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Rallings Calls Media Coverage of ACLU Lawsuit “Erroneous”

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Brandon Dill

Michael Rallings with crowd during protest

In response to news coverage of a recent court ruling saying that Memphis violated a 1978 consent decree by gathering political intelligence on protesters, Michael Rallings, director of the Memphis Police Department (MPD), said Tuesday that some of the language in the reports “does not accurately reflect the department’s activities.”

Specifically, Rallings said the terms “surveillance” and “spying” are “erroneous.”

Rallings also said the city’s goal has been to be transparent about the issues involved in the case, ACLU of Tennessee, Inc vs. City of Memphis.

“In fact the only reason many of the articles were printed in the first place is because we voluntarily unsealed documents and posted them on the city website for the world to see,” Rallings said.

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Set to go to trial Monday, August 20th, the case is the result of a lawsuit against the city for gathering political intelligence on protesters over a two-year period through social media and other mediums. Rallings said he can’t speak at length about ongoing litigation but “feels compelled to explain a few things”:

-The terms “surveillance” and “spying” are “erroneous,” and were never used in the court’s order. “Those words conjure up images of officers in unmarked vans on the street corner listening to tapped phone conversations. This does not accurately reflect MPD’s activities, or its motivation, regarding the monitoring of events which are the subject of this lawsuit.”


-Officers look at social media posts to help us gauge the size and intensity of demonstrations so that we can properly provide for public safety. This is also an effective tool in stopping criminal activity such as sexual predators, domestic violence, stalking, and threats. We also use other technology, such as body cameras, SkyCops, and security cameras in our law enforcement efforts to keep Memphians safe.

-Monitoring of social media posts and the usage of modern technology such as body cameras are considered to be best practices in policing nationwide. Various media reports show that many other cities, such as Boston, Charlotte, Denver, Little Rock, San Jose, and Seattle, use social media monitoring. In the aftermath of last year’s Charlottesville riots that resulted in about 40 casualties, including three deaths, the after-action recommendation said that monitoring social media is crucial to protecting public safety.

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“We feel like we have been complying with the consent decree as it would apply to today’s world,” Rallings said. “We need to be able to read these posts and use them as part of our decisions about how we deploy resources, since we are responsible for the safety of all involved.”

Protest and counterprotest can cause “mayhem and loss of life,” Ralling said, but proper social media monitoring helps the agency prepare and respond to those types of events.

“These tools enabled me to ensure that the 2016 bridge protest was peaceful and without injury,” Rallings said. “Without these tools, I believe that night would have ended very differently We will, however, follow the judge’s order.”

Rallings said if the judge rules in favor of the plaintiff, then the department will “find a way to balance public safety with complying with the manner in which the court interprets the consent decree.”

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Downtown Delivery Trucks Block City Streets

CREDIT: Toby Sells

A Memphis business owner once said you could get away with murder downtown as long as you turn on your flashers.

Deliveries to restaurants and office buildings often bring big trucks to a halt on major thoroughfares like Front or Union during peak drive times. The truck drivers will brake, turn on their flashers (or hazard lights), hop out of the cab, open the cargo door, and unload their haul for as long as it takes — all the while blocking a lane of traffic.

“I work downtown, run into it every day, and can’t stand it,” said Memphian Ryan Jones. “There’s got to be an alternative.”

It’s not murder, of course, but Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers are, indeed, instructed to look the other way when it comes to delivery trucks stopped downtown. MPD Major Keith Watson said Memphis is an old city, its streets aren’t as wide as others, and his department has to help facilitate commerce downtown.

“We have to keep the city and the downtown area thriving because that’s what it takes,” Watson said.

Truck drivers know the police won’t ticket them for on-street parking, Watson said. However, MPD will take action if a truck is completely blocking traffic, threatens traffic safety, has been abandoned, or does not have its hazard lights flashing.

Watson said civilian drivers just have to be careful. If a truck is blocking a lane of traffic, drivers should pull around them and “if they’re able to drive on paved streets without going off the pavement, then it’s a win-win situation for everyone.”

