge the specific allegations that support your forthcoming findings report, the city cannot — and will not — agree to work toward or enter into a consent decree that will likely be in place for years to come and will cost the residents of Memphis hundreds of millions of dollars,” Gibson said in a statement. “From what we understand, consent decrees remain in place for an average of more than ten years, with absolutely no controls to ensure timely completion or consideration for the financial impact to the affected community. Such a proposal is not the right solution for Memphis.”

Upon sharing these findings, the Official Black Lives Matter Memphis Chapter said the following:

“Confirms what activists and organizers have been saying about the police department for years.” 

Cardell Orrin, executive director of Stand for Children – Tennessee, echoed these sentiments saying this is what they’ve “heard many times and has been debated, disputed, and diminished.”

“Thanks to the investigators from DOJ for validating the experiences of people in Memphis when the people’s representatives have not been willing to acknowledge and do something about it,” Orrin said in a post. “You can go back to the many CLERB (Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board) recommendations that never got addressed by MPD leadership or the city.”

This story will be continually updated as more reactions come in.

Categories
Cover Feature News

Alyssa Moore: Survivor

“Jared McLemore is live on Facebook.” Those who clicked immediately saw a dark street scene with trees in the background. Then, McLemore, shirtless, rushes into the frame and sits crosslegged, his expression strangely blank. He pours gasoline over his body from a red can. Voices come from offscreen as he fumbles with matches. A second body rushes in, tackling him, but it’s too late. The frame is filled with flames. Fully engulfed, but eerily calm, McLemore runs off screen. The screaming begins.

***

Rock-and-roll came naturally to Alyssa Moore. Her parents were punk rockers in the Antenna scene of the 1980s. She picked up the guitar and wrote her first song at age 8. At 13, she played her first gig — a kid’s birthday party. Music became her passion, her escape from reality. “I’ve had family problems my whole life,” she says. “When I turned 14, 15, it was the worst it had ever gotten. They were fighting constantly. … My dad was gone. My mom was so depressed that she would just come home every day and go to sleep.”

Up until the ninth grade, she had been an A student. After the divorce, her grades faltered. Two months into her junior year, Moore dropped out. “I got my own apartment and started living as an adult. I’ve been living in Midtown since then.”

She met Will Forrest when she was 15. “I remember hearing her music on her MySpace at the time,” he says, “and thinking she was a pretty rad musician. We wound up both frequenting the open mic at Java Cabana and started playing music together.”

The two started dating. They recorded their first album with engineer Kyle Johnson at Rocket Science Audio. “I always wanted to be a rock star,” she says. “Every night I would go to bed, put on my headset, and listen to whatever female musician I wanted to be at the time: Courtney Love, Chrissie Hynde, whoever. Being a rock star is awesome. But I wanted to be able to do what Kyle did.”

Johnson became her mentor. “He just trusted me so much and had so much confidence in me,” she says. “Instead of teaching me everything, he said ‘Here’s the keys. Go play. The only way you’re going to figure this out is if you do it a million times.'”

After about five years, Moore and Forrest’s romantic relationship cooled, but their musical collaboration remained strong. Their new band was called Strengths. Their music was a mix of punk, metal, and math rock, with savage guitars and sudden time changes. It was smart and complex. Then, in November 2014, she met McLemore.

“He introduced himself after a Strengths show,” recalls Forrest. “He’s an excessive personality, talks a mile a minute. He was really funny. He wanted to dominate the conversation and be the center of attention.”

The day after the show, he sent Moore a Facebook friend request. “He was working at Ardent; I had started doing sound at Murphy’s. I was a studio rat at that point. It just made sense for us to get together.

“When we started dating, he asked a lot of questions. He was very intelligent. He had an imagination that I was drawn to. Because I was so fascinated with music and with recording, and he was as well, that was essentially our relationship for the first eight months.”

McLemore told Moore that he had been diagnosed with rapid-cycling bipolar disorder. “His mental illness didn’t scare me,” Moore says. “I knew what depression felt like, and I knew that it causes you to do and say things that you wouldn’t otherwise do. I watched my mother, in my childhood, be super depressed, and I saw when she came out of it, she blossomed. This is a guy who has had shitty luck his entire life, I thought. He’ll be okay, I just have to prove to him that somebody can love him with a mental illness.”

Mitchell Manley met McLemore when they were 17 years old. “When I was living in Milan and was playing in bands with him, I knew he had a lot of personal trauma.”

McLemore was married while in Jackson. But after about seven years, his wife left him in the middle of the night. “None of his friends ever saw her again,” says Manley. “Shortly after his wife divorced him, he attempted suicide. He tried to shoot himself, but the gun jammed. They airlifted him to Memphis and immediately put him into mental health treatment. Then he tried to start a better life.”

Moore says she did her best to help McLemore. “As he opened up to me about his illness and the things he had done about his illness, I was like, ‘You need to be on medicine. Don’t be ashamed.'”

Moore says that while they were together, they smoked marijuana but didn’t take any other drugs. With her family’s painful history of alcoholism, Moore didn’t drink, and for a while, McLemore didn’t either. “He admitted to me that he had an Adderall addiction from the ages of 22 to 28. He was prescribed Adderall, because doctors thought he had ADHD instead of bipolar disorder. That was a big mistake. They gave speed to a psychopath.”

