Tag: Memphis

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Cover Feature News

Blue Crush

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

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

Justin Fox Burks

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Justin Fox Burks

Richard Janikowski

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Geography trumps ethnicity,” he says.

Justin Fox Burks

Larry Godwin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Susan Lowe

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Reaching a Balance

Thanks to a spot that runs regularly on the local Air America radio affiliate, we learn that some or another major media source — we forget which, but we were impressed — declared Memphis “the greatest American place” back in 1998. If we are, it is because the conditions of our existence have historically compelled a mingling of cultures, resulting most noticeably in a series of glorious musical heritages. We use the plural on purpose, having heard music
historiographer David Evans of the University of Memphis discourse convincingly on the separate musical streams — ragtime, blues, jazz, R&B, rockabilly, rock-and-roll, and more — that have issued into the world from Memphis.

But our greatness in the future will depend on how well we achieve a synthesis of our populations in other ways, especially politically and socially. Like the rest of America, Memphis and Shelby County are now past that era in which the words “black” and “white” adequately describe ethnic variety. We are home now to Asians and Hispanics in truly significant numbers.

It is this last fact, along with the rough balance of Caucasians and African Americans in our mix, that made the honor conferred on us this past weekend by Major League Baseball so appropriate. In becoming the site of the first annual Civil Rights Game and, according to baseball commissioner Bud Selig, the likely permanent home of the game, Memphis achieved both a signal distinction and the opportunity to become an annual example to mankind.

That opportunity is a burden, too, of course. We may be currently notorious in the eyes of the state and nation for instances of public corruption, but few other American jurisdictions, we venture, have achieved an effective symmetry in government to the extent that we have.

Consider: The current congressman in Memphis’ 9th congressional district, Steve Cohen, is a white who won a hefty majority last year against a black opponent with a famous last name. The current mayor of Shelby County, where Caucasians still dominate on Election Day, is A C Wharton, an African American who won a lopsided majority in 2004 over a well-known white member of the County Commission.

A white candidate, City Council member Carol Chumney, has gained enough currency in Memphis’ black precincts to have finished ahead of Memphis’ incumbent black mayor, Willie Herenton, in the first major poll of city voters. Meanwhile, a significant number of influential whites are involved in the mayoral effort of another candidate, former MLGW head Herman Morris, who is African American.

Racial issues still flare up in local government. The current controversy over a proposed second Juvenile Court judge is a case in point, though even that issue has as much to do with reaching an effective balance between the county’s municipal and governmental jurisdictions as anything else.

We still argue at the table over who gets the best seat or the first cut of meat. But we sit down together, and we’re used to it. If we can take the next major step and stabilize population flow in an environment that is economically secure for all, we will, in fact, deserve to be called a great American place.

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Embedded Diner

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

A few weeks ago, I was watching a local station’s 10 o’clock newscast when I saw a story that made me stand up and cheer with sheer joy. I was so loud in my state of ecstasy that I woke up my wife Holly, who was asleep on the sofa next to me. “What, did the Grizzlies finally win a game?” she asked. “No, something much bigger,” I replied. According to the report, a Memphis man named William Arnold was thrown out of a Waffle House restaurant in Southaven for talking too loudly on his cellphone.

Mr. Arnold, judging from your brief appearance and the few words you muttered on that night’s newscast, you seem like a decent man. Pleading your case to the camera, you said that you were only making a quick call to check on your mother. You seemed sincere. However, I have to admit that I do not feel sorry for you. In fact, I am glad they asked you to leave the Waffle House for your lack of civility. I know your type, Mr. Arnold. Do I ever.

Last year, my wife and I bought a great old house. We got a wonderful deal, but the kitchen had to be gutted and totally rebuilt. Instead of paying a contractor to do it in a couple of weeks, we decided to subcontract the job. While this approach has been cheaper, it’s also taken a lot longer than expected. What this means is that we’ve basically been without a kitchen for the past six months. What this means, too, is that we’ve eaten out almost every night for 180 days. That last sentence bears repeating: We’ve eaten out almost every night for 180 days.

In that time, I’ve come to see myself as an embedded diner of sorts. I can report that even the best meals, when eaten over and over again, can grow tiresome, and that the wait staff, no matter how friendly, gets sick of seeing you a couple times a week. But perhaps most significantly is how astoundingly rude some of the patrons can be. This is not the majority of patrons; it only seems that way given the general lack of manners and wealth of jackassery of those obnoxious few.

