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Report: Sexual Assault Kits Testing Time Cut In Half

The time it takes to test sexual assault kits in Tennessee has been cut nearly in half from last year, according to new data from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

A new report shows results from state crime labs are now returned in 22.7 weeks on average. That’s down from an average of 45.4 weeks from August 2022. 

Credit: Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

The fresh data comes from new quarterly reports now required by legislation originally proposed by state Sen. London Lamar (D-Memphis). The law sought to reduce testing times in the wake of the abduction and kidnapping of Eliza Fletcher. Her alleged assailant was matched to a DNA test from a sexual assault a year prior to the Fletcher case, but the DNA had not been tested in time to make an arrest. 

   “We filed this legislation because victims of sexual assault deserve transparency and accountability from the state and an 11-month wait time for DNA test results is an unacceptable threat to public safety,” Lamar said. “A six-month turn around time is still not where we need to be, but the TBI is making clear progress.

The report said 476 sexual assault kits are no waiting to be tested. That’s down from a 12-month high of 1,005. 

The TBI is hiring 39 new employees to be able to process more kits. Nearly half of those have completed training and half have begun training. 

The TBI is also outsourcing some testing to a Florida company with $1.9 million in federal grants funding. 

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Nichols Video Expected Soon, TBI Director Says ‘It’s Absolutely Appalling’

Video of the Tyre Nichols incident will be made public sometime after 6 p.m. Friday, Shelby County District Attorney Steve Mulroy said during a Thursday press conference. 

The video belongs to the city of Memphis, Mulroy said. It is a mix of body-worn police camera footage and footage from a nearby SkyCop camera, he said. 

Much has been made of the video, with Nichols’ family and members of the public pushing for it to be made public immediately. Many have worried that once the video is made public, civil unrest may follow. That’s one reason that nearly every public leader who has spoken about the situation and the video has asked that any protest that follows be non-violent. 

The timeline of the video’s release was not made public by Mulroy Thursday. The exact timing of its release is in the hands of city leaders. But Mulroy expected a statement from the city Thursday afternoon. 

TBI Director David Rausch said he’s been policing for 30 years and has devoted his life to the profession. But at the moment he was grieved and “shocked by what I saw.” 

“I’ve seen the video and as [Mulroy already] stated, you will, too,” Rausch said. “In a word: it’s absolutely appalling.” 

Mulroy kept a tight lid on details of the incident that led to Nichols’ death, focusing mainly on the charges made against the five officers directly involved in the incident. 

However, the timeline of that evening’s events got a bit more color (but not much) after a question from a reporter. Here’s what Mulroy said. 

“I suspect that all of your answers along those lines will be forthcoming once you have a chance to view the video for yourself,” Mulroy said. “I know that a lot of this has already been publicly released, but there was an initial traffic stop. And we won’t comment right now on the presence or absence of the legality of the stop, but there was a traffic stop.”

Mulroy continued: “There was an initial altercation involving several officers and Mr. Nichols. Pepper spray was deployed … Mr. Nichols fled on foot. There was another altercation at a nearby location at which the serious injuries were experienced by Mr. Nichols. After some period of time of waiting around afterwards, he was taken away by an ambulance. Beyond that I don’t really think we should go into any further details.” 

A reporter asked if the police waited to call an ambulance, to which Mulroy replied, “I believe that if you watch the video, you’ll be able to make that judgment for yourself.”

Mulroy’s main goal with the news conference was to outline the charges against the officers and explain how those charges were made. He said his office and a team of other law enforcement offices worked “quickly to expedite this investigation because of the extraordinary nature of the case compared to the average investigation and prosecution. For decisions in a case like this, we worked swiftly, but also fairly, and most importantly, in a way calculated to ensure that we have a strong case.”

For this, Mulroy said he quickly called in the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) to ensure the case had an independent investigation. He also called in the newly formed Justice Review Unit within his office, but that works separately and independently, “to make a truly objective recommendation about whether criminal charges were appropriate.”

On Thursday, the grand jury returned indictments on the five former MPD officers involved in Nichols’ death: Demetrius Haley, Tadarrius Bean, Emmitt Martin III, Desmond Mills, Jr., and Justin Smith. 

They were charged with second degree murder, aggravated assault, aggravated kidnapping resulting in bodily injury, aggravated kidnapping involving the possession of a weapon, official misconduct through unauthorized exercise of power, official misconduct through failure to act when there is a duty imposed by law, and official oppression.