After five months, the couple moved into a Midtown guest house. “If something went wrong, he would say ‘I’m going to kill myself.’ He would break down and cry a lot, and I would hold him and console him.”

Strengths was one of the tightest bands in Memphis, but McLemore convinced Moore and Forrest that something was wrong. Forrest says McLemore suggested starting a new band. “He offered the solution that he would play drums, and we could be super tight. But it wound up being a way less-functional band, and it fell apart.”

The new band played one show. “After that show, Jared said, ‘Look, I’ve tried to be friends with Will. I just can’t do it.’ So, we talked to his therapist about it, and even his therapist sided with him. He said it was strange for me to be in a band with my boyfriend from high school. She convinced both of us that me being friends with Will was a bad idea. … Looking back, [Jared’s] motive was to isolate me from my friends.”

“This trajectory is very common,” says Dr. J. Gayle Beck, professor of psychology at the University of Memphis. “This pattern almost ensures that she has less social support and few places to turn when stressed.”

***

In February 2016, Moore and McLemore were working together in the studio. “I don’t remember what caused the argument, but he stood up, grabbed my wrist, pulled me up, dragged me to the bathroom, closed the door and locked it behind us. He pushed me to the corner, and pushed me down on the ground. He held my hands back, and said ‘Okay, this is it. Now you’re going to die.'”

Trapped against the wall in the bathroom, Moore talked McLemore down from murder. “I scraped my hand against the wall. I remember looking at it and thinking, ‘Well, I’m bleeding because of my boyfriend. But it’s so tiny. Surely this means nothing. He just had a bipolar episode.'”

Moore told no one of the incident. “It is shameful to say, ‘Hey, the man I love locked me in the bathroom and tried to kill me.’ You feel like an idiot.”

Terror and threats became regular occurrences. “He was very smart about not leaving bruises in obvious places,” she says. “To the day he died, he would say, ‘I never beat you up,’ but I would say that he did, because that’s what it felt like.”

Beck says there is a broad range of abusive behaviors beyond beatings. “There is a common belief that Intimate Partner Violence [IPV] is only abuse if it entails hitting and punching. IPV subsumes physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Sometimes abusers will threaten to kill the victim and later say, ‘I was just angry — I’d never do that.’  Being threatened with a weapon is abuse.”

“People ask, ‘Why did you stay with him?'” says Moore. “I beg that they look at their own relationship and imagine their partner turning on them and wondering how long it would take for them to be like, ‘Okay, I gotta get out.'”

***

The first week of August 2016, Moore got a rare moment away from McLemore. She used the opportunity to contact the National Domestic Violence Hotline. “At that point, when you have somebody else validate you like that, you kind of freak out a little bit. I wasn’t quite prepared to make a plan to leave at that point. But having someone else tell me, ‘Yes, you’re being abused. You need to leave’ is so powerful.”

Two weeks later, McLemore accused Moore of flirting. “He said that I’d been slut dancing to this band. My denial of it sent him over the edge. I was making dinner when he decided to attack me.”

Alyssa Moore

The kitchen in the Midtown guest house Moore shared with McLemore became the scene of an attack.

At knife point, he forced her into the bedroom. “He said, ‘Take your clothes off. Now.’ I just kind of looked at him, because he had never done that before. He said, ‘You know what’s going to happen. Do it.’ And he has the knife in his hand. So, I get naked, because I have to. He comes over to me and gets on top of me. He doesn’t rape me, other than what he’s already done by making me get naked. He grabs my neck and holds my face down. He chokes me. Then he stops, lets go for a minute, and watches me. Then he does it again a second time. Beyond that, my memory blacks out. I disassociated a little bit. I know at some point he ran, but he didn’t take my phone with him, so I called 911.”

The police took the report and told her to find another place to stay. Moore went to her mother’s apartment. “I had to tell her everything.”

Moore informed her friends that McLemore was on the run from police. Two days later, musician Josh Stevens saw McLemore walking on Madison. “At this point, he had either given up and he authentically wanted help, or he just couldn’t run any more and wanted somewhere to recharge. We took him back to the house. He was very docile.”

The next day, Stevens’ girlfriend and McLemore’s cousin took him to the Memphis Mental Health Institute. Instead of checking himself in to the hospital, McLemore bolted. Stevens rushed to Moore’s side. They called the police. “Then we saw Jared.”

McLemore started running towards Moore. “He was literally going to kill her,” says Stevens. “I saw it in his eyes. …The last thing I remember my friend Jared saying to me — and I say this because he wasn’t my friend after this — was ‘I should have killed you and your girlfriend last night when I had the chance.’ We tussled. I got him down, but he got away.”

McLemore stole Moore’s car. As he was driving away, Moore’s father Mike was arriving. He recognized McLemore and followed him. McLemore stopped, got out of the car, and the two fought. Again, McLemore got away. Meanwhile, the police had arrived. Moore says they were less than helpful. “I told them what had happened the night before, and they just kept hushing me. They didn’t look up at all. No eye contact or anything. They didn’t tell me what to expect, where he was going, nothing.”

McLemore returned to the house and gave himself up to police. He was committed to the Western State Mental Health Institute in Bolivar.

