Tag: Toney Armstrong

Categories
News News Blog

Police Body Camera Rollout Delayed

The rollout of body cameras for every Memphis Police officer has been pushed back indefinitely, a decision announced by Mayor Jim Strickland at a Friday afternoon press conference.

Back in September, Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong announced that 2,000 cameras would be deployed and operational by the end of 2015. He said 50 officers a day were being trained to use them.

But today, Strickland said his office felt it necessary to delay their deployment until the Shelby County District Attorney’s Office can update their technology to deal with the data that will be coming from the cameras. He also said city government would need additional manpower to handle public records requests for camera footage.

“I’d rather do the right thing than do the fast thing,” Strickland said.

Armstrong told those at the press conference today that the police department would also need more staff to screen and redact information from the videos.

“Someone has to sit down and view all of that video. It’s labor-intensive, and information has to be redacted so citizens’ private information doesn’t go public,” Armstrong said.

Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich said her office wasn’t given advance notice by Mayor A C Wharton’s administration about his 2015 deadline for getting the cameras operational.

“No one in my office had been trained [on what to do with the footage] before the announcement was made [last September],” Weirich said.

She said the police camera footage was “evidence, not entertainment” and that the contents would need to be handled carefully.

Strickland said he does support body cameras and said he voted for them when he was a Memphis City Councilmember. But he implied the previous administration rushed the deployment of cameras.

“I can’t speak to what happened before January 1st, but I think people were overly optimistic,” Strickland said.

Strickland would not speculate on when the city would be ready to roll out cameras.

Categories
Opinion Viewpoint

Changing the Guard at MPD

CREDIT: Memphis Police Department

It was recently announced that Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong and nearly half of his command staff are leaving the department. While there’s no question the departure of so many seasoned officers will be a huge loss, it also gives newly inaugurated Mayor Jim Strickland an opportunity to remake the department to better serve the community.

Memphis Police Department

Departing MPD Director Toney Armstrong

The department faces many external challenges and suffers from internal problems that have been long ignored. These challenges are unlikely to be adequately addressed by an insider.

One of the flaws that was exposed in the investigation into the officer involved in the shooting death of Darrius Stewart is the lack of consistent policy positions for officers in what would often be standard situations. 

Currently, rules are written vaguely, giving officers the latitude to make judgment calls. Unfortunately, that latitude can also be used to treat different people in similar situations very differently. This ultimately undermines the relationship between law enforcement and populations that have been wrongly targeted due to circumstances that are beyond their control (race, the condition of their vehicles/residences, and the areas in which they live).

Rules that detail when passengers involved in traffic stops are to identify themselves need to be put in writing. This will ensure people’s privacy rights are respected, and officers don’t accidentally create a situation where an arrest is thrown out due to mishandling.

Clear rules about when to call for backup need to be in place.

Finally, rules about when force, either restraining force or deadly force, is to be used need to be in line with a 1985 U.S. Supreme Court ruling which involved an unarmed, fleeing suspect and the Memphis Police Department. 

That ruling states deadly force cannot be used unless the officer has “probable cause to believe that the suspect poses a significant threat of death or serious physical injury to the officer or others.”

The new police administration should actively engage the Citizen Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) on any new policy adopted and treat their relationship as a partnership to both inform the public of new policy and provide oversight when policy violations are reported.

For too long, relations between law enforcement and the public have been strained due to real and/or perceived wrongs committed by officers. Partnering with the CLERB will give the public the assurance that conduct issues will be dealt with in a timely manner.

Changing the way the department polices the city is another issue to address.  Instituting a community policing program would help heal fractures and most likely lead to a real decrease in crime.

Officers in Memphis have little direct contact with the populations they’re serving unless they’re on a call. That means officers only see the people they’re serving when they’re at their worst or in a bad situation. This negatively impacts their outlook on the community and leads to more alienation.

While walking patrols may not be feasible in every neighborhood, focusing on developing relationships in the community will minimize the alienation that is common in traditional patrols. It also builds relationships between the public and police that are durable, even when things go wrong.

Those relationships also provide a “boots on the ground” intelligence to identify other societal ills that may be occurring in communities (domestic violence, child abuse or neglect, unfit housing, wage theft, and other problems people who feel forgotten may not report, because they don’t believe anything will be done about it).

These things are important for a city like Memphis that has a high rate of working poor. While the loss of decades of institutional memory may seem like a severe problem for the city, problems are really just opportunities ripe for the taking.

Positive changes are unlikely to come from within. Institutions have their own inertia and generally follow Newtonian laws of motion, meaning they will most certainly maintain their current velocity and direction unless acted upon by an external force, and even then, they’ll still resist any push to change.

The opportunity for Memphis and law enforcement in the new administration is to identify the right kind of “external force” that will move the department in the right direction and make Memphis not only safer for its citizens but also a city that places a high degree of value in a cooperative relationship between the police and the community.

Categories
Cover Feature News

The Year Ahead in Memphis

CREDIT: Brandon Dill

Business

Bass Pro Shops: Last year, right here in this very same spot in this very same issue, we said the opening for the Bass Pro store in the Pyramid was delayed until May 2015. (We apologized because in 2013, right here in this very same spot in this very same issue, we said you’d be doing your 2014 holiday shopping there. Remember? No? Well…)

It’s not big news that the wait is over. Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid opened April 29th with a line of customers that stretched into the parking lot. More than 35,000 visitors cranked the turnstiles that day.

Brandon Dill

Bass Pro: now open.

By August 4th, more than one million people had visited Bass Pro Shops in the Pyramid. In mid-December, store officials said Bass Pro had seen more than two million visitors. Also, the store sold more than 27 tons of fudge in about eight months.

Ikea: Memphis rode high on the 2014 news that Ikea, the Swedish retailer with a cult following, announced it was building a store in Memphis, not “It-City” Nashville. And, boy, did we rub Nashville’s nose in it (on social media). Nashville, ya burnt! Ha!

Then, we noticed that no work — nothing — was being done on the Ikea site behind Costco on Germantown Parkway. The store, the source of our cool cachet, was held up by a tax dispute. The city breathed a sigh of relief when, in late November, locals came up with a tax-payment workaround and Ikea said it would go ahead with the Memphis store, with a late 2016 opening date.

Brandon Dill

What’s in store for the Mid-South Coliseum?

Mid-South Coliseum: Can rape allegations save a building? Maybe. Last January, the Mid-South Coliseum seemed destined for the wrecking ball. Locals were considering the Tourist Development Zone deal, which would fund a huge plan to reinvent the Mid-South Fairgrounds into a youth sports destination. That plan had no place for the Coliseum.