For instance, sitting in Huey’s Midtown I saw the strangest thing, and it left me with the impression that folks just don’t talk to each other like they used to. In a booth behind us, a man was with his girlfriend. They were a nice, clean-cut, respectable-looking young couple. Initially, he was on his cellphone having a conversation while she sat there looking bored and sad and ignored. As soon as he got off his phone, she picked hers up and started talking to someone. Now it was his turn to look sad, bored, and ignored. As soon as she ended her conversation, he picked up his phone and called someone. This went on and on and on. They took turns, volleying back and forth. I don’t think they actually spoke one word to each other the entire duration of their meal. It was surreal, almost like a Fellini film. In retrospect, I think one of them should have stayed at home, and the other should have gone to the restaurant. At least that way, they would have spoken to each other.

On another evening, I watched as a little boy took all of the sugar packets out of the ramekin on the table. He lined them up neatly, all nice and color-coded. Next, he commenced licking each and every one of them in an orderly, systematic way. Apparently, this kid has some method to his madness. He was concentrating on what he was doing, in “the zone,” if you will, so you can understand his frustration when his mother interrupted his focus and told him, in a very calm and friendly voice, to stop. He freaked out and pushed all the little packets off the table and down to the floor. Mommy picked them up and put them back in the ramekin like nothing happened. Needless to say, when dining out now, I take my coffee black.

During my experiment of culinary grandeur, I also witnessed a fair share of individuals having illicit affairs. Who needs Desperate Housewives when you can see the real thing? I saw a professor having a heated argument with his student. The student was appalled that he didn’t get a higher grade in his class since they were “sleeping together and everything.” Another of my favorites was the one I refer to as “the doctor and his lady.” She complained about being second fiddle to the surgeon’s wife. Anytime he tried to inject anything about himself into the conversation, she would erupt. For instance, he would say something about the stresses and daily grind of being a cardiovascular surgeon, and she would cut him off mid-sentence and retort with something like, “Do you think it is easy to have sex with you? Well, you are wrong.” It was beyond comical. The highlight of the conversation was when he tried to interrupt, saying, “That is irrelevant.” At that point, the gold-digging, silicone-filled, plastic-looking shallow mistress gave the heart-transplant surgeon a 15-minute education on how “irrelevant” is not a word, and he should learn to speak better to avoid sounding ignorant. It was priceless! One of the funniest things I have ever heard.

During our six-month, dining-out opus, Holly and I invented a coping mechanism to help us survive. We referred to it as the “Button and Dial.” If someone was annoying us and we wanted to put him or her out of their misery, we had an imaginary button on the table we would hit. We imagined that when the button was pressed, a laser beam would come out from the ceiling and zap this insufferable person. It would be instant annihilation, no suffering. If someone was REALLY annoying, we would slowly turn an imaginary dial. It would zap him or her in a long, slow, agonizing manner. Much suffering was involved. He or she would slowly turn red, and you could see their skeleton and eyes light up, like a cartoon. It lasted for about 30 seconds. It was brutal, but some people deserved this.

I have had the opportunity to travel quite a bit throughout this country. And at the risk of sounding like I am trying to suck up to the restaurant community to get a free meal or two, I must say that for a town its size, Memphis has some wonderful restaurants and a wide selection of choices for even the most discriminating of palates. The vast majority of our meals were great, and my family started some dining traditions I hope we will continue when our kitchen renovation is finished.

Despite my grumblings, much positive came from my social experiment. After being embedded frontline in these eateries for six months, I have a newfound respect for the wait staff of this city. I can’t tell you how many times I saw a patron ask a waiter, “Will I like this?” And I can’t tell you how many times I wished the waiter would have said, “How the hell should I know what you like, lady?” But I never did hear this reply. Nor did I ever see a waiter mistreat a customer. Most were happy, friendly, and personable folks. In fact, I highly recommend that you dine out frequently and enjoy our city’s high-quality eating establishments. My only advice to you is not to do it (or anything else) for six months straight.

Greg Graber, a native Memphian, is a freelance writer and educator. His “Greg Graber Growl” column appeared on the Grizzlies’ NBA Web site for three years, and he was named “Best Self-Promoter” by the Flyer staff in the 2001 Best of Memphis issue. You can contact him at ggraber.blogspot.com.