“I think that we expect too much from law enforcement in this domain,” says Beck. “It takes a woman [on average] six or seven attempts to successfully leave an abusive/violent romantic relationship. The implication of this is that the police will be called multiple times to her address. If they ask him [or her] to leave and the couple reunites, they have done all that is within their power to do. We cannot rely on the police to ‘solve’ the DV [domestic violence] in Memphis.”

After he was released from the hospital, McLemore was taken to jail. His mother bailed him out, and he was put on diversion. He went to live with her in Milan, Tennessee. He was forbidden to contact Moore and fitted with a GPS ankle bracelet.

In early September, Moore decided to make her story public, inspired by other women in Midtown who had called out their abusers on Facebook. “They were not saying these things to villainize their abusers and rapists. They were saying things to give courage to people who had had these things happen to them. Tell them, this happened to me, too. … In retrospect, I did it exactly wrong. I should have posted every picture I had, every screenshot that I had. I shouldn’t have given him any benefit of the doubt. Some people who are raping, abusing, hitting, being violent — sociopathic people — they cannot change their behaviors. Why should we not call them out?”

Moore’s Facebook post detailing her abuse at McLemore’s hands was widely seen and shared in the Midtown music community. One of the women who saw it was Jessie Honoré, a domestic abuse survivor who had become an advocate for women in similar trouble. “I had friended [Alyssa] because she is so great. I reached out to her. She’s younger than me. I’m a mom of two. I felt like I could offer her some advice.”

Honoré invited Moore to an online support group for Memphis women who have been victims of intimate partner violence. “Abusive relationships make you question your own judgment and your own gut instincts,” Moore says. “So, having a group to nurture you while you’re coming out of that fog is invaluable.”

The months that followed were free of abuse, but Moore faced new complications. She was stuck paying for rent at both the studio and her home. Moore had been advised to buy a gun, but she wasn’t comfortable with firearms. Instead, she got a knife for protection.

For a while, McLemore seemed to be getting better. He expressed regret publicly and privately. But it didn’t last. He moved back to Memphis, and the threats resumed. “He was sending and posting pictures of himself with a gun in his mouth,” says Moore.

Jared McLemore’s messages.

After being contacted by multiple concerned people, Moore eventually texted McLemore. “I sent a message that said, ‘Don’t talk to me. Get your shit together. Stop circulating these pictures. Don’t kill yourself. Things aren’t going to be awful forever.’ He sent a bunch of apologies. I said ‘Thanks, I don’t want to hear any more from you.'”

The contact turned out to be a mistake. “Throughout March and April, he would contact me. It was suicidal stuff, so I would call the police. I was not dealing with him any more.”

On the evening of May 9, 2017, Moore was washing dishes in her apartment. She looked up to see McLemore staring at her through the window. McLemore scraped the screen with something metallic. It was her knife. “He had obviously broken into my house or my car to get it, because those were the only places I ever kept it. He told me he had a gun. He said ‘I ought to kill you.’ That’s when I ran into the bathroom and called 911 again.”

When police arrived an hour later, McLemore was gone. “I told them many times that he was on probation, that he sent me pictures of the gun in his hand.” The police seemed skeptical of the situation. They told Moore that the Domestic Violence unit would call her the next day. The call never came. “I was afraid to go outside,” says Moore. “I didn’t think he had any reason not to kill me at this point.”

Desperate, she made another Facebook post detailing McLemore’s threats. “My intention up until the day he died was to get him into a hospital. I kept thinking, ‘he only wants to kill me because he’s depressed.'”

On Thursday, May 11th, Moore went to the Family Safety Center to file a restraining order against McLemore. She was told it took two hours to process, and the center was closing in an hour. That night, Moore got a message from McLemore’s roommate. “The police had shown up, searched the house, but they couldn’t find the gun,” she says. “Jared was acting sane and normal, so they didn’t take him anywhere. This was after the Facebook post, after hundreds of people had called the police. They showed up to his house, searched the place, and left. They didn’t take it seriously, at all.”

The next morning, Moore returned to the Family Safety Center. “Through them, I was able to get a warrant for his arrest,” she says. “Eventually, I went to work. I figured the police were coming.”

***

Friday, May 12th, at Murphy’s was a triple bill. Paul Garner had contracted with Moore to record his band, Aktion Kat. “We booked the show about a month prior. We respected Alyssa as a recording artist, and we knew she would do a great job.”

Garner, an activist at the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center, learned about McLemore from the Facebook post. “This was a person who had done everything a victim is told to do and was essentially shrugged off.”

Moore had asked Forrest to come to the club. “There had been so many times when he would threaten to show up,” he says. “I would go up there a lot of nights and hang out. I was really exhausted, so I said I would go next door and lay down for a minute. I kind of dozed off.”

Murphy’s staff was aware of the situation, so Moore says she felt safe. “I thought surely the police were going to come and arrest him. But about 10:30, I got a message from him: ‘I have a warrant out for my arrest. I didn’t assault anybody. I must die.’ Then about an hour later he showed up.”

Aktion Kat was setting up when McLemore walked in and made a beeline for Moore. “He was shirtless, and he was already covered in gasoline. He grabbed my arm and rubbed it down a time or two and nodded. He had told me, ‘I’m going to cover myself in gasoline and set myself on fire. That’s how I’m going to die.’ He said goodbye, and he kissed me. Then he went outside.”