A grassroots group, the Coliseum Coalition, started organizing. They hosted two events, called Roundhouse Revivals, to get people to the Coliseum and to get them to share their thoughts as to what it could be. The Urban Land Institute even said part of the Coliseum should be saved.

Then this summer, Robert Lipscomb, the city’s former director of Housing and Community Development and the major backer of the youth sports plan, was accused of raping a Memphis teenager, years ago. Lipscomb was fired, and the entire Fairgrounds deal, which includes the Coliseum’s future, was left up in the air, where it remains.

Tennessee Brewery: The only bad news about the Tennessee Brewery this year was for the thousands who loved drinking beer in its makeshift annual beer garden. Developer Billy Orgel bought the brewery building in 2014, a big win for preservationists, as the building was slated for demolition. In January, Orgel and his team unveiled a plan that included apartments, a parking garage, retail shops, and more, in a $25 million project called the Brewery District. Orgel promises a restoration of the historic building and a renewed vibrancy to South Main. He’s said the buildings could be complete and occupied in 2016.

The Pinch District: Not much is yet known about the future of The Pinch, except local leaders are making plans for changes.

In January, the district was in the crosshairs of the Tennessee Historical Commission, slated to be removed from the National Register of Historic Places. The plan was thwarted, then a MEMFix event in April brought in thousands.

In October, Memphis City Council member, Berlin Boyd, assembled government and business leaders to announce they were moving forward with plans in the Pinch. Though Boyd didn’t share many details, he did say that the area’s two largest tenants — St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital and Bass Pro — would likely drive much of the direction of the plan. That meeting came right before St. Jude announced an expansion plan for its Memphis campus worth about $9 billion (yes, billion with a “B”).

The Commercial Appeal: Until this year, the city’s daily paper had had one owner — Scripps — since Franklin D. Roosevelt was president. But it got a new owner in the spring of 2015 — Journal Media Group — and will likely have another by March.

Gannett Co., the largest newspaper company in the U.S., agreed in October to buy JMG for about $280 million. If the deal is approved by stakeholders and the government, it is expected to close in the first three months of 2016.

The move could possibly bring more layoffs in the CA newsroom. Some analysts are concerned the move could mean less emphasis on local reporting and bring a homogenous USA Today format to the paper’s look and writing. The deal also worries some media watchers, as it would mean Gannett would own all but one of the state’s major dailies.

Midtown Market: Those blighted buildings on the southwest corner of Union and McLean could be gone by June. That was developer Ron Belz’s prediction earlier this month to Memphis City Council members.

Later that day, the council agreed the city would take out a loan for $4 million to help Belz build “Midtown Market,” a mix of apartments, retail shops, and, perhaps, an “upscale” or “boutique” grocery store.

The city’s part of the funding was one of the last (and most critical) pieces of funding Belz said he needed to make the project work. City officials are still working on a plan to control traffic around the site, which will also soon have a new, expanded Kroger nearby.

Central Station: Want to watch a movie downtown next year? Well, it’s likely that you’ll be able to. Developers want to transform the 101-year-old Central Station building and the area around it at the corner of G.E. Patterson and Main into a residential and entertainment campus.

Henry Turley Co. and Community Capital LLC plan to transform the station building into a hotel, with a restaurant and some retail shops. Around the corner, they hope to build a Malco movie theater, apartment buildings, and, possibly, a grocery store.

The city council approved $600,000 for the project this month, which developers said they needed to begin construction. Expect dirt to move on the project soon.

One Beale: Scrapped during the recession, One Beale is expected to rise at the western end of Beale in 2016. If built, the $150 million project will change the city’s skyline with two — possibly three — new towers right on the Mississippi River: a 12-story office building, a 22-story hotel, and a 30-story apartment tower. Construction could take more than two years, pushing the grand opening to sometime in 2018. — Toby Sells

Food & Drink

The Green Room: The latest project from Jeff Johnson of Local/Oshi Burger Bar/Agave Maria, will be an event space and restaurant with a pop-up concept. Johnson is hoping to start holding events in the Green Room, located in the old Evergreen Grill space on Overton Park, as soon as January. He’s also planning to launch the restaurant that same month.

The pop-up aspect is ambitious. Fare and chefs will change on a regular basis. One idea Johnson is currently contemplating is a French brasserie. Johnson says he’s been in contact with chefs from Memphis and around the country to work in the Green Room. As for the name, he says it’s a nod to the location, the Evergreen neighborhood, as well as to green rooms, a space for celebrities and VIPs at TV shows and concerts. Johnson says he wants customers to feel like they’re the star of the show.

Justin Fox Burks

Lyfe Kitchen

LYFE Kitchen and Catherine & Mary’s in the Chisca: The opening date is unknown at this point for these two restaurants set for the old Chisca Hotel, though it should be sometime in the coming year. The Carlisle Corporation, which has been renovating the Chisca, bought a minority share of LYFE in 2015 and moved its headquarters to Memphis. Carlisle opened the first Memphis LYFE, offering healthier meals in a fast-casual setting, in East Memphis.

In regards to Catherine & Mary’s, the partnership with Andrew Ticer and Michael Hudman of Andrew Michael Italian Kitchen, Hog & Hominy, and Porcellino’s was a bit of a surprise, as Ticer and Hudman seemed dedicated to building something of a restaurant commune on Brookhaven Circle. Catherine & Mary’s, according to a press release that announced the deal, will serve “traditional Italian cooking through the lens of the American South.”  

The Curb Market: The Curb Market is a hyper-local market set to open in the old Easy Way space on Cooper in late January. It’s owned by Peter Schutt, who is also owner of two farms as well as The Daily News Publishing Co. Ben Fant of Farmhouse is working with Curb on its marketing. Fant says in an email: “Completely LOCALLY sourced produce, meats, and groceries. The goal of the market is to support local farmers and source their goods first. Depending on seasons, they will source regionally and on occasion, nationally, but always U.S.A. All meats will be grass-fed and free-range. Everything in the market will be economically viable and sustainable … The focus is on agriculture not agribusiness.”

Wine in Grocery Stores: It’s happening. Area grocery stores can start carrying wine in July. — Susan Ellis

Crime & Public Safety

Despite a shortage of Memphis Police officers, crime steadily decreased in 2015. Comparing statistics from January to November, crime was down 1.5 percent countywide and .6 percent in the city.