”While each of the five individuals played a different role in the incident in question, the actions of all of them resulted in the death of Tyre Nichols, and they are all responsible,” Mulroy said.

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Tennessee Hate Crimes Rose in 2021

Tennessee hate crimes rose in 2021 — the most recent year recorded — for the second year in a row, according to new state and federal data. 

Each year the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) issue reports on hate crime. Law enforcement agencies must report crime data, and in years past, they could report to either the FBI or the TBI. Last year was the first year the FBI mandated all agencies report to them. However, the transition is not yet complete as some agencies are unable or unwilling to comply with the FBI mandate.

The U.S. Department of Justice said because of this “data cannot reliably be compared across years.” It also makes it tough to complete a picture of hate-crime activity in Tennessee.

However, state data show 133 hate crimes recorded in 2021, higher than the 122 recorded in 2020, and the 112 hate crimes recorded in 2019. The information in both reports also illuminates the flash points of friction in the state. 

For example, most hate crimes in Tennessee in 2021 were based on race and ethnicity (62). Most of these (46) were against Black people. Twenty crimes were against whites. However, TBI data show that most hate-crime victims (67) were white, followed by Black victims (34).

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

The next most-affected group was the LGBTQ community with 13 crimes reported. Most of Tennessee’s hate crime victims (29) were between 35 and 44 years of age. 

“No one in this country should be forced to live their life in fear of being attacked because of what they look like, whom they love, or where they worship,” said the DOJ’s Associate Attorney General Vanita Gupta. “The department will continue to use all of the tools and resources at our disposal to stand up to bias-motivated violence in our communities.”

Tennessee hate crimes mostly happened in homes or residences (55) but they also happened in commercial spaces (27), schools (20), government buildings (8), public transportation (26), roads and alleys (17), parking lots or garages (9), and recreational spaces (6).

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

Most of these crimes were simple assaults (133). In them, offenders used their hands, fists, feet, arms, and teeth (30). They also used “dangerous weapons” (15), firearms (6), motor vehicles (3), asphyxiation by strangulation, gas, or drowning (1), fire or explosives (1), and in 17 cases the weapon was unknown. 

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

Thursday and Friday tied for the day that saw most hate crimes (25) committed in Tennessee. Saturdays (16) and Sundays (9) were the lowest. Most hate crimes were committed between the hours of noon-2:59 p.m. (24) and from 3 p.m. to 5:59 p.m. (24). The fewest hate crimes (3) occurred between the hours of 3 a.m.-5:59 a.m. 

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation
Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

In Tennessee, most hate crime cases are not solved. In 2021, 40 hate crime cases were cleared with an arrest. However, 83 cases were not cleared. In other cases, prosecution was declined or the victim refuse to cooperate.

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

The Memphis Police Department recorded six hate-crime incidents in 2021, according to the FBI data. Three of these were anti-Black, two were anti-Hispanic or Latino, and one was anti-LGBTQ. In them, there were six counts of intimidation, one aggravated assault, one case of destruction of property, one robbery, and one simple assault. 

Three incidents were in homes, two on roadways, and one on an industrial site.  Six offenders were Black and three were white. 

The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO) recorded four hate crimes in 2021. Three of those were anti-Black, one was anti-white, all of them simple assaults. Two happened in schools, one in a restaurant, and the other in an unknown location. All four offenders were Black, according to the data, and one victim was a law enforcement officer.

Germantown Police Department recorded one hate crime, an anti-Asian simple assault by a thief person that happened in a restaurant. Millington Police Department recorded one anti-LGBTQ simple assault by a Black person recorded in a restaurant.

Bartlett Police Department recorded two hate crimes in 2021, one anti-Black, the other anti-white. One happened in a home, the other in a medical setting like a doctor’s office, drug store, or hospital. 

Of the suburban cities that reported such data to the FBI, Collierville had the most in 2021. Two of them were anti-Black, one was anti-LGBTQ, and another was anti-Protestant. The victims were three individuals and one religious organization. 

The University of Memphis reported zero hate crimes to the FBI. So did the state park rangers at Meeman-Shelby State Forest, law enforcement at Memphis International Airport, and the University of Tennessee Health Science Center. Neither Lakeland nor Arlington reported data to the FBI.  