Garner chased McLemore out the door, followed by Moore and other people. No one knew he was broadcasting his suicide live on Facebook. “By the time I got outside, he was on the other side of the street, assuming the crosslegged position and pouring the stuff over his head. I had a couple of seconds to try to prevent him from doing what it was obvious he was about to do.” He charged McLemore and tried to kick the matches from his hands. “As soon as I made contact, I felt the heat.”

Moore was at the door. “The flames shot up 10 feet high. At this point, I don’t see Paul. All I see is Jared on fire.”

McLemore silently stood up and ran toward Moore. Garner was on fire too. “I saw the little grassy field next to the P&H and thought, maybe that grass is wet. I was rolling around over there until my friend Scott Prather ran across the street and jumped on me and put me out.” Moore waited until two other people ran in before she closed the door. “There was a moment when I was on one side of the door, and Jared was on the other side of the door. I was staring him in the fucking face while he was on fire. I was trying to lock the door, but the heat was so intense.”

Moore fled into the bar. McLemore burst through the door. “I saw Steve [Wacaster] coming out with the fire extinguisher,” she says. McLemore crumpled to the ground as Steve sprayed him with the fire extinguisher. “People were pouring water and beer, trying to put him out. It was nauseating.”

Forrest was awakened by a call from Moore and ran into Murphy’s. “Jared was laying there, half melted. He saw me. I could kind of hear an eagerness in his voice when he saw me. He said, ‘Will, help me. Will, help me.’ The smell of him. … I will never forget that.”

Outside, Moore was in shock. “Some woman — I don’t even know who it was — grabbed me and hugged me and said, ‘You don’t have to be afraid any more. I’m not letting go of you.’ It was exactly what I needed right then. I wish I knew who it was.”

***

The horrific video quickly went viral. Within hours, it had spread to England, where The Sun tabloid published it on their website.

Garner was taken to the hospital with second and third degree burns on his calves and hands. He was briefly kept in the same room as McLemore, who died about eight hours after the fire.

“I really wanted to highlight that I don’t like the whole hero individual narrative that they were trying to hit me with,” he says. “I wanted more to be focused on, why did this happen? This person had been reported multiple times. He had been active on Facebook, and when people were tagging police and asking why they didn’t do anything, he was commenting on those threads. As someone who has experienced police surveillance in recent years, I know they have social media tools like Geofeedia that they are using to track us and where we are having protests. I wish that same kind of energy would go into a legal investigation into someone who has been reported as a threat by other folks.”

That night, Jessie Honoré started a GoFundMe campaign for Moore. “She was very insistent on the details being correct, and very insistent on not asking for a single penny more than she would need. We broke it down. What if we were able to raise enough money so you didn’t have to go to work for 30 days? What is six months of trauma therapy? I reached out to a local therapist and asked what she would charge Alyssa for therapy.”

The goal Honoré settled on was $6,300. More than $25,000 rolled in the first day. “That was just Midtowners,” says Honoré. “Then it went viral across the country the next day.” When the GoFundMe was finally closed after a month, more than $42,000 had been raised. A benefit concert at Memphis Made Brewery raised an additional $3,000. “It changed her life,” says Honoré. “That’s an awesome thing that came out of this. People give a damn.”

***

“After the fact, it’s an easy conclusion to state that Jared’s mental health was a factor. I would not draw this conclusion,” says Beck.

Three American women are killed by their intimate partners every day. A 2006 study by the Violence Policy Center estimated 1,000-1,500 murder-suicides happen annually, the vast majority of which involve men killing their intimate partners. A 2015 study by Everytown for Gun Safety found that 57 percent of mass murderers have a history of domestic violence. If Moore had not made the community aware of her plight, and if people like Garner and the staff of Murphy’s had not been ready to respond so quickly, many others could have died.

At the University of Memphis, Gayle Beck runs the Athena Project, a mental health research clinic for victims of IPV. “The emotional aftermath of IPV varies by the individual, and so there is not a one-size-fits-all approach that we can advocate for every woman,” she says. Common psychological scars from IPV include Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), depression, and anxiety. “The Athena Project offers cognitive-behavioral treatment for PTSD stemming from IPV. All of the services are free and completely confidential. If a reader wants to learn more, they can phone me at (901) 678-3973.”

“After making my Facebook post, I had so many people privately message me with their own stories. They didn’t want to go public with them. They just wanted to share their stories with someone.” says Moore. “Abuse comes in so many forms. … It’s not always beating. It’s not always this spectacular, but I guarantee that every other person who has been abused feels as crappy as I do about it.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Mayor, Police Director React to Dallas Shootings, Racist Snapchat

Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings held a joint press conference on Friday morning to express sympathy for those affected by Thursday night’s ambush on members of the Dallas Police Department and those affected by this week’s police shootings in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and St. Paul, Minnesota. They also addressed a racist image that was allegedly sent over Snapchat by a Memphis Police officer.

On Dallas shootings and police shootings in Baton Rouge and Minnesota:

Jim Strickland
“I continue to be shocked and saddened by the loss of life in our country during this entire week. I call on us as Americans to reject this violence, all of it. Let us come together in Memphis and beyond and have a peaceful and thoughtful dialogue on the issues that confront us, a dialogue where ideas trump anger and compassion is paramount.” 