But the drop since 2006 has been phenomenal — 17.8 percent countywide and 13.6 percent in the city. That’s when the Memphis Police Department (MPD) first started using data-driven policing via its Blue Crush model. It was also the first year of Operation: Safe Community (OSC), a massive, multi-agency, crime-fighting initiative from the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission that addresses everything from offender recidivism to truancy.

“We’re down significantly from 2006, and if you go back to what some might say are the good old days of the late 1980s, we’re considerably down from those numbers as well,” said Crime Commission interim director Rick Masson.

It’s impossible to predict crime rates for 2016, but Masson said he believes we’re on track to continue the crime decrease. Next year will be the last year for the current version of OSC, and various law enforcement agencies will be coming together to work on another five-year OSC plan to launch in 2017.

The MPD will gain a new police director in 2016. Current Director Toney Armstrong announced in October that’d step down once Mayor-elect Jim Strickland found a replacement. One challenge for Strickland and the new police director will be hiring and retaining officers.

“There’s a shortage of police officers, so that’s something that will have to be addressed by the new administration,” Masson said.

At a public forum this month, Strickland’s transition team threw out a few ideas to reduce crime. They set a goal of decreasing police resignations by 20 percent in his first year and 30 percent each year during the rest of his term. They also want to reduce police response time to an average of three minutes, educate the public on the proper use of 911, and fully staff the 911 call center, and seek public/private partnerships to offset the costs of police recruitment classes.

The city’s rape kit testing backlog should be cleared in 2016, according to Memphis Sexual Assault Kit Task Force coordinator Doug McGowen. “We hope to have the vast majority of the kits tested in 2016. We ship about 300 a month out, and we have about 3,900 that need additional analysis, so we’ll be very close to meeting that goal,” McGowen said.

McGowen, who has been tapped by Strickland as the city’s new chief operating officer, said he’d continue to run the task force for the foreseeable future.

— Bianca Phillips

Music

The New Daisy: After signing an exclusive booking deal with Live Nation, the New Daisy went through major renovations and became one of the best places to see live music in Memphis. The “new” New Daisy features a state-of-the-art sound system and stage lighting, and even a VIP area known as the Big Star Room.

After years of being the bookend on the dark side of Beale Street, the New Daisy is alive and well, and bringing big names like Dropkick Murphys and Disturbed to Memphis in 2016.

FedExForum: The Forum has a stacked calendar early in 2016, with Barry Manilow, The Doobie Brothers, and Billy Joel (the Piano Man’s only Tennessee appearance) coming to town.

The Hi-Tone: The club changed hands just over a year ago, but the Crosstown venue is still going strong under the direction of Brian “Skinny” McCabe, hosting festivals such as Gonerfest and Rock For Love, in addition to specializing in metal, punk, and garage rock shows.

Bar DKDC: This small Cooper-Young restaurant/bar has become a full-fledged venue, with local and touring talent playing the room on a weekly basis. Don’t expect that to stop anytime soon.

Rocket Science Audio: RSA continues to be one of the most intriguing venues/recording studios in Memphis, and their monthly Variety Show has come a long way since its inception. Expect big things from them in 2016.

Found: Another new venue worth a mention is the vintage clothing/furniture store on Broad Avenue that every so often hosts musical up-and-comers of all kinds in its back room.

Lafayette’s: The signature music club in Overton Square continues to make the Square a hot destination for tourists and locals alike by booking bands every night of the week. Expect that to continue in 2016.

Levitt Shell: It was recently announced that the Shell will undergo $4 million dollars in renovations. The Overton Park outdoor venue will receive upgrades to its sound system, bathrooms, and musician load-in area. In addition, a bigger, permanent area for vendors will be constructed. All those improvements should make for an exciting (and packed) Concert Series.

The Bands: Plenty of Memphis acts had strong years in 2015, including NOTS, Cities Aviv, Julien Baker, and Lucero, to name but a few.

NOTS released their debut We Are Nots late last November, then did lots of touring before impressing the U.K. label Heavenly Recordings at South by Southwest. The label brought NOTS to Europe last month for a slew of shows. NOTS begin working on their sophomore LP in January.

Cities Aviv also continued to be one of the most intriguing figures in the Memphis rap community, even if he spent most of the year in New York City. He’s back in Memphis now, and his new album Your Discretion is Trust, is some of his best work.

After conquering Europe with his sidekick Quinton-JeVon Lee, aka RPLD GHSTS, expect to see plenty of Cities Aviv in 2016, starting with a Hi-Tone show in early January.

Andrea Morales

Julien Baker

Julien Baker is another Memphian who had to leave the city to get national recognition (she currently attends MTSU). Her debut album Sprained Ankle, released this fall, has been championed by NPR, Pitchfork, and every other music media outlet that has good taste.

Other local bands to watch out for in 2016 include Deering and Down (who have a new album coming in early 2016 from BAA), HEELS, Aquarian Blood, Evil Army, RPLD GHSTS, and the Sheiks, who are already headed back to Europe in 2016 with Jack Oblivian.

Hometown champs, Lucero, dropped a great new record that they recorded at Ardent with Ted Hutt, and they also join the ranks of Memphis bands crossing the pond in early 2016.

Deck the Halls: The 2015 openings of the Blues Hall of Fame and the Memphis Music Hall of Fame were notable events, creating two worthwhile institutions that will honor Memphis music for years to come, in addition to bringing in tourism revenue. The opening ceremony of the Memphis Music Hall of Fame brought Jimmy Fallon, Justin Timberlake, and Keith Richards to town, making for one of the most star-studded events of the year.

Vinyl Thoughts: The Memphis Record Pressing plant is up and running, cranking out records for Sony, Fat Possum and Goner, and bringing the vinyl business back to the birthplace of rock-and-roll. It’s an amazing addition to our music resume to be one of the few cities in the United States to have a vinyl pressing plant. Take that, Nashville! — Chris Shaw

Politics

Hillary’s Boast and Red-state Reality: The most obvious political fact about 2016 is that it’s a presidential-election year, and that fact would ordinarily not be expected to ruffle Tennessee’s red-state Republican feathers, except that presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton has already barnstormed the state once, declaring that she intends to “turn Tennessee blue” again by dint of hard and purposeful campaigning here — something that Barack Obama conspicuously did not do in either 2008 or 2012.

Of course, presidential elections still call out Democrats in disproportionate numbers to the polls, and if Donald Trump should keep on keeping on and succeed in telling the Republican establishment, “You’re fired,” then really weird things could happen here.