Toby Sells

“I would advise the citizenry or those individuals who may experience this to just have a little patience and allow commerce and trade to occur,” Watson said. “If they partake in any of these businesses or companies that are recipients of these deliveries, it’s needed. We have to allow it to occur.”

Almost anyone who has driven in downtown Memphis has come across a truck blocking traffic. But Terence Patterson, president and CEO of the Downtown Memphis Commission (DMC), said he hasn’t heard any complaints about it.

“It’s urban living, and there are certain things that have to take place,” Patterson said. “But, no, I haven’t heard any complaints about [delivery trucks] stopping traffic or there being any safety concerns about it.”

Patterson is willing to help, though, and said anyone with concerns about idled delivery trucks should contact his office.

Memphis is certainly not the only city dealing with downtown deliveries. The Federal Highway Administration said trucks delivering in downtown areas across the country cause 947,000 hours of vehicle delay annually.

Many cities have issued special guidelines for downtown delivery trucks drivers. In Columbia, Missouri, for example, smaller trucks are urged to use public alleys for loading and unloading.

But New York City and Pensacola, Florida, are taking it a step further. Last year, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) gave the cities $200,000 for pilot programs testing an off-hours delivery program. The funds will help businesses there to re-tool their operations to make and receive deliveries at night when traffic counts are low.

DOT officials said if the program is successful, it could be launched in other cities, like Memphis.

“Moreover, it can become part of the solution to the larger congestion problem, bringing relief to people tired of spending hours stuck in traffic every day,” DOT said in a blog post.

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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.

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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. 

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Memphis Police Get Body Cameras

Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong announced that 500 officers will soon begin wearing body cameras. 

The announcement came at a press conference at the MPD’s Real Time Crime Center. Armstrong said that 50 officers are being trained with the cameras each day, and by early October, 500 officers will be using the cameras. By the end of the year, they should have 2,000 cameras deployed and operational. Every officer will have a camera assigned to him or her, Armstrong said.

The body cameras have been discussed for quite some time, but Mayor A C Wharton, who spoke at the conference, said the city was on target with its goal of outfitting officers with cameras.

“In spite of the fact that we’ve had some of the roughest periods, especially with loss of Officer Bolton, there have been quite a few questions about whether we have fallen behind,” Wharton said.

But he maintains the process is on-track. He said it simply takes awhile to get the technology up and running.

“This is not simply about placing a gadget on the lapel of each officer. It’s much more than that, with all the aspects of technology,” Wharton said.

Armstrong also said that in-car video has been installed in five squad cars, and four more cars will have cameras by October 1st. He said there will be cameras in more than 400 vehicles by January 2016.

Wharton pointed out that crime in Memphis is on the decrease with major violent crimes down 20 percent from 2006, when the county’s Operation Safe Community initiative was launched.

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Memphis Police Department Hit with “Blue Flu” Protest

CREDIT: MPA Facebook Page

The “blue flu” protest by Memphis police officers is rooted in changes to their health-care benefits and proposed changes to their retirement benefits. Some have called the benefits “generous,” but others contend they match the tough and sometimes gruesome work of being a cop in Memphis.

The changes prompted hundreds of Memphis Police Department (MPD) officers to call in sick before, during, and after the Independence Day holiday weekend. The protest was not sanctioned by the Memphis Police Association (MPA), according to the police union’s president Michael Williams.  

Last month, the Memphis City Council approved a

24 percent increase to the premiums city employees and some retirees pay for their city-sponsored health insurance. The increase was a compromise down from the 57 percent rate hike proposed by Memphis Mayor A C Wharton. 

The council also cut from the city’s health plan the spouses of city employees if they can get insurance from their employer. Also, a fee on tobacco users was raised from $50 to $120 per pay period.

These health-care changes are on the books but won’t take effect until later this year or the beginning of next year. But what about those benefits? 

The city’s five-year plan from the PFM Group, expert consultants hired by the city, was delivered in January and said that some of the city’s employee health-care benefits are actually better than those of other cities comparable to Memphis. 

• Health insurance premiums —The original 70 percent/30 percent split between the city and employee has shifted over the years to a 75.7 percent/23.1 percent split in 2012, the plan says. The shift raised the cost to the city by

$3.8 million from 2010 to 2012. 