However, the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) said national reporting of the data is “consistently inconsistent,” noting that the 2021 is “drastically incomplete” making comparison between previous years “almost meaningless.”

For example, the SPLC said, about 3,500 agencies did not report any data to the FBI in the 2020 report, including 10 cities with populations over 100,000. And another 60 police departments in cities with populations over 100,000 reported zero hate crimes.

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Official Tweets in the Eliza Fletcher Case

Much of the official information on the abduction and murder of Eliza Fletcher came from tweets from Memphis Police Department and the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.

Here’s the chronological sequence of those tweets beginning with her early-morning abduction on Friday, September 2nd.

Friday, September 2nd:

Saturday, September 3rd:

Sunday, September 4th:

Monday: September 5th:

Tuesday, September 6th:


Here is the inmate information for Cleotha Abston, Fletcher’s alleged kidnapper and murderer, posted to the Shelby County Jail website:

Shelby County Jail
Shelby County Jail
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MEMernet: Polar Bears, a Geenline Van, and Those TBI Alerts 

Memphis on the internet.

Tweet of the Week

“Zoos are really insane as hell. Ain’t no way a polar bear supposed to be in Memphis, Tennessee,” tweeted @galeonsworld last week.

Van Life

Last week three people stole a minivan and attempted to drive it across the V&E Greenline bridge. 

They didn’t make it far. The bridge is fine, Greenline officials said on Nextdoor last week. But the handrail is not. Damage from a collision with the van will likely cost $5,000, they said.  

“Unfortunately, while this particular incident is unusual, we have seen more and more motorized vehicles using the trail for criminal and recreational purposes,” Greenline officials said.

Posted to Twitter by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation

“No One Easy Answer”

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) apologized for the many alerts that buzzed the phones of Tennesseans at all hours last week. 

“We know it’s been a frustrating morning for many of you,” the TBI tweeted. “Same here, TBH.”

Why? “There is no one easy answer,” the TBI said in a statement. The agency doesn’t send the alerts, a partner does. The alerts also vary across cell providers, change with movements across the state, change with powering a phone on and off, signal strength, wifi availability, and more.

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Gun Crime Rises 30 Percent

Gun crime continues to rise in Memphis, according to the latest data from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission.

Memphis Shelby Crime Commission

Crimes involving guns were 30 percent higher in the first three months of 2021 compared to the first three months of 2020. From January to March of this year, there were 1,576 reported incidents involving guns, according to data collected by the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and the University of Memphis Public Safety Institute. 

Memphis Shelby Crime Commission

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) data show 3,546 gun-crime incidents in Memphis for the first quarter. This is up nearly 53 percent from first quarter 2020. 

TBI reports gun crime differently. For that agency, aggravated assault with three victims is one incident involving three offenses. TBI gun-offense figures include nonviolent offenses, like felons in possession of firearms. So, TBI gun data will always be higher than that reported by MPD.  

Memphis Shelby Crime Commission

Police responded to 4,405 reports of shots fired from January to March this year. This is up from 3,891 reports in first-quarter 2020. Police responded to 530 reports of someone hit by gunfire, up from 429 in the same time last year.   

MPD said 357 guns were reported stolen from cars in the first quarter compared to 164 in the same period last year. The commission said if such gun thefts continue at the same pace, about 1,500 guns will be stolen from cars this year.  

Memphis Shelby Crime Commission

“As a community, we must have a sense of urgency about the level of gun crime,” said Crime Commission president Bill Gibbons. “It will take more than law enforcement and prosecutors making it a priority. All of us, including parents, teachers, and faith leaders, must also make it a priority.” 

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MEMernet: Domestic Violence, Rhodes Scholar, and Freddy Krueger

Domestic Violence

The Tennessee Bureau of Investigation tweeted Monday that domestic violence rises during the holidays, but those holidays “might surprise you,” and posted this sobering infographic.

Posted to Twitter by the Tennessee
Bureau of Investigation

Rhodes?

Rhodes College got brief time in the national spotlight last week. President Donald Trump’s press secretary Kayleigh McEnany said prospective Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was a “Rhodes scholar.”

She was not. The Twitterati straightened it out. Bloomberg reporter Josh Wingrove’s tweet on it was retweeted more than 48,000 times.