But, as things stand now, Clinton would have to recreate a state party infrastructure, more or less Phoenix-like, from the ashes.

City Council and County Commission: Memphis’ newly configured city council seems well-stocked with youthful, business-friendly members, a good match-up with the city’s new mayor, Jim Strickland, who made his name as a council advocate of fiscal solvency above all. (Which means that the core issue of how to retain a stable police force in the absence of restored benefits will continue to be a vexation.) And, while Democrats are nominally a majority-of-one on the Shelby County Commission, the chairman, Terry Roland, is a Republican, and, on key votes, Democrats Justin Ford and Eddie Jones fairly persistently go with the GOP, more than canceling out Republican Steve Basar’s working relationship with the Democrats.

Beyond matters of partisanship, the unresolved issue in county government is whether the current commission power struggle with county Mayor Mark Luttrell succeeds, and to what extent.

Electoral Matters: It wouldn’t be an even-numbered election year without somebody venturing once again to do that which so far nobody has succeeded in doing — namely, mounting a serious challenge against 9th District Congressman Steve Cohen.

Among those who have been talked up — by themselves or by others — as itching to take a shot are attorney Ricky Wilkins (a redux case from 2014), state Representative G.A. Hardaway, and, most recently, state Senator Lee Harris.

And, though Harris’ seat wouldn’t be the right location geographically, current Shelby County Commissioner Heidi Shafer, an East Memphis Republican, is looking hard at making a run, ASAP, for the state legislature. That’s why Shafer, the commission’s budget chair for three years running, opted to chair the legislative affairs committee this time around.

Haslam’s Task: The 2016 session of the General Assembly is just around the corner, convening on January 12th. And that aforesaid GOP legislative majority has seemingly peaked out at a hyper-conservative level too daunting for either of moderate GOP governor Bill Haslam’s two major wish-list items — his Insure Tennessee proposal for Medicaid (TennCare) expansion, which was blocked in the General Assembly last year, or any form of a gasoline tax to fund overdue attention to the state’s increasingly obsolete infrastructure.

State Senator Ron Ramsey, the state’s lieutenant governor and presiding officer of the Senate, usually calls the shots on such things, and he has basically declared that the Medicaid-expansion matter will not be considered until and unless an elected Republican president, post-2016, proposes the additional funding via block grants to the states.

As for the question of infrastructure improvements, a little bit of good news — a modest windfall in unexpectedly good state revenue collections — may extend the bad news of inaction on creating new funding sources for roads, bridges, and the like. Current thinking within the legislature is apparently to sprinkle the bonus funds where they are most needed but to eschew any major upgrades. — Jackson Baker

LGBT Rights

The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling in favor of marriage equality nationwide will ensure that 2015 goes down as perhaps the most important year in the fight for LGBT rights.

But, in Tennessee (and a handful of other conservative states), the battle might not be over. The Tennessee Natural Marriage Defense Act was filed in September, and if passed, it would revert the state definition of marriage back to one man and one woman, and it would require the state attorney general to defend local government officials who refuse to recognize the Supreme Court’s marriage ruling.

Justin Fox Burks

Cole Bradley

“The federal government doesn’t preempt the action of legislatures. In other words, if the federal government gets wind of an unconstitutional bill being filed, they don’t send a note to the legislature saying, by the way, you can’t do that,” said Tennessee Equality Project (TEP) Executive Director Chris Sanders.

“What happens is the legislature passes its law, and it goes into effect. It harms someone, and then someone has the basis to sue the state. If passed, it could temporarily interrupt marriage equality,” he said.

Sanders believes the bill would eventually be struck down, once lawsuits make their way to the Supreme Court.

“I think they’ll lose at every turn. That’s why we all pray for [Supreme Court Justice] Ruth Bader Ginsberg every night,” Sanders said.

Sanders said TEP is also watching a state Pastor Protection Act, which would “protect religious clergy” from having to perform same-sex weddings. But he points out that such a bill would be redundant since pastors are already protected by the First Amendment.

“There could also be bills that ‘protect’ businesses from having to do business with our community, particularly wedding vendors,” Sanders said. “And another possible bill would exempt local government officials, like a county clerk, from having to serve our community. That’s a Kim Davis-style bill.”

Transgender rights also may be on the line in Tennessee in 2016. Tennessee Representative Bud Hulsey announced his intention to file a bill that would prevent transgender students from using the bathroom that corresponds with their gender identity.

Some possible bills may have a direct impact on LGBT equality in Memphis.

“We’ve heard some rumors that there could be a bill to try and undo existing local nondiscrimination ordinances, like the one in Memphis,” Sanders said.

On a more positive note, the Memphis Gay & Lesbian Community Center (MGLCC) has announced that they will launch a new program in 2016 to house homeless LGBT youth. Dubbed the Metamorphosis Project, it will employ refurbished shipping containers as transitional housing structures, and it will be the first housing project for LGBT young adults in the city. The shipping containers will be set up on property the MGLCC has purchased in Orange Mound from the Shelby County Land Bank.

“We’re going to alter the containers by adding windows and doors and making them into individual living spaces with a bedroom and a bathroom,” said MGLCC Youth Services Manager Stephanie Reyes. “And we’ll have an administration building there with a classroom, where we’ll teach classes on writing a resume, nutrition, and life skills.”

— Bianca Phillips

Film

The new year will kick off with Ocsar hopefuls like The Revenant hitting Memphis screens, and the Sundance Film Festival debuting the year’s crop of indie and arthouse pictures. We’ll get to see if the long-delayed Western Jane Got a Gun starring Natalie Portman was salvaged after a troubled production. February looks livelier than usual with the Coen Brothers’ Hail, Caesar!, the Marvel comedy superhero Deadpool, and Zoolander 2, which heralds the return of Ben Stiller’s beloved male model. March gets us the Iraq War comedy/drama Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, and the long awaited Batman v Superman: The Dawn of Justice which, if the trailers are any indication, could be a historic debacle. More intriguing is the biopic I Saw the Light where Tom Hiddleston (aka Loki) plays Hank Williams.

Richard Linklater’s new film Everybody Wants Some debuts in April, as does Iron Man director Jon Favreau’s live action adaptation of The Jungle Book, which presumably has some reason to exist. Summer blockbuster season starts in earnest with the new Marvel epic Captain America: Civil War and X-Men: Apocalyspe. For the more serious-minded, there’s Snowden, the tale of the NSA whistleblower. June brings us the big-budget video game adaptation Warcraft, helmed by Moon director Duncan Jones, and the sequel to Finding Nemo, Finding Dory.