Expenses to cover those costs rose 36.6 percent from 2008 to 2012, the study says. The same costs rose only 22.8 percent in the same time for similar public and private employers. 

• Health insurance deductibles – Memphis city employees pay $100 per person up to $300. Metro Nashville employees pay $2,000, the study says. Atlanta employees pay $900. Boston employees pay $400. “This constitutes a generous benefit to [Memphis] city employees compared to other public and private employers,” the study says.

George Little, the city’s chief administrative officer, said Wharton administration officials have used the five-year plan in making policy decisions. But changing employee health-care options to curtail city spending has been suggested by similar studies going back to Willie Herenton’s administration, Little said.  

 “[The benefits are] higher than the peer cities and better than — I mean way, way better — than most folks in the private sector are getting right now,” Little said.

But Williams said officers here deserve better benefits packages because they don’t get Social Security benefits like those in the private sector, and they have hazardous jobs that take a toll on their bodies and that “no one else wants to do.”

“We arrive on a crime scene with carnage and dead babies and bodies that have been decomposing for days or children that have been molested,” Williams said. “So, to say our packages are better; they may not be better.”

The city council is still debating changes to employee pension benefits, which the five-year plan contends has some components “richer than comparable jurisdictions.” 

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Fine for a Fee

The Council’s public safety and homeland security committee took a turn this morning as a budget committee.

The committee considered two proposals — a traffic court docket for unpaid court costs and an additional fines for home alarms — that would bolster the city’s coffers.

“[Citizens] are given time to pay court costs and fines and for some reason they don’t do this,” said council chair Harold Collins. “We have millions of dollars in outstanding court costs.”

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The Last 48?

Fans of A&E’s The First 48 love homicide detective Caroline Mason, the high-heeled star of the reality show’s Memphis episodes. More than a year after it ran in the Memphis Flyer, an interview with Mason still receives comments on the Flyer website on an almost weekly basis.

But Mason’s fans will be disappointed to learn that the Memphis Police Department (MPD) has suspended filming with the popular reality show. Filming of new cases was halted May 1st, and the crew is only allowed to finish filming cases they began shooting before the suspension.

“We can’t talk about why we’re suspending filming,” said Joe Scott, assistant commander of investigative services for the MPD. “There’s no hard feelings. Nothing happened that was wrong. There are reasons, but those are operational things that are not public.”

Even the producers of the show weren’t informed why they were asked to stop filming.

“All the feedback about the show has been really positive,” said Laura Fleury, executive producer of The First 48.

City councilwoman Wanda Halbert said the decision to halt filming may have stemmed from a discussion wth police director Larry Godwin during a recent council meeting. A few council members had questions about how the show could potentially tarnish the city’s image, Halbert said.

The city receives no monetary compensation for First 48.

“The show has been on for years. They could have at least put money in a victim’s fund,” Halbert said.

Scott said the department is leaving the door open to resume filming at a later date.

“There’s nothing written in stone to say they can’t come back,” Scott said. “That’s why we use the word ‘suspended.'”

Fleury hopes the suspension is only temporary: “We hope they will come back, because there is so much support for the show in the Memphis community and in the police department. We’ve heard that since the show began filming, people in Memphis are more inclined to work with police. They recognize the officers they see on TV.”

The First 48 features segments from 11 major cities and shows investigators solving and making arrests in homicide cases. The show began filming Memphis homicide investigations in 2005, during its third season. Two photojournalists are stationed in Memphis, and they follow detectives on nearly every case.

Cases are only shown on the program, however, when an arrest is made within the first 48 hours of the investigation.

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What Goes Around

CREDIT: Bianca Phillips

Attention, motel owners: Allow people to sell sex or drugs at your motel and you might find the state selling your furniture. But don’t worry too much — the property could still be yours.

In a public auction last week, the state sold mattresses, TVs, and furnishings from the Garden Inn & Suites, the Royal Inn & Suites, the Bellevue Inn, and the Lamplighter Motor Inn. Once at auction, however, most of the items were purchased by the original owners.

