INFOGRAPHIC: Memphis Crime Rate (Slightly) Down
Tag: Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission
Bill Gibbons, the current commissioner of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security and a former Shelby County district attorney general, will soon join the Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis to lend his expertise to the study of protecting the public. He’s also re-taking the helm of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission — a post he held until he joined state government in 2011.
Some see Gibbons’ imminent return as an encouraging move to combat rising violent crime. But it is abundantly clear to me that the prescriptions advocated by Gibbons and other members of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, dating back to the 2006 inception of Operation Safe Community (OSC), have done little if anything to combat crime.
The crime commission continues to use 2006, a high-water mark for violent crime in Shelby County, as a benchmark to measure violent crime. This is where politicians get their numbers when they say “crime is down.” But by any real measure, crime isn’t down, especially not this year, which has seen more murders in the first four months of the year than any time since OSC began.
In fact, the rate of violent crime in Shelby County has stayed largely the same in every year except 2006. As defined by the FBI Uniform Crime Report and reported by the various law enforcement agencies in the area, the county rate has remained in a range of 15 to 20 crimes per 1,000 people.
OSC says they use 2006 because that’s when the program began. It then releases reports that show decreases in crime on a particular month of the year. But in reality, no real progress has been made since a dramatic — and temporary — drop in violent crime nationwide in the 1990s.
This is exactly why no one believes the crime numbers, and they shouldn’t.
As it stands, local law enforcement acts as a reactionary force. Part of that just comes with the territory. But there are preventive measures that the police can employ that build trust from the public, and build stronger ties with communities without imposing a military-style occupation on every high-crime neighborhood.
While the Operation Safe Community 2012-2016 plan continues to talk about pilot programs for community-oriented policing, there’s no guarantee that with the departure of former Memphis Police Department director Toney Armstrong, their strongest local advocate, these programs will continue.
One good thing in the OSC plan is that it calls for more supportive services outside of law enforcement, like mental health treatment access and job training. These are absolutely necessary tools, but there’s little talk of funding sources.
At the same time, the plan pushes for harsher sentences and mandatory minimums, which have been repeatedly shown to disproportionately impact racial minorities and the poor, at a time when such strategies are falling out of favor, to say the least.
There’s no question that organizations like the crime commission can be effective tools to help bring together for a common cause disparate groups that otherwise wouldn’t talk to each other. To the extent that this has happened, the crime commission has been successful.
The plan the commission has laid out has lofty goals. But with such scarce communication with the public, there’s little hope of building the kind of buy-in that would help achieve them. The commission has mostly been used as a PR tool to pump up the stats of politicians rather than to bring these and other diverse groups together or educate the public in a real way.
Gibbons was involved in the commission’s creation. This pattern started with him at the helm. So there’s little reason to believe it will change now that he’s back.
Good intentions notwithstanding, the crime commission, which includes a host of “community partners,” suffers from the same problems other such boards do: The people who serve on them may be stakeholders, but they are not representatives of the community, and so reaching out to the community is virtually impossible, making improbable at best the goal of achieving the consistently moving target of truly reducing crime in Shelby County.
There’s no question that Shelby County has a huge task in working to reduce crime in our community. But let’s be real about it, and talk about the warts at least as openly as we talk about the successes. Give people actionable things to do before a call to 911 is necessary rather than relying solely on the constant drumbeat of “report the crime.”
And make sure law enforcement is building lasting relationships with communities of need.
Steve Ross is proprietor of vibincblog, where a longer version of this essay first appeared.
New data from the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission reveals there has been a slight increase in murders, aggravated assaults, and robberies countywide compared to 2013. However, burglaries and felony theft offenses are on the decline.
The above-mentioned information was disclosed in the Crime Commission’s latest Operation: Safe Community monthly crime trends report. Countywide crime statistics for January through September 2014 were shared in the report.
Violent crime has increased by six percent in Memphis and 6.6 percent across Shelby County compared to last year, according to the report. From January to September 2014, there were 116 murders, 303 forcible rapes, 6,405 aggravated assaults, and 2,594 robberies in Shelby County. Over the same period in 2013, there were 98 murders, 315 forcible rapes, 5,988 aggravated assaults, and 2,434 robberies.
Major property crime, however, decreased by 3.6 percent in Memphis and 3.9 percent countywide from January through September 2014, compared to the same period in 2013. In 2014, there were 9,269 burglaries, 22,049 theft offenses, and 2,417 motor vehicle thefts. However, in 2013, there were 9,807 burglaries, 22,989 theft offenses, and 2,291 motor vehicle thefts.
There are a few other offenses that have declined since 2013. Drug/narcotic violations have dropped by 28 percent and simple assaults by 11.4 percent. Furthermore, weapons law violations have decreased 10.6 percent and domestic violence 8.8 percent.