July sees Steven Spielberg’s Roald Dahl adaptation The BFG and The Legend of Tarzan, directed by Harry Potter‘s David Yates from a script penned by Memphis’ own Craig Brewer. Then the all-female Ghostbusters remake will do battle with Star Trek Beyond. In August we get the all-villain comic book oddity Suicide Squad and the story of the gulf oil spill in Deepwater Horizon.

The theme for November will be magic, with Marvel’s sorcerer supreme Doctor Strange squaring off against J.K. Rowling’s Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them, while Indie Memphis brings the scrappy underdogs to Memphis screens. December will be once again dominated by Star Wars with Rogue One telling the story of how Princess Leia got the plans to the Death Star.

Categories
Editorial Opinion

Mayor Strickland’s New Cabinet

So far, the major appointees of Mayor-elect Jim Strickland seem an acceptable bunch. Like the members of his transition team, they are a mix. Appropriately enough for mayoral bridegroom Strickland, the old nuptial saying applies: “Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue.”

The “something old” component, previously announced, includes several retainees: interim, now permanent, public works director Robert Knecht; general services director Antonio Adams; information services director Brent Nair; libraries director Keenon McCloy; executive director of workforce investment Kevin Woods; finance director Brian Collins; and Memphis Police director Toney Armstrong.

Among the “something new” appointees: Douglas McGowen as chief operating officer (COO), a new position; Bruce McMullen as city attorney; Alexandria Smith as human resources director; and Ursula Madden as chief communications officer.

Madden, a longtime news anchor for WMC-TV, Action News 5, also qualifies in the “something borrowed” category, inasmuch as she is a lift from the ranks of the media, a rival “estate” to government in Edmund Burke’s category of major societal divisions.

And “something blue” as a category applies handily to Armstrong, the head of city law enforcement whose tenure in office has in the past few weeks endured despite dismissive rhetoric by two mayors. A C Wharton made a premature announcement of Armstrong’s departure in the aftermath of the election that proved to be, in the old Nixonian-era term, “inoperative.” And Strickland’s persistent refusals during his campaign to commit himself to re-employing Armstrong were widely read (and apparently misread) as a vote of no confidence.

Indeed, it would almost seem that Armstrong himself — as resourceful in the politics of survival, it appears, as in his celebrated detective work (chronicled for a nation in TV’s 48 Hours) — has the major say in his professional destiny, including whether he will abide by his erstwhile, Wharton-era decision to retire in 2017 or keep on keeping on. The director is remarkably direct in his statements, keeping a sense of independence and an even keel, as when he spoke of the “logistical nightmare” he faced after cuts in police benefits played havoc with his forces. And who among us even remembers that group of restive police dissidents he identified as “the monsters” when he took over as director in 2001. Without much fuss or fanfare, they were simply subdued.

And, speaking of independent hands, we confess to being intrigued by Strickland’s “buck-stops-here” determination to reorganize his administration with himself as the hands-on center of the wheel vis-à-vis his major appointees. This contrasts with Wharton’s approach, which was more of a sort of chairmanship relationship to a group of autonomous departments.

All in all, we think Strickland has begun cautiously and well. And, without being at all conspicuous in a ticket-balancing sort of way, he appears to be fashioning an administration that is diverse and representative of several points of view — an administration that does not break jarringly with the preceding one but clearly can move in its own chosen direction.

Categories
Letters To The Editor Opinion

What They Said…

CREDIT: Greg Cravens

Greg Cravens

About Randy Haspel’s column, “Give ‘Em Hill” …

I hate people who make Hillary look good. It’s a conspiracy wrapped in a plot inside a fraud.

CL Mullins

Oh look, Hillary won a Kewpie doll. Oh wait, that’s Trey Gowdy. Make it a Kreepie doll.

Jeff

Actually he’s the kid holding the banjo in Deliverance … all growed up.

Packrat

“Dueling Banjos” is his “Eye of the Tiger.”

Jeff

About Toby Sells’ post, “City Engineer Steps Down in First Post-Election Departure” …

He was also the point man who had to rationalize the dangerously designed and indefensible bike lanes on Riverside and was roundly shouted down by residents at the public meetings.

The idea for placing more parking meters downtown was boneheaded, discouraging Memphians from coming downtown. I am glad to see Mr. Cameron leave, and I just hope the next departure will be Mr. Rogers from Memphis Animal Services.

Memphis Tigers

My dad and I rode the Riverside bike lanes almost every weekend. Nobody says a word when they shut down Riverside for a couple months every year, but squeeze out lanes for bicycles, and everyone goes insane.

FUNKbrs

Wow! Absolutely right! Taking over 10,000 motorists a DAY and halving their traffic lanes (and doubling the accident rate) is a small price to pay so Scooter and his dad can ride those bike lanes almost 50 times a year. After all, two to three dozen cyclists a day used those bike lanes! Those selfish motorists! Equally hard to understand is the selfish public expecting to park on a public street! The nerve!

Hopefully, the new mayor will end the tyranny of PC and/or connected, tiny-but-vocal special-interest groups before all the traffic flows and parking in Midtown and downtown is ruined.

ALJ2

To all the folks vilifying the evil PC bike lanes: Just keep in mind that unless you’re able to differentiate yourself as a neighborhood, then you have little to offer. If our product (that is Midtown and downtown) looks and feels exactly like Cordova, then we have nothing meaningful to offer, and convincing people to infill and redevelop becomes an impossible task.

If you allow street life to develop and have your auto commute lengthened by 180 seconds, we can start to differentiate our product in a profound way. If we hold fast to a car-centric vision, then we’re exactly like all the other second-tier Sun Belt cities. Remake the whole of Midtown and downtown in the spirit of Harbor Town and watch what happens.

Apok

If Toney Armstrong’s department would enforce the law on Riverside, those bicycle lanes would still be there. Daily commuters should not use that road as their route.

Clyde

When Exxon/ISIS kicks the price of gas up to $10 a gallon you’ll all be scrambling for your Schwinns.

Nick R

About Bruce VanWyngarden’s “Bacon, Cheese Dip, and Rocket Scientists” …

Ah, the crappy commentary from The Memphis Flyer. Show some more political bias!

Chris Hopper

Perfect, Bruce! Hillary, too, brought home the bacon in the BS “Bengotcha” hearings.

CD

What’s the difference between this editorial and 50,000 plastic cups that say “Pancho’s Cheese Dip?”