Categories
Music Music Features

Three’s Company

Jem Cohen, the ascot-sporting bassist for the Ettes, has got it made. He gets to play energetic ’60s beat rock, and, as the only male in the band, he gets to spend a lot of time with two beautiful ladies and travel around in a psychedelic van solving mysteries. Okay, I made up the last part. Nonetheless, the L.A.-based trio with a vintage look and sound seems to be having a blast and getting along as they head into the final weeks of a two-month tour through Canada and the U.S. Drummer Poni Silver quips, “Ask us how well we’re getting along in another three weeks.”

All three members, including guitarist and frontwoman Coco Hames, are from the East Coast but didn’t meet until they were in Los Angeles. They are finding that La-la Land isn’t the easiest place for a retro-rocking, non-trendy group to survive.

“It’s hard because you’re competing against the sons and daughters of famous people who have all of these connections in the music business,” Cohen says. “Though the place is big enough for different styles, the scene is so fragmented.” Hames half-jokingly adds, “We tour all the time because everyone in Los Angeles is so industry.”

In 2004, Hames and Silver decided to form a band. Where the girl group in Dreamgirls drops the “-ettes” from their name, Hames wanted to embrace the feminine aspect of the name and “be the suffix.” After trying out a couple of girlfriends on bass, the two decided on Cohen, sacrificing the gender purity of the group for band chemistry. Cohen says, “One of the reasons we do get along so well is that we love the same music — Carl Perkins, Buddy Holly, the Beatles.”

After months of rehearsal and songwriting, the Ettes decided to cut their first proper record. They aimed high and far away. They contacted Liam Watson, who had produced Billy Childish, Holly Golightly, and the White Stripes, and arranged to record at his Toe Rag Studios in London. The Ettes financed the trip themselves.

“We wanted to do it and didn’t think about what would happen next,” Hames remembers. In London, the group got to meet their musical idols, Childish and Golightly.

Soon after, the Ettes were able to convince the Sympathy for the Record Industry label to release their debut, Shake the Dust. Though the label is based in SoCal, many of its acts hail from Detroit or, in the case of Jack Yarber’s multiple projects, Memphis. In fact, Falling James Moreland, Courtney Love’s first husband and noted transvestite punk rocker/critic, recently wrote, “Let’s hope we don’t lose this ever-touring group to Detroit or Memphis. The Ettes fit in better with rootsy revisionists like the Detroit Cobras and the Oblivians than they do with most L.A. bands.” He might have good reason to be fearful. The Ettes are indeed looking for a nice place to relocate. According to Hames, the phrase “shake the dust” is about moving on from the past.

One place the Ettes are considering is Asheville, North Carolina. Hames’ folks live there, and it’s also the home of former Memphian Greg Cartwright and his band the Reigning Sound. The Ettes aren’t ashamed to admit their admiration for Cartwright’s music, both the Oblivians (which Cartwright was a member of along with Yarber and Goner Records’ Eric Friedl) and the Reigning Sound. The Ettes have even recorded a cover of the Reigning Sound’s “We Repel Each Other.” Their streamlined, poppier version lacks the raw power and emotional urgency of the original, but it does have a charm of its own.

Hames’ voice, equal parts Ye-Ye girl sweetness and party-gal rasp, is much better suited to Shake the Dust‘s low-key, melancholy closer, “I Wanna Go Home.” It would also seem to be a perfect match for “My Baby Cried All Night Long,” a Nancy Sinatra cover that the Ettes have been working into their live repertoire. Hames, in a stylish baby-doll dress, could easily be Nancy Sinatra’s understudy. The band’s impeccably mod fashion sense is evident not only in their publicity shots but offstage as well. Hames says, “I dress the part every day. People need to understand that it comes from my history as a debutante.”

To give you an idea of how many shows they have played on the recent tour, the Ettes’ upcoming show will be their second in Memphis this year. Even with the relentless touring schedule, Cohen seems more than content in his role as the Jack Tripper of the garage-rock set.

“We are excited about coming back to play,” Cohen says. “Everyone was very energetic in the audience, and we even attended a late-night dance party after the show.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Fly on the Wall

The Recipe

From The Healthy Memphis Blog: “If Santa left a pet hamster under your Christmas tree, you might want to know … pet rodents, including hamsters, are an underappreciated source of salmonella infections in humans.” The HMB failed to report that hamsters should never be served raw or rare and should be cooked until the internal temperature is at least 180 degrees Fahrenheit. Serve with pesto or a nice chimichurri sauce.

Headline of the Week

After reading The Commercial Appeal article about Michael Frick, recently named market president for Bank of America in Memphis, it became clear that the 48-year-old banker was indeed a rising star in the industry. And yet, “Frick A Rising Star in Banking” reads a little too much like a euphemistic personal ad.