The Operation: Safe Community monthly crime trends report utilizes data reported by local enforcement agencies to the Tennessee Incident Based Reporting System.
Operation: Safe Community was launched in 2007 and is an initiative to reduce crime in Memphis and Shelby County. Spearheaded by the Memphis-Shelby County Crime Commission, the initiative involves an organized network of more than 100 partner organizations.
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Crime Fight
When the Memphis Police Department (MPD) upgraded its multi-million-dollar communication system, the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office was added to the platform. By joining forces, the law enforcement agencies saved taxpayer money.
But don’t think that means the two departments are ready to share.
County commissioner Mike Carpenter presented a plan last week to the Law Enforcement Consolidation Task Force that would shift county law enforcement to MPD and make the jail the sheriff’s sole responsibility.
“Two weeks ago, task-force members said they weren’t sure what we were talking about. There were no specific proposals,” said Carpenter, the group’s chair. “We need a long-term view. This isn’t about the individuals running things today. It’s not about the mayor.”
Under the proposal, a five-member Public Safety Commission would guide a functional consolidation of the two entities. The commission would consist of five representatives: someone from MPD, someone from the sheriff’s office, a representative of the county mayor, a representative of the city mayor, and a chair, appointed jointly by the city and county mayors. All the mayoral appointments would be confirmed by the City Council and the County Commission.
The plan, which would ultimately require a change in the county charter, would give leaders a chance to reverse or opt out of consolidation agreements if things weren’t going well.
Carpenter called his 21-page proposal a “starting point.” Though several other members of the task force seemed to agree, Sheriff Mark Luttrell called it “premature,” “pre-emptive,” and “ill-timed.”
“One of the most polarizing issues facing the community is consolidation,” Luttrell said. “I feel the report pre-empts the committee process.”
Mike Heidingsfield, director of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission, the organization that suggested functional consolidation of the departments’ basic training, traffic, search and rescue, and internal affairs divisions in a 2003 report, felt similarly.
“This perspective assumes this group has decided that consolidation is the path to follow. I don’t think we’ve gotten there as an entity,” he said.
Just the word “consolidation” is controversial. Unfortunately, as Carpenter noted, there will never be an “apples to apples” comparison with another city or county. But the proposal makes a good case, citing the elimination of boundaries, a rising jail population, potential economies of scale, and an elimination of unnecessary duplication.
Representatives from three other consolidated police departments told the task force that their organizations were more efficient after consolidation.
Robert White of the Louisville Police Department said, “Everything there were two of, there is now one of, and people are getting the same type of service.”
As it is, MPD and the sheriff’s office rarely operate jointly. The Metro DUI unit, the Memphis Shelby Metropolitan Gang Unit and the Metro Narcotics Unit, once joint crime-fighting efforts, have all been disbanded.
“Joint efforts at attacking non-federal crimes and day-to-day policework appear to be virtually non-existent,” the report noted. “These kinds of differences in philosophy and mission and disputes between the departments are avoided to the benefit of citizens under one single law enforcement agency.”
But perhaps the strongest argument for a functional consolidation is that it will happen one day whether citizens vote on it or not.
In its 2003 report, the Crime Commission noted that, because of annexation, there will be fewer than 20,000 residents in unincorporated Shelby County by the year 2020.
“Continuing at the current staffing levels to provide law enforcement for the small area described above is impractical and effectively results in municipal taxpayers, who are also county taxpayers, subsidizing law enforcement services for a small portion of unincorporated Shelby County.”
Before its law enforcement divisions were consolidated, Charlotte, North Carolina, was in a similar situation.
“It was not going to be long before the county police did not have a jurisdiction to police,” Charlotte representative Russ McElwee told the task force. “One of the strongest arguments for consolidation was the city people were paying county police salaries without any of the benefits.”
Consolidated law enforcement may not save money, although it has in some places. But that’s probably not the main issue for citizens of a high-crime society.
The success of law enforcement isn’t measured in dollars and cents but in safety and security. And, as the report noted, law enforcement may see boundaries but criminals don’t.
Saying it was just a “starting point,” County Commissioner Mike Carpenter officially presented his consolidation proposal to the law enforcement consolidation task force on Wednesday.
“I don’t think this is an air-tight proposal. … This is open to discussion,” Carpenter said.
Carpenter’s plan suggests creating a Public Safety Commission that would guide a five-year consolidation process of the Memphis Police Department and the law enforcement duties of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office. If, during that time, consolidation was not working or was costing too much money, the bodies involved could opt not to go forward.
But some task force members said they needed more time to come up with a viable proposal.
“If it takes five years to execute [the plan], we need to take longer than 90 days to choose that path,” said Mike Heidingsfield, head of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission.
The task force’s next meeting is November 28th.