Ichabod McCrane

About our elderly …

Isn’t it ironic that conservatives will whine and complain over giving a single mother $200 to feed her hungry kids or provide medical care for our elderly but not bat an eye over wasting $5,000,000 on investigations to hurt Hillary’s presidential bid?

Jim Brasfield

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

What Strickland Will Do

CREDIT: Jackson Baker

Jackson Baker

Mayor-elect Jim Strickland

To the surprise of many observers, Councilman Jim Strickland, an acknowledged underdog when he declared as a candidate for mayor last January, won election last week with a 20-point edge on incumbent Mayor A C Wharton. At 42 percent, Strickland’s share of a larger-than-expected dissenting vote was clearly the predominating one when compared to those of Councilman Harold Collins (18 percent) and Memphis Police Association president Mike Williams (16 percent). 

So does the mayor-elect regard himself as having a mandate?

“Yes, to implement my platform” a relaxed Strickland agreed in the course of an interview in his law office on Monday.

Strickland will take office, along with a newly elected city council, on January 1st. In the meantime, his first task, to be completed this week, is the naming of a transition committee. There will be “two or three” co-chairs of that committee, he said, and they will assist him in naming a staff to help run the city.

As for that aforesaid platform, it was made clear during the campaign, within the winner’s incessantly reiterated triad of bullet points. In every speech, public statement, interview, and ad, Strickland essentially limited himself to promises of remedial action on public safety, blight, and accountability of public officials.

Wharton pitched to millennials and talked up bike lanes and futurist blueprints. Collins advocated a crash program on behalf of high-tech jobs. Even Williams evolved rapidly from his original incarnation as a one-issue candidate (restoration of lost employee benefits) and proposed strategies involving solar panels and transportation reform.

With the regularity of a metronome, Strickland stuck to his triad of safety, blight, and accountability. These are all valid problem areas — or would seem to have been so regarded by the voters, but they are all arguably managerial, even housekeeping, matters.

Strickland thinks otherwise. “I disagree with people who say all that’s not a vision,” he said on Monday. “You have to have an effectively run city government. To create a community that’s more inviting to people and businesses is so meat-and-potatoes that some people don’t consider it a vision. I just disagree. I think it is a vision. When you’re one of the most violent cities in America, number one in unemployment, with a poverty rate of 30 percent, doing the basics is important. If city government were a football team, you’d say it doesn’t block and tackle very well.”

And there was one important component of his legislative persona that Strickland left unsaid during his campaign — his longstanding history as a budget-cutter and apostle of fiscal austerity, as the councilman who in 2010 generated this headline: “Strickland Proposes City Employee Pay Cut.” 

These were inconvenient matters to remind voters of at a time of palpable public resentment of benefit cuts and reduced core services. To be fair, Strickland later rethought the pay-cut idea, but — unlike Collins, who seems to have split that part of his core protest vote with Williams — he signed on to most of the other economies that Wharton would ultimately embrace (and pay the political price).

There is a reason why Strickland, who some 20 years ago served a term as Shelby County Democratic chairman, had virtually wall-to-wall support this year from the city’s Republican voters and other conservatives and why GOP rank-and-filers from the county’s suburban municipalities were always to be found at his fund-raisers and rallies.

To those who might wonder, however, Strickland still considers himself a Democrat — “I’ve always voted in Democratic primaries. I never have voted in a Republican primary” — though he says he is unlikely to be running for any future office as a party nominee of any kind. His ambitions, he contends, are limited. “This is it,” he says of the office he has just won.

“Those who thought crime was not an issue lost.”

Apparently, safety-blight-accountability was a sufficiently nonpartisan platform to work with voters across the board, and the first two points of that triad had figured large in polls commissioned by chief Strickland strategist Steven Reid, resonating strongly even — or perhaps even especially — with inner-city blacks, whose encounters with violence and environmental squalor have been long-standing.

(To give David Upton his due, that veteran Democratic operative — neutral in this campaign — has always maintained that concern over the crime rate has been more significant and politically charged in the inner city than elsewhere.)

Though only a handful of African Americans had been among the white throng at Strickland’s Poplar Plaza headquarters opening in July, and an early Commercial Appeal poll had the District 5 councilman in single digits with blacks, Strickland was, in the late stages of the race, doing significant under-the-radar outreach, and he was privately claiming to have as much as 20 percent of the black vote. (It will be interesting to see how closely a demographic accounting of the final vote totals will come to bearing that out.)

And, to be sure, Strickland did espouse some new wrinkles, mostly incremental in nature. He suggested using private funds to help reformed felons pay for expunging their records, liaising with Boys Clubs and Girls Clubs, and offering financial incentives — residential PILOTs, he called them — in the form of tax breaks for people to buy a home in the inner city, rehab it, and live in it.

“Another thing is that it can take a city or county three or four years to foreclose on a piece of property with a tax debt. That’s too long,” Strickland contended. “We need a shorter time than that.” The legislature has to be talked into making both of those ideas possible.

“Then I’d like to expand a program I created enabling citizens to serve as reserve code-enforcement officers. That’s not being implemented very enthusiastically at present. I’d also like to talk with county government about better cooperation on simplifying code enforcement. We’ve got a city fire code, a city residential code, and a county commercial code. Maybe we could consolidate them.”

Strickland sees law enforcement as his most pressing matter, as well as the key part of what he sees as his vision.

“Last November, we did a poll to see if Mayor Wharton could be beaten. And we polled the issues that were near and dear to my heart, including crime. We found that being tough on crime was a popular stand, to both races. Harold Collins was as tough on crime as I was. He used the term ‘terrorism.’ There’s a small minority in Memphis who don’t think crime is an issue, and they lost.

“We lost a little less than 400 people. In 2014, the Wharton administration told me we lost 158 police officers. We normally lose 100 a year in natural attrition. We lost 58 more than normal, which is concerning, but it’s not 400.

“But, aside from quibbling about numbers, we do have a serious problem hiring and retaining police officers. I propose a series of steps. Number one, we’re going to be honest and open with the unions. We’ll open up the books and let them look at them. The Wharton team has told us for a year and a half that we could not afford the lifetime health insurance. The employees have a suspicion that money is there for lifetime health insurance and has been used elsewhere. The only way to counter that argument is to open up the books and let everyone see what we can afford and what we can’t afford. I want to learn the answer myself.

“Two, we need to do a better job of recruiting new police officers. When I got on the council eight years ago, one of the first things we did was try to hire more police officers. We went then from 2,100 to 2,400 police officers by changing the area in which they could live — Memphis to Shelby County — and we went through a big recruiting period, with TV ads.