King’s Crown

According to WHBQ, the family of Henry Weiss, D.D.S., will auction off a model of Elvis Presley’s teeth and a crown made especially for Presley. Let’s all hope and pray the King didn’t have a proctologist.

Headline of the Week II

A clever headline can be a thing of beauty, but who at the Memphis Daily News thought it was a good idea to title a brief about the Memphis Area Limb Loss Support Group, “Out on a Limb”? At least there was no mention of a “hoppin’ good time.”


Innocent!

Your Pesky Fly would like to thank everyone for their concern and for all the offers of cake, cookies, and conjugal visits. But when the CA reported that “Authorities have identified Christopher Davis, 20, of Memphis, as the alleged robber who was shot while trying to rip off an armored car,” it wasn’t me. Still, if any of those offers still stand, I do hate to see a good cookie go to waste.

Categories
Opinion

Criminal Confusion

In addition to the crime problem, the police and sheriff’s department have a trust problem and a communication problem.

Victims can’t get their 911 calls answered or routed promptly. Community watchdogs can’t get officers to respond to known trouble spots. Prosecutors can’t lock up all the violent criminals they convict. City Council members don’t necessarily believe additional cops would be deployed wisely and well, and they’re reluctant to raise property taxes to pay for them. And the federal investigation of police corruption, Operation Tarnished Blue, has taken a toll on public confidence.

These are the messages that come out of community forums, press conferences, and interviews with elected officials and crime experts. To use a football analogy, Mayor Willie Herenton and Police Director Larry Godwin are backed up inside their 20-yard line as they push for 650 more officers over the next three years and a property tax increase of at least 50 cents to pay for them.

A community forum hosted by councilwoman Carol Chumney last week in East Memphis produced these comments:

From a neighborhood leader, speaking to a police captain: “What can we do if we know there’s a problem and we can’t get you?”

From Sheriff Mark Luttrell on the 911 problem: “Bartlett, Memphis, and Shelby County each have separate 911 systems. Consolidating it is expensive. It will be two years until it will happen.”

From Chumney: “At a Crime Commission meeting two months ago, Director Godwin told me point-blank they did not need more officers.”

From Shelby County prosecutor Tom Henderson: “We [Tennessee] have some of the weakest gun laws in the United States. Our laws suck.”

From former Police Director Buddy Chapman, now head of Crime Stoppers: “A community suffers only as much crime as it is willing to.”

A police captain and an inspector from Central Precinct listened and responded for nearly three hours, as did Chumney, Luttrell, Henderson, and Chapman. But there was no consensus on what works to reduce crime and what should be done.

Chumney, a likely candidate for mayor in 2007, couldn’t resist the temptation to lecture Herenton and Godwin, who, not surprisingly, had declined her invitation to attend the event. She thinks the police department’s problem is management more than manpower. It’s a fact that Godwin has done a complete turnabout on overtime and more cops this year, and Herenton’s plan looked slapdash. His cost numbers, for example, are based on 500 cops, but he asked for 650. But Chumney’s political digs aren’t helping. The issue isn’t who was first; it’s what to do now.

Chapman’s comment seemed to blame the victims. Was he suggesting Memphians are apathetic? That they should arm themselves? Move away? Spring for 650 more cops? Hire 650 more teachers instead? He didn’t say.

Henderson, when pressed, said Memphis needs a lot more cops. But the veteran prosecutor also noted that his office handled 100,000 cases last year. Even with tougher laws and stiffer sentences, locking up all the bad guys would require another jail.

The one we have processed 53,000 people last year. Luttrell said he would ask for 35 to 40 more deputies in his next budget because calls for service are up. But when he fielded a question about why crime is currently on the rise, he lapsed into banalities about social inequities. Everyone knows Memphis has poverty, gangs, and injustice. The question is why people in the same circumstances decide to start or stop committing crimes. The “broken windows” approach to crime epidemics says that context matters and that smart policing and swift prosecution can significantly influence behavior.

The Memphis Police Department answered 540,000 service calls during the first eight months of 2006. Godwin has said the manpower shortage is so severe that lieutenants are responding to calls because no officers are available.

Asked about the proposed 650 new cops, Michael Heidingsfield, president of the Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission, said, “It certainly can’t hurt, as long as they’re deployed properly. But the number of police is never the long-term solution.” He favors getting rid of the residency requirement but opposes relaxing the education standard. Corruption is a confidence killer, he said, and without public confidence “the cause is lost.”