Michael Rallings
“I’m angry, frustrated, and disappointed that we continue to go down this path. We cannot survive if we do not work together. We are not your enemy. We are your ally. The Memphis Police Department has more than 2,000 officers out there serving and protecting the citizens of this great city. The horrific incidents that have occurred over the past few days are unacceptable. The shootings in Baton Rouge, Minnesota, and Dallas, Texas, cannot be our new norm. We — citizens, law enforcement personnel, and the citizens of Memphis, Tennessee — are better than that. We must grow strong and support each other. We cannot stand idle anymore. Now more than ever, we need to open our eyes and accept that we as a community must work together.

We must remain patient and let the justice system do its job. At the end of the investigation, we’ll have a clear picture of what has occurred in these incidents. We must not let what has happened skew our way of thinking. We must stay focused in Memphis. We must continue to work together to build relationships. 

I ask that the citizens of Memphis not let the actions of officers in other cities reflect on their opinion of the hard-working men and women who serve as officers in their community. I ask that our officers continue to do their jobs and not let the actions of a few individuals hinder our goals of being servants and protecting our city.”

On any planned or future local protests:

Michael Rallings
“I realize that many of our citizens may be planning to participate in protests, rallies, or candlelight vigils. I ask that, in light of last night’s events in Dallas, you proceed with caution. I’m not going to ask you to not exercise your rights. However, I do expect that these events remain peaceful and all laws are obeyed.”

On the potential for a copycat incident:

Michael Rallings
“We will continue to work with local and national law enforcement partners to make sure Shelby County citizens stay safe. We don’t want these type of incidents to happen. We want to make sure our community stays calm and stays safe. I’m always concerned about violence or a copycat incident, so that’s why we try to take a proactive stance. We’re reaching out to our community activists, our clergy leaders to relay the message that we want peace in Memphis.”

On Snapchat:
 
An image of a white hand pointing a gun at an emoji of an African American man was allegedly sent over Snapchat by a Memphis Police officer. Rallings said fellow officers reported the Snapchat to him, and two officers have been relieved of duty pending an investigation.

“The image is disgusting and will not be tolerated. We will conduct a thorough investigation and the individual responsible will be held accountable,” Rallings said.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Residents Can Get “SkyCop”-Style Cameras for Their Neighborhoods

In East Memphis’ Belle Meade subdivision, neighborhood security camera footage recently led to an arrest of a person stealing a trailer with a four-wheeler on the back. But unlike a typical private security camera, this one fed directly into the Memphis Police Department’s (MPD) Real Time Crime Center (RTCC).

Back in February, Belle Meade became the first neighborhood to fund-raise and purchase their own “SkyCop”-style cameras, which were installed throughout the area bordered by Walnut Grove, Poplar, Goodlett, and East Cherry.

The MPD has been placing surveillance cameras in high-crime or highly trafficked areas for years, and they have several mobile cameras that are placed around town during special events. But the Memphis City Council cleared the way earlier this year for any neighborhood to get a camera hooked up with the RTCC.

“This process is for people who are interested in having their cameras tie into the RTCC,” said Councilman Philip Spinosa, who sponsored the resolution to allow neighborhoods to purchase their own police cameras.

While any neighborhood can install cameras that don’t feed into the RTCC, Memphis Police Sergeant Joe Patty said the police-approved surveillance cameras make it easier for police to access video when something happens. The cameras also become property of the MPD, so maintenance falls to them, not the neighborhood.

“You have our patented SkyCop enclosure with the blue light on it, so it’s easy to recognize as a police camera. It belongs to the police, so it becomes our problem,” Patty said. “And if something were to happen, we could instantly access it and pull the video. In the other scenario [where neighborhoods use private cameras], we have to send somebody from our video team to go out and pull that video. Unless it’s a homicide or a really critical incident, that’s usually the next couple days after it happens.”

Here’s how it works: Once a neighborhood group decides it wants police cameras, someone from the group will contact the MPD’s RTCC at MPDNeighborhoodCameras@memphistn.gov, and they’ll send back a list of approved vendors. The group gets quotes from those vendors and either fund-raises from within or applies for grants to cover the cost of the camera and installation. The group then donates that cost to the Memphis and Shelby County Law Enforcement Foundation, which will purchase the cameras and have them installed.

“It becomes property of MPD, and we add it into our grid,” Patty said. “It’s basically an MPD camera, but it’s purchased by private funds.”

When the council cleared the way for this process earlier this year, some council members had concerns that citizens in neighborhoods that might need cameras the most wouldn’t be able to afford to purchase them. So they also approved a new Neighborhood Sentinel Program that allots $400,000 in the city budget for 70 neighborhood cameras to be installed in crime hotspots determined by MPD data.

“Neighborhoods should have access to cameras regardless of financial means,” Spinosa said. “This is a first step in adding security to neighborhoods. I would love it if, after we do these 70, we could do another resolution for another 70.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphis 2016 Homicides By the Numbers

On March 28th, 22-year-old Reginald Burke was shot while driving near the I-240 North/I-40 East flyover, the apparent victim of a road rage incident between himself and Tarrance Dixon and Robert Chaney, both 21. Dixon and Chaney were charged with second-degree murder.