“We’ve got to come up with funds in the city budget to increase the pay of police officers.”

Strickland reserves the right to impose rigid curfews on youth in cases of flash-mob flare-ups like the violent outbreaks that plagued the city in late 2014. “[Former Councilman] Rickey Peete passed a curfew law 10 or 15 years ago, but it’s not enforced. It’s a stair-step program, pegged to age. If you’re 14 years old, you need to be home at 10 o’clock.”

Reinstituting a full-fledged program of civilian reserve (PST) officers to handle traffic investigations and other nonviolent matters is another step Strickland intends to take. “That’s an additional expense, but it gives you more police officers on the street. And I want to bring the animal control officers from the city shelter into the police department, for two reasons: One, I think you get better oversight from the police department than the shelter; and two, I think you’d get more efficiency, because, right now, a wild dog call can go to either the police department or the shelter. Put them under one roof, and there’s more efficiency, and you can send out animal control officers, which frankly are less expensive, and the police officers can patrol the streets.

“We need a new director of Animal Services, by the way. I want to hire one of these national, certified animal-advocate groups to come in and do an evaluation of the shelter and also help us hire a director.”

There is the matter, too, of who will serve as police director. During the campaign, the three other major mayoral candidates — Wharton, Collins, and Williams — all indicated they would continue the employment of Toney Armstrong, who has a year to go before exiting the department via the early-retirement (or “drop”) program. Strickland was the only candidate who avoided committing himself.

“I think Toney’s a good man,” Strickland said. “It’s too early to say what I’ll do. That’s one of the things I want to talk to him about. If I wanted to go outside the city and recruit a police director, would that person want a full four years to institute their program? Or would three years be acceptable? And I think Director Armstrong would know that.”

“We will restructure government.”

As he sets about naming a staff (which he promises will be “impressive and diverse”), Strickland says he will employ the same “less is more” philosophy that he employed in picking a campaign staff. “We had lots of volunteers, but we had just two paid staffers, Kim Perry and Melissa Wray,” he said. He also had the services of campaign consultant Reid, to whom he gives significant credit in planning a strategy that led to victory. 

As noted above, the one major fact of his council experience that came in for minimal expression during that campaign was Strickland’s reputation as a budget-cutter and advocate of economic austerity. “I think people already knew that about me,” Strickland says by way of explaining his downplaying of the issue. “As a whole, people cared about the other issues more. I think you’ll see more serious cuts, by the way. We’ll have fewer employees, especially in upper management.” Having often decried what he described as over-billeting and cronyism in Wharton’s administration, Strickland will do some judicious pruning and consolidation of the city roles.

“We will restructure government,” he promises.  

Holdovers? There could be some, he acknowledged. Gone from his conversation on Monday was the sharp polemics of his mayoral campaign. He paid tribute to outgoing Mayor Wharton and the incumbent’s CAO,  Jack Sammons. “They’ve both been very gracious and forthcoming in the conversations I’ve had with them.”

Strickland made clear he intends to take seriously the third point in his triad of campaign issues — that of employee accountability. Were there already check-points to measure performance in office? Strickland was asked.

“I would argue they are spotty,” he said. “I’ll be meeting with Doug McGowen, who runs the Mayor’s Innovation Delivery Team, to go over what work he’s already created. We ought to have measurements on how long it takes to process 911 calls, for example, and we should hold people accountable to a definite set of standards.”

There are more details to be worked through but, consistent with the bare bones of Strickland’s campaign appeal, the syllabary of the new mayor’s agenda will be a lean one, limited by the relative scarcity of available resources and focused on a few carefully chosen target areas.

The real change is the fact of Strickland himself, a bluff, hearty, good-natured but competent and calculating man whose mayoral ambitions had been of long standing but whose pathway to power and margin of victory both remain something of an astonishment — with the latter fact allowing him whatever mandate he can make of the means at hand.

Categories
News The Fly-By

Big Moves Ahead for Memphis Police Department Facilities

CREDIT: Toby Sells

Some big moves are planned for the Memphis Police Department (MPD) headquarters at 201 Poplar and for the department’s South Main precinct.

The MPD wants to move its headquarters from the Shelby County Criminal Justice Complex to the former Donnelly J. Hill State Office Building on Civic Center Plaza. The state vacated the building last year, and its offices are now housed down Main Street at One Commerce Square.

Toby Sells

Donnelly J. Hill State Office Building

Robert Lipscomb, the city’s director of Housing and Community Development (HCD), wants the city to buy the building from the state for $1.5 million. The goal is to relocate MPD headquarters and a few other city offices from spaces leased around the city into the 12-story office building.

“If we’re going to fight crime, we need to show the public that we’re serious about fighting crime,” Lipscomb said. “We want to give the police department a visible presence, and I think this building does that.”

The MPD’s rent at 201 Poplar is $85,000 per month, according to MPD Director Toney Armstrong. All told, rent and other expenses there cost the city about $1.4 million per year. Vacating 201 Poplar would save the MPD about 75 percent of that rent cost.

Some city council members were skeptical of the deal and not in favor of raising the city’s debt in the current budget year.

Lipscomb said HCD would also move into the former state office building as well as the Memphis Housing Authority, human resources, legal, and a few other departments. Lipscomb discussed his plans with the Memphis City Council last week, but the project is not yet ready for a formal council vote, he said.

But Lipscomb said a more pressing matter was the move of the MPD’s South Main precinct from Central Station to the Memphis Area Transit Authority’s North End Terminal at 444 North Main.

The move was precipitated by the planned, $55 million redevelopment of Central Station into a hotel, restaurant, and apartments. The council approved the $1.3 million reallocation of funds in this year’s budget to begin the planning and design phase, which is expected to be completed by September.

The price tag drew fire from councilmember Berlin Boyd. After being told that the move was necessary, Boyd chided administration officials for asking for the emergency funds.

“No offense, but with everything [from the administration], there’s a sense of urgency,” Boyd said. “We can find money to do certain things, but when it comes to helping people, we can’t do that.”

Armstrong explained that the move would allow him to have the entirety of his downtown precinct “under one roof” and that the department didn’t ask to move.

“One of the things we have to understand here is we’ve been asked to relocate; we’ve been asked to vacate the premises,” Armstrong said. “So, it’s more than necessary that we move.”

Categories
News News Blog

City Council Discusses Adding Cateria Stokes to Homicide Reward List

Cateria Stokes, the 15-year-old girl who was killed during a drive-by shooting at her house on April 10th, may be the next name added to the city’s reward list for information on homicide suspects.