“‘She also is a Rhodes scholar,’ Trump’s @PressSec says of Amy Coney Barrett, who did not receive a Rhodes Scholarship to study at Oxford, but instead received her B.A. from Rhodes College in Tennessee.”

McEnany acknowledged the flub saying, “My bad.”

Lot going on here

Posted to YouTube by Kingpin Skinny Pimp

Memphis rapper Kingpin Skinny Pimp posted a brief YouTube video from a Hollywood sidewalk this week.

In it, Freddy Krueger — in a perfect Southern accent and with a flourish of his famous knives — proclaims “North Memphis, baby!”

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Drug Overdose Deaths Rose in Tennessee Last Year Amidst Falling National Trend

Justin Fox Burks

Drug overdose deaths rose to a record high in Tennessee in 2018, according to new statistics released by the Centers for Disease Controls (CDC), while the numbers were down nationally.

There were 1,837 drug overdose deaths recorded in Tennessee last year, 3 percent more than in 2017. However, such deaths were down 5.1 percent across the country, marking the first decline of overdoses in 25 years.

The figures were discussed recently on an episode of Tennessee Court Talk, a podcast from the Tennessee Supreme Court and the Administrative Office of the Courts. The episode featured Special Agent Tommy Farmer from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) Dangerous Drug Task Force and Dr. Robert Pack, professor of community and behavior health at East Tennessee State University (ETSU).

Farmer, from the TBI, said he wasn’t surprised to see the increase in overdose deaths but hoped the state would “plateau off.” He said the rise is thanks to a transition to illegal drugs from prescription medications.
[pullquote-1] “There’s no doubt it has to do with fentanyl and heroin and the availability of them,” Farmer said.

Pack, the doctor from ETSU, said he didn’t expect a dramatic decrease in the figures here but was pleased to see the shift in the figures nationally. He said headway on reducing overdose deaths in Tennessee won’t be made unless changes are made closer to the source of the problem.

“We have to get upstream as far as we can to stop the cycle of addiction that is occurring in these (communities),” Pack said. “If we can’t stop it, then all we can do is repeat it.”

One way to do that, Pack said, would be to influence kids to be more resistant to drugs.

While much more work needs to be done, Pack and Farmer said gains have been made in Tennessee, particularly addressing the opioid crisis. Pack said more agencies are better reporting overdose deaths now than ever before, which could be one reason for the 2018 spike.

“We’ve said for a long time that the numbers were grossly underreported,” Farmer said. “There’s a lot more out there than we’re actually seeing. I do believe this number indicates that we’re doing a better job of getting good information.”

Overdose deaths are higher in big cities, Farmer said, but that doesn’t always mean the deceased lived in them. Large cities serve as a source of drugs for dealers, so drugs are cheaper there. Also, people want to be closer to the source of their drugs, so they’ll travel to it. When they get the drugs, they don’t wait to take them home, he said, “they’re getting the drugs and overdosing at that location.”

Pack said Tennessee now has better access to care and drugs to help those addicted than ever before.

Fentanyl, a synthetic opioid pain reliever usually prescribed to cancer patience, is on the rise in Tennessee, Farmer said. The drug is powerful, he said. One thing that means is that it’s shipped in smaller units (like the size of two sugar packs), making it harder for law enforcement to detect.

DEA

The opioid fentanyl can be 100 times more potent than morphine.

The drug is being mixed with methamphetamine or heroin. It’s smuggled to Tennessee largely from suppliers in China or Mexico, Farmer said. For users, “it gives them an incredibly powerful high,” Pack said.

What fentanyl gets mixed with largely depends on what is popular in different areas of the state, Farmer said. In Memphis, that’s heroin, where “there’s always been a steady availability” of the drug, he said. Oxycontin is popular in Oak Ridge and Percocet is favored in Nashville.
[pullquote-2] But dealers will blend their drugs with just about anything, Farmer said, if they fear customer complaints. He said TBI agents have found drug operations outfitted with blenders bought from Walmart or Walgreens producing drugs that are not at all what the dealer said they were selling.

“We’ve seen crazy concoctions, made from anything they can get their hands on, from aspirin to ibuprofen to vitamin B12,” Farmer said. “It doesn’t matter as long as it gets them high. The potency of fentanyl is so powerful in microscopic amounts that it doesn’t take much at all.”

Meth returns

Meth is returning to Tennessee “with a vengeance,” Farmer said. The TBI lab is on track to get more submissions of meth than ever before.