Burke was able to flag down another driver for help and was transported to the Regional One Health, where he eventually succumbed to his injury, making him the city’s 59th homicide victim.

Burke’s murder is one of 79 homicides in the city so far this year, a number that’s nearly double from 2015’s 47 homicides to date. According to statistics released in April by the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, the murder rate was up 69 percent over 2015 and 43 percent over 2006 (the year the commission launched their Operation Safe Community crime-fighting plan).

Reginald Burke

Those high homicide numbers appear to be skewing the overall violent crime data, pushing citywide major violent crime up by 16 percent from January to March 2016 versus the same period in 2015. And homicides haven’t seemed to slow in April or May either.

“It is almost impossible to predict when a homicide will occur. There is no statistical data that will alert us when someone has made the decision to commit murder,” said MPD Interim Director Michael Rallings.

Of the 79 homicides so far, 55 of the murders have been solved by the MPD, 42 arrests have been made, and three warrants have been issued for suspects who remain at large. Four of the 79 homicides have been ruled as justified by the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office. In 34 of the 79 homicides, the victim and suspect knew one another. Only 11 of the 79 homicides are believed to be gang-related.

“By saying gang-related, I mean the suspect, victim, or both are known gang members, and the homicide occurred due to some type of gang activity,” Rallings said.

Rallings said 65 of the 79 murders to date involved firearms.

Memphis Gun Down, a program that launched in 2012 under former Mayor A C Wharton’s Innovate Memphis (formerly the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team), has made it a goal to reduce gun violence in the city. The program’s 901 Bloc Squad sends reformed gang members into high-crime areas in Frayser, Orange Mound, South Memphis, and the Mt. Moriah corridor to connect with those who are caught up in the gang lifestyle.

“They’re trying to show diplomacy and influence these young people who are gang-involved to put their guns down and resolve conflict in other ways,” said Memphis Gun Down Director Bishop Mays.

Memphis Gun Down also has a hospital intervention program at Regional One Health, through which they make contact with shooting victims to try and prevent any retaliatory crimes. Additionally, the program offers youth an outlet during the summer through its “twilight basketball” games in the above-mentioned target communities.

“We need to align our resources throughout the city. We can’t put everything on the backs of the police officers,” Mays said. “We’re in a state now where we must pay attention or we will lose a lot of youthful assets in our community. We need to not judge and be willing to reach out to those who will accept help.”

Rallings echoed Mays’ statement, saying that the police can’t curb violence without help from the community. At a press conference last week, Rallings urged citizens to alert police any time they see an altercation occurring or someone suspicious in their neighborhoods.

“It takes everybody working together to make this a safe community,” Rallings said. “People are waiting on the police to solve all these problems, but the police are just one aspect. The clergy, everyone in the educational system, and individuals in the community all play a part.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Police Director Discusses Homicide, Guns, Drugs

Memphis Police Director Michael Rallings held a press briefing on Thursday afternoon at the department’s Organized Crime Unit (OCU) to show off guns and drugs confiscated in various busts since February, and the director also took a few minutes to discuss the city’s unusually high homicide rate.

Rallings said there have been 78 homicides to date, and 55 of those murders have been solved. The MPD has arrested 42 people in connection with this year’s homicides, and three warrants have been issued for suspects at large. Four of the homicides were ruled justifiable.

In 34 cases, the suspects and victims knew one another, and only 11 homicides this year have been proven to be gang-related. Fourteen of the murders were domestic violence-related, and 17 of them involved juveniles (including four unborn children). 

Firearms were overwhelmingly the weapon of choice for suspects this year — 64 of the 78 homicides were committed with guns.

“As I have mentioned before, it is almost impossible to predict when a homicide will occur. There is no statistical data that will alert us of when someone has made the decision to commit murder. The Memphis Police Department cannot combat this problem alone,” Rallings said.

On two tables in an OCU briefing room were 130 guns, 223 pounds of pot, 1,118 grams of crack and powdered cocaine, and an assortment of heroin, meth, and pills. Of those guns, 110 were handguns and 20 were long guns. The guns and drugs were collected through undercover investigations and traffic stops conducted between February 1st and April 15th of this year. Those investigations and traffic stops led to 394 felony arrests, 61 weapons charges, 424 misdemeanor arrests, and 808 misdemeanor citations.

The largest bust was associated with three related houses on South Wellington, Newell, and North Holmes. That search warrant netted $13,000 in cash, 33 pounds of pot, 405 Xanax pills, and 22 firearms. Ten of the weapons seized in that operation were stolen from citizens and six were stolen from Richard’s Armory in Bartlett.

Rallings said the total stash seized since February was “one of the largest collections … I have witnessed.”

“With a large reduction in staff, these men and women are still hitting it hard. They’re doing a bang-up job,” Rallings said. “We’re doing everything we can to rid the city of guns, gangs, criminals, and drugs.”

The guns and drugs on this table were associated with one investigation that involved three homes.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

Greg Cravens

About Toby Sells’ story, “Lawmakers Consider Bills on Bikes, Historical Markers, and Skunks” …

Translation: “No Gas Tax for Bike Lanes,” written and paid for by the Koch Brothers’ Banana Brand Banana Republics. Where the Bananas Don’t Grow on Trees; They Legislate™.

“No Removal of Historical Markers,” doesn’t apply to the Nathan Bedford Forrest statue, since it’s not in honor of a conflict. It’s in honor of a man.