Cateria Stokes

The Memphis City Council’s Public Safety Committee discussed adding Stokes’ name to the list in their meeting Tuesday morning, and the resolution will be voted on in the full council meeting Tuesday night. If passed, tipsters with information on Stokes’ killer, who remains unknown at this time, could be given a $100,000 reward.

Other names on the city’s homicide reward list include former Memphis Grizzly Lorenzen Wright, Larry Joseph Larkin, Joey Lacy, Cora Gatewood, Calvin Riley, Napoleon Yates, Marco Antonio Calero, Jack Lassiter, and Deryck DeShaun Davenport.

The Public Safety Committee also heard the monthly rape kit update. A member of the rape kit task force told council members that the construction storage room for DNA evidence was moving along and “seeing lots of progress.” As of March, there were 5,246 rape kits that remained untested. That’s down from 5,246 untested in February.

Council members also discussed an ordinance to give the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) more teeth, including the power to subpoena officers and information. The CLERB, which is currently inactive, is designed to provide oversight for citizen complaints against police wrongdoing. Both Director Toney Armstrong and Memphis Police Association President Mike Williams took issue with the idea giving the board subpoena power, claiming that it could impact the officers’ Fifth Amendment rights.

But City Council member Shea Flinn, who once served on an earlier incarnation of the CLERB, urged the council to take action soon and give the CLERB more power.

“All politics aside, this board is about when things don’t go right. And the reason this board wasn’t taken seriously by the city council [in its past incarnation] is because the board wasn’t serious. It had no power,” Flinn said. “And in these economic times, when we’re paying staff [to serve on the board], we cannot do nothing.”

Flinn said a CLERB with more power could help build trust between citizens and law enforcement. The CLERB amendment will be heard in its first reading at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

Categories
News News Blog

Memphis Police Arrest 22 Gang Members in Drug Sting

A Memphis Police undercover investigation netted 22 arrests for street-level heroin and cocaine sales, announced Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong in a press conference Friday afternoon.

Toney Armstrong (left) discusses recent investigations at a Friday afternoon press conference.

The investigation targeted members of the Gangster Disciples gang and ran from January 1st, 2014 to February 28th, 2015. The gang was infiltrated by an undercover Organized Crime Unit officer and a confidential informant. Charges for the 22 arrested range from intent to sell or deliver heroin, cocaine, and meth to possessing a firearm during the commission of a felony. 

The sting led to the seizure of $206,891, 203 kilos of cocaine with a street value of $6 million, three kilos of heroin with a street value of $180,000, seven handguns, and 10 vehicles used to transport narcotics. The drugs were transported to Memphis in all sorts of ways, including by Greyhound bus and through the U.S. mail. 

Nineteen of the 22 suspects are Gangster Disciples, and one is an LMG, which stands for LeMoyne-Owen Gang.

“There will not be a gang in this city more powerful than the Memphis Police Department. And there will not be a gang leader more powerful than the Memphis Police director,” said Armstrong, in a warning issued to gang members.

Armstrong also gave a few updates on recent crimes. He said nine people have been arrested for involvement in the mob attack at the BP at Poplar and Cleveland last Thursday. In that incident, Orrden Williams, Jr. was attacked by teens from Northwest Prep Academy, a Shelby County School for students who are overage for their grade, when he tried to escort an older woman who was afraid of the teens to her car.

Armstrong said the suspects range in age from 16 to 19, and many have criminal histories ranging from simple assault to sexual battery.

He also said three people — Carl Johnson (19), Jordan Clayton (21), and Branden Brookins (19) — have been arrested in the drive-by shooting death of 7-year-old Kirsten Williams. Williams was playing outside her home last Friday (April 10th) on Durby Street when the men drove by and fired multiple rounds into the house.  

Memphis Police are still investigating the April 10th murder of 15-year-old Cateria Stokes. A drive-by shooting at her house at 4581 Cottonwood in Parkway Village led to Stokes being shot in the head while she slept in her bed . A 63-year-old man inside the home was also shot. The incident occurred around 2 a.m.

“We are still working on that investigation. We will not rest. We will turn over every rock to bring that investigation to a successful conclusion,” Armstrong said. 

Categories
Letter From The Editor Opinion

Good Cop. Bad Cop.

Let’s say you read a story about a doctor who amputated a patient’s left leg by mistake. He was supposed to remove the right leg, but he was in a hurry and misread a chart, and he was tired from having worked 12 hours straight and, well, he screwed up. That doctor would be criticized in the media. He’d be sued for malpractice. He’d have to go before the medical board and might lose his medical license.

But his incompetence wouldn’t be seen as an indictment of the entire medical profession or an attack on all doctors. His fellow doctors wouldn’t demand an apology from the media or start demonizing patients. They know, as we do, that getting rid of incompetent doctors is a good thing for all of us, including hospitals and other doctors.

The same standards hold true for most professions. It’s just common sense. You want to toss out the bad apples.

So why isn’t that the case when it comes to cops? Why isn’t it possible to acknowledge the difficulty of the job they perform and still criticize those cops who are bad at doing it? In Cleveland, Ohio, the police basically assassinated a 12-year-old boy, Tamir Rice. The cop who did it has a history of mental issues and was deemed unsuitable for police work by another police department. There are protests in the streets and some of the city’s professional athletes are wearing T-shirts that condemn the killing, which was ruled a homicide.

But in Cleveland, as in other cities, the police are rallying around the officer in question. The union head is demanding an apology from the athletes and their teams. Battle lines are forming on social media; there are countless posts about the great work that cops do, and about how difficult their job is. Criticizing the behavior of some officers is portrayed as being anti-police or as being ignorant of how difficult their job is.

I get it. Being a cop is a thankless, life-threatening job. Most cops are good men and women. But police departments need to man up and acknowledge their bad apples. Closing ranks behind the blue “code of silence” is hurting them more than it’s helping them, as is the symbiotic relationship between district attorneys and cops that so often results in a sham grand jury “investigation.”

I’ve grown to respect Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong’s quiet approach to the current situation. His department’s non-confrontational response to local protesters has been spot on, and we should be grateful for it. It’s important that the police recognize that there’s a difference between a legal, organized protest and running through the streets and setting businesses on fire.

And it’s equally important for police leadership to recognize that the “thin blue line” is there to serve and protect us, and when someone in uniform fails in those duties, it’s in their own best interest that he or she be held accountable by their superiors — and their peers.