All four motels were closed after a months-long investigation by the District Attorney’s Office found the motels tolerating prostitution and drug activity on their premises. The furnishings were auctioned after being forfeited to the state as a result of “public nuisance” closures. But the day after the auction, a judge ruled that the hotels would be allowed to reopen.

“The [property owners] were the built-in buyers. It was only natural for them to buy their own stuff back so they could get back into business,” said Ken Roebuck of Asset Recovery Auctions, who led auctions at each motel on Tuesday, May 6th.

Most items were sold by the room, and though people not affiliated with the motels purchased some miscellaneous items, such as tables and linens, the highest bidders tended to be the property owners themselves.

The furnishings from Garden Inn & Suites netted $18,500. The Royal Inn & Suites’ items brought in $20,500. Items from the Bellevue Inn and the Lamplighter Motor Inn earned $2,250 and $1,850, respectively.

Most of the money will go to cover the cost of the investigation at each motel. Any additional money will be given back to the property owners because the closures were civil, not criminal, proceedings.

“With a nuisance matter, we’re not allowed to seize the property,” said assistant district attorney John Campbell. “We’re only allowed to sell the items that were used to further the nuisance.”

Though it may seem strange that the property owners would ultimately receive the auction proceeds, Campbell said it’s unlikely that there will be money left after investigation costs are covered.

The District Attorney’s Office must use the funds to pay back the Memphis Police Department for use of undercover officers and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office for inmate labor used to set up the materials for the auctions. The D.A.’s office has yet to determine how much money each agency will receive.

“For a couple of these motels, the money raised is nowhere near going to cover the cost of the investigation,” Campbell said. “I know the cost of the Bellevue’s investigation will cost way over the $2,250 [brought in at auction], and the same thing goes for the Lamplighter. The other two will probably get some money back.”

Campbell said the nuisance laws were set up so that taxpayers wouldn’t bear the burden of paying for the investigations into such matters. “If your property causes a problem and the police have to do an investigation, it makes sense from a taxpayer standpoint that the property owner should have to cover those kinds of costs. It’s a financial burden that will hopefully keep people from doing it again.”

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Who’s the Boss?

When city and county police forces in Charlotte, North Carolina, merged 15 years ago, someone was forced to give up his title.

The city police chief was granted the highest role in the consolidated force, while the county chief (similar in role to Shelby County’s elected sheriff) was moved to the position of “deputy chief.”

“The former county chief became deputy over police services in the unincorporated areas of the county,” says Darrellyn Kiser, assistant to the Charlotte-Mecklenburg police chief.

Earlier this month, Shelby County commissioner Mike Carpenter and Memphis city councilman Jack Sammons co-sponsored resolutions to form a joint city/county committee to look into consolidating the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO). That committee will be charged with deciding if consolidating is a good idea and, if so, who should lead a merged force.

“The [new head] should be an appointed position. It should be a part of the executive branch, as it is now,” says MPD director Larry Godwin.

Godwin, himself an appointed official, says appointed officials cannot sue the city when problems arise.

But Shelby County sheriff Mark Luttrell sees things differently.

“The head of a new organization needs to be directly accountable to the people, not buried two or three steps down in a bureaucracy,” says Luttrell, an elected official.

Though full consolidation has never been tried in Shelby County, the departments attempted some merging of units several years back (called functional consolidation). The former metro DUI unit and the gang unit pulled officers from both city and county police forces, but those were disbanded under Godwin’s leadership.

“Those fell by the wayside because the city doesn’t think functional consolidation is the way to go,” Luttrell says. “I think it’s still valid.” But Godwin says consolidation is an all-or-nothing issue.

“With functional consolidation, you’re working for two agency heads,” Godwin says. “When you need those resources, they’re already committed, and you don’t always have the control to yank them away.”

Full consolidation of the departments would also mean a merger of tactics. Currently, the MPD focuses much of its attention on crime hotspots. The SCSO puts more emphasis on building relationships with community members and faith-based organizations.

“If you were to combine the two forces, you would have to combine those philosophies as well,” says Mike Heidingsfield of the Shelby County Crime Commission.

“There’s a huge number of issues to be worked out,” Kiser says. “Does everyone keep their same rank and position? How do you consolidate salary schedules? What about benefits packages? All of that took us about two years to iron out.”