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Memphis’ Gang Problem

CREDIT: Justin Fox Burks

Justin Fox Burks

Graffiti symbolizing Latino gang “Playboy Sureños 13”

On the night of September 6th, a crowd of teenagers randomly targeted and beat three people in the Poplar Plaza Kroger parking lot. A portion of the assault was captured on a smartphone.

The phone video footage of the incident was uploaded online and quickly went viral. The video displays a group of teens, reportedly around 100 of them, running from a nearby CiCi’s Pizza to the grocery store parking lot. Some of them target a 25-year-old man by his car. Circling him, several people in the mob shower the man with punches to the head and face as he flees toward the store entrance.

The video then shows a 17-year-old Kroger clerk, one of two employees who rushes to help the first victim, being punched by two or three of the teens. He’s knocked to the ground and kicked repeatedly in the head. Large pumpkins are thrown at his head and face as he lies on the ground unconscious.

Nearly a dozen teenagers, ranging from 14 to 19 years old, have been arrested, thus far. They face charges varying from aggravated assault to aggravated rioting. Law enforcement has identified several of the juveniles as gang members.

Though the Kroger incident was not necessarily a gang-organized event, the gang culture is a real problem in Memphis. There are 9,100 documented gang members and 170 documented gangs and subsets in the area, according to the Tennessee Gang Investigators Association (TNGIA). This number does not take into account undocumented members, which authorities say could double that number.

Justin Fox Burks

Graffiti of a Bloods subset in East Memphis

Justin Fox Burks

Graffiti downtown symbolizing the “Greenlaw Money Mob”

Finding a Way Out

Ar’tavius Brown, 18, hails from Westwood, a South Memphis neighborhood where some gang activity occurs. Intrigued by the lifestyle he had seen many of his peers embrace, Brown decided to join the gang culture.

“Seeing the people with the cars, with the money, you see how they get it quick, and you start to want it too,” says Brown.

In the seventh grade, Brown joined a Westwood faction of the Pirus, a gang founded in California. It falls within the Blood Gang Alliance. Members primarily dress in red clothing and bandanas to symbolize their association.

Before he joined in, Brown witnessed the impact of gang and criminal activity. Many of his family members are gang members. He has an uncle who’s serving life in prison for murder, and he witnessed a close friend get gunned down by rival gang members.

But it wasn’t until last fall that Brown personally experienced the ramifications that come with gang life. In October 2013, some Crips, a rival set to the Pirus, tried to jump him. A Central High School senior at the time, Brown pulled out a pistol and started firing shots at the group while chasing them. No one was hit, but Brown was apprehended for the shooting.

“I went to jail on two counts of aggravated assault and reckless endangerment with a deadly weapon,” Brown says. “They were talking about upgrading it to first-degree attempted murder, but [Juvenile Court] Judge Dan Michael saw something in me and gave me a break.”

Blessed with a second chance, Brown is no longer an active Piru member. He managed to graduate from high school, despite his incarceration, and he is now mentored by Young Man University, an organization dedicated to helping underprivileged youth and adult males avoid imprisonment and criminal lifestyles. College is next for him.

Justin Fox Burks

“Love Mob” gathers at Poplar and Highland in response to Kroger parking lot beating.

A National Problem

But the problem isn’t just local. According to the FBI, in 2011, there were approximately 1.4 million active street, prison, and outlaw motorcycle gang members, comprising more than 33,000 gangs in the United States.

In 2012, Tennessee had 30,000 gang members (25,000 at large and 5,000 in prison), according to the Governor’s Public Safety Forum on Tennessee Gangs. For comparison’s sake, consider that there were only around 14,000 law enforcement officers in the state that year.

In Memphis, various gangs operate within different pockets of the community. Gang activity happens in rural areas, but it is most prevalent in predominantly black communities such as North Memphis, South Memphis, Frayser, Northhaven, Whitehaven, Binghampton, Orange Mound, and Hickory Hill.

Memphis’ Riverside community is primarily the territory of the Riverside Rollin’ 90’s Crips. The area has been plagued with violence and drug activity. Over a 10-month period, the Riverside Rollin’ 90’s were investigated by the Multi-Agency Gang Unit (MGU), a collective comprised of local, state, and federal law enforcement agencies that specifically targets gangs and gang members in Memphis. Throughout the investigation’s duration, there was at least one shooting per day, and 1,200 calls regarding gang-related matters were reportedly made to police.

“Memphis has a serious gang problem,” says Fred Winston, operations commander for MGU. “We target people who are really out there affecting where people live. We’re trying to get the worst of the worst off the street.”

Following MGU’s investigation, a gang injunction was issued on the Riverside Rollin’ 