“Legal Skunk Ownership,” leads to the next step: skunk-fighting rings.

Jeff

There are already enough skunks in local and state government, thank you.

Bike lanes are nice, if they aren’t converted from congested public roads designed and built for — and funded by — motorists.

ALJ2

About Bianca Phillips’ story, “Memphis Police Department Attempts to Boost Presence” …

MPD is 400 officers shy of a full complement, by their analysis. Large cities across this nation have varying numbers of law enforcement officers. Memphis has more than some comparable cities and fewer than others. I hope our new police director will do his own assessment of what a “full complement” should be.

He/she could start with an assessment of how we are currently using our force. Reactivating the PST program is a good start, as is increasing data-based “hotspot” policing. Another thing that would help is getting all the officers parked car-to-car in our parks and behind buildings back moving on our neighborhood streets. We might not need to pay overtime if we more efficiently used our force.

Memphis Tigers

Our violent crime rate is second only to Detroit (12 percent lower), and our police force is 25 percent smaller, based on the total number of officers. Oakland and St. Louis have similar crime rates, but their police forces are significantly smaller. Oakland’s ranks are one-third the size found in Memphis. Milwaukee rounds out the top five violent-crime-rate cities, and their force is 10 percent smaller.

Barf

Barf, try adjusting those numbers by geographical size.

Oakland = 78 square miles

St. Louis = 66.2 square miles

Milwaukee = 96.8 square miles

Detroit = 142.9 square miles

Memphis = 324 square miles

That is the problem. Memphis has annexed like a madman, and now officers are stretched too thin. MPD has to provide police protection for 324 square miles. Kind of hard to do when you run off 400 officers (and another 150 are on the DROP, ready to retire soon). The City Council created this problem and refused to listen to officers who said they would leave if the city changed the benefits.

Firefox

About Bianca Phillips’ post, “Brian Kelsey Drops Bill Supporting Racist, Sexist, Homophobic School Leader” …

Now, was Kelsey doing this to send a message to the people in the rural areas of TN-08 that he was just like them? Then, he got so much blowback that he had to drop it, lest he offend donors?
He wants to be in Congress so badly he can taste it, and I can only imagine he is petrified at the prospect of Mark Luttrell crushing him in Big Shelby.

LeftWingCracker

Kelsey: “I just grabbed the next bill in that folder marked ALEC WANTS. Was this one not supposed to be in there?”

Charley Eppes

This is the same creep who crafted the “Turn Away the Gays” bill in 2014, under the guise of the “Religious Freedom” Act. Follow the money. He’s in ALEC’s back pocket, which means he’s all Gays, God, and Guns all the time. And now, he wants ALEC to bankroll his way to D.C. As if Marsha Blackburn, Diane Black, Steve Fincher, and Scott DesJarlais haven’t already made Tennessee enough of a laughingstock.

CD

Categories
News News Blog

TBI Will Investigate Latest Officer-Involved Shooting

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) will be handling the case of Wednesday night’s officer-involved shooting of a man following a police chase. The man, who Memphis Police officers say aimed a weapon at them, was killed, and another man is on the run. 

Last October, the Memphis Police Department (MPD), the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office, and the Shelby County District Attorney’s office signed a memorandum of understanding with the TBI to allow the state agency to investigate officer-involved shootings. That agreement came after Memphis Police officer Conner Schilling shot and killed Darrius Stewart, who was unarmed, during a traffic stop last year. Under state law, all TBI investigations are sealed.

On Wednesday evening, two MPD officers shot and killed a man whom friends and family have identified as 32-year-old Johnathan Bratcher. The TBI has not yet released the man’s identity. Around 3 p.m. yesterday, two police vehicles tried to pull over a man driving a Chevy Impala near Trezevant and Lowell. But the driver did not stop, and police pursued the car in the direction of South Parkway and Mississippi Boulevard. At that intersection, the Impala crashed into other cars and then ran over a curb at St. Andrew A.M.E. Church. The driver and passenger jumped out of the car and attempted to run away.

The two Memphis police officers, who have not been identified, and an unidentified Shelby County Sheriff’s officer tried to chase then men. That’s when one of the men allegedly pointed a gun at the officers and was then shot and killed by police. The other man remains at large as of Thursday morning. One of the Memphis Police officers was white and the other black. The man who was shot was black.

Mayor Jim Strickland’s office released the following statement Wednesday afternoon: “I have been made aware of an officer-involved shooting today. However, TBI is the lead agency investigating. I am not at liberty to discuss the details of this case. This is a reminder of the dangers our officers face on a daily basis, even on something as routine as a traffic stop.”

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Branding Agency Behind “Blue Lives Matter” Billboard Message

Two “Blue Lives Matter” billboards went up in Memphis in September — one at I-240 and I-40 and another at Getwell and I-240 — and now the boards are popping up in cities across the country.

“The last numbers that I’ve heard is that there were 300 boards up around the country in at least 20 states and 30 metro markets,” said Trace Hallowell, the creative director for Tactical Magic, the Memphis-based branding agency behind the message.

It all started last spring when an anonymous person contacted Tactical Magic asking if they could create a pro-police message. Hallowell said they worked on the campaign pro bono and came up with two billboard messages — “Memphis Honors the Blues” and “Memphis Heroes Wear Blue.” The anonymous person managed to get Louisiana-based Lamar Advertising to put the message on two billboards in Memphis.

“Over the summer, I became quite provoked by a string of incidents where law enforcement people were singled out for assassination apparently just because of their uniforms. I’m distressed over law enforcement abuses, too. But as a human rights issue, it bothered me terribly,” Hallowell said. “And there are certain sectors of society that were celebrating that. I thought, we need to have a message out there to just affirm the humanity of the men and women who wear uniforms. So I called [the anonymous person] up and said, how about we extend the campaign with this topical message of ‘Blue Lives Matter’?”

The person agreed, and the message went up on billboards here last month. And then, Lamar Advertising began putting the message up in other markets, including Toledo, Ohio; Grand Rapids, Michigan; and Hartford, Connecticut.

The billboards feature a hashtag — #thankublu — at the bottom of the board, and it’s generated both positive and negative responses on Twitter. Some supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement have spoken out against Blue Lives Matter or All Lives Matter messaging, claiming those phrases diminish the original intention of the “Black Lives Matter” message, which came about after a string of incidents involving white officers killing unarmed black men in Ferguson, Missouri; New York City; Cleveland, Ohio; and other cities.

One recent tweet from Stephen Matlock (@stephenmatlock) reads: “As long as police officers can get away with murdering children like #TamirRice, I’m not inclined to say #thankublu.” Another from Clayton Seager (@ClaytonSeager) reads: “#thankublu is so disrespectful towards #BlackLivesMatter I’m disappointed in this country.”

But some of the tweets are positive, and Hallowell says he’s gotten more encouraging feedback than negative feedback.

“This isn’t a competing entity [with Black Lives Matter]. It’s just a message meant to contribute to the cultural conversation in a moment in time when it seemed to be called for. Some people have posted some pretty hateful things, but most of it has been touching and positive,” Hallowell said. “At least 99 percent of our response so far has been really positive, so focusing on the negative might be misleading. Some people have said, ‘This meant a lot to me. I went through a bad shift today. I had to arrive on a scene with a dead infant, and I was feeling terrible, and on the way back, I saw this for the first time.'” 

Memphis has seen its own share of police killings lately. On August 1st, Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton was shot eight times while conducting a traffic stop near Cottonwood and Perkins in Parkway Village. 

Tremaine Wilbourn, 29, has been charged with first-degree murder in the shooting of Bolton, who was 33. Wilbourn was a passenger in a car that was stopped on the side of the road when Bolton pulled over to check on the car. Police believe Bolton may have interrupted a drug transaction. A struggle ensued between Bolton and Wilborn, and Bolton was shot multiple times. Police searched the vehicle Wilbourn was riding in later and found almost two grams of pot. 

On October 4th, Memphis Police Officer Terence Oldridge was shot and killed in his driveway in Cordova. His neighbor Lorenzo Clark was arrested for being a felon in possession of a handgun in connection with the shooting. But Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong has said they don’t yet have enough evidence to charge Clark with murder since they haven’t determined who shot first. Oldridge’s weapon had apparently also been fired.

Memphis has also had a recent case of a white officer killing an unarmed black teen. On July 17th, Darrius Stewart was shot and killed by Memphis Police Officer Conor Schilling after the car Stewart was a passenger in was pulled over for having a headlight out. Stewart was placed in the back of a squad car after the traffic stop while Schilling checked for warrants. The police account of what happened says that, when Schilling opened the squad car to handcuff Stewart, the man kicked the door and tried to attack the officer. Shortly after the warrant check, police reported that Stewart had been shot and an ambulance was called for. Stewart later died at the Regional Medical Center. 

District Attorney Amy Weirich has received the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation’s report on the incident, but she has yet to make a decision as to whether or not Schilling will be charged with homicide.

Categories
News News Blog

Another MPD Officer Shot Over the Weekend

Terence Oldridge

Terence Oldridge, a Memphis Police officer from the Airways precinct, was shot and killed outside his home in Cordova on Sunday. 

According to the Blue Lives Matter Facebook page, Oldridge, who was off-duty but scheduled to work later in the day, was attempting to break up a domestic disturbance between his neighbors when he was shot multiple times by one of the neighbors. The MPD hasn’t released details of how the shooting happened.

He was rushed to the Regional Medical Center but died at the hospital. Police have a suspect in custody, but the suspect’s identity is not yet known.

Oldridge is the second MPD officer shot and killed in the past three months. He’s the fourth officer killed since 2011. In July 2011, officer Timothy Warren was killed in the line of duty at a downtown hotel, and in December 2012, officer Martoiya Lang was shot and killed while serving a warrant.

Oldridge had barely been with the MPD for a year. His anniversary with the department was September 22nd.

Congressman Steve Cohen released the following statement this morning: “Like all Memphians, my thoughts and prayers today are with Officer Olridge’s family and his fellow officers. It is both shocking and sad to lose another Memphis Police officer.”

UPDATE (10/13): Oldridge’s neighbor Lorenzo Clark has been charged with being a felon in possession of a handgun in connection with Oldridge’s shooting. But he has not been charged with Oldridge’s death. Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong has said it has not been determined who fired first, and Oldridge’s weapon had apparently been fired.