“We’ll probably see more than even back in the heyday and at the height of our meth epidemic when the state of Tennessee had the dubious distinction of being No. 1 in the country, the meth capital of the country,” Farmer said.

Laws here have made it harder to get the ingredients to make meth and seizures of meth labs have decreased here by about 86 percent, Farmer said. But what remains is an “insatiable appetite for stimulants in our state” and a steady supply of meth from Mexican drug cartels.

Pack said methadone clinics are seeing a rise in patients screening positive for meth.

“We can’t just deal with this on the treatment side,” Pack said. “We have got to get upstream and deal with whatever it is that is driving people to seek (meth) to fix their pain, their physical or emotional pain with something other than coping or other effective strategies.”

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State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture

Tennessee Bureau of Investigation/Twitter

Escape fugitive Curtis Watson after his Sunday-morning capture.

In a series of weekend tweets, state agencies presented a pulse-pounding, up-to-the-moment look at the final capture of escaped fugitive Curtis Watson.

Watson’s capture came Sunday after he was spotted on a home surveillance camera in Henning.

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (2)

Watson was in his sixth year of a 15-year sentence for aggravated assault when he escaped from the West Tennessee State Penitentiary in Henning Wednesday, according to the Tennessee Department of Corrections (TDOC).

West Tennessee Correctional Administrator Debra Johnson was found dead in her residence at the penitentiary shortly before noon on Wednesday. Officials discovered Johnson was missing from his farm-work detail and suspected he played a role in Johnson’s death.

A manhunt for Watson ensued but was fruitless. As of Saturday, the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI) said it had received 369 tips on Watson but no credible sightings. The TDOC added $4,500 to a reward for information leading to Watson’s arrest, bringing that reward total too $57,000 on Saturday afternoon.

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (3)

Early Sunday morning, TDOC posted photos and video from a residential surveillance camera showing Watson in camouflage clothes rummaging through an outdoor refrigerator (below).

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (4)

”Residents in the area should be ALERT and VIGILANT,” reads the TDOC’s Twitter post Sunday morning.

At 11:23 a.m., a TBI tweet showed a photo of a haggard-looking Watson in the back seat of a police car. The tweet read “Captured!”

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (6)

Later, TBI posted a video of Watson right after his capture (below).

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (7)

At 4:33 p.m. Sunday, the TBI tweeted another photo of Watson being walked into a detention facility in Tipton County.

State Agencies (Pretty Much) Live-Tweeted Watson Capture (8)

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‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting

Twitter

Memphis responded with sadness and outrage to last night’s shooting of 21-year-old Brandon Webber by the United States Marshal Service.

We’ve collected tweets and posts below. But first, here’s the official word from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation (TBI).

“At the request of 30th District Attorney General Amy Weirich, TBI Agents are investigating the circumstances surrounding an officer-involved shooting that occurred in the Frayser Community of Memphis Wednesday evening.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting

Preliminary information indicates that at approximately 7 p.m., multiple officers with the United States Marshals Service – Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force encountered a male, wanted on multiple warrants, outside of a home in the 2700 block of Durham Street as he was getting into a vehicle. While attempting to stop the individual, he reportedly rammed his vehicle into the officers’ vehicles multiple times before exiting with a weapon. The officers fired striking and killing the individual. No officers were injured.

This remains an active and ongoing investigation, as TBI Special Agents and forensic scientists continue to work to gather any and all relevant interviews and evidence. As in any case, TBI’s investigative findings will be shared with the District Attorney General throughout the process for her review.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (2)

As is our policy, the TBI does not identify the officers involved in these types of incidents and instead refers questions of that nature to their respective department.

Any updates on this investigation will be posted online at TBINewsroom.com.”

Memphis Police Department (MPD) responded to help the Marshals Service and assist with traffic control.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (4)

Various news reports said some 300 showed up at the scene. It all made national news.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (5)

The local National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) said it was watching the situation.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (3)

Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer asked the NAACP to choose words carefully.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (11)

At least one disagreed with Sawyer.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (10)

Plenty of people disagreed with that, too.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (21)

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (23)

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (20)

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (7)

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (22)

Some braced for what could be coming next.

‘Say His Name #BrandonWebber:’ Memphis Responds to Officer-Involved Shooting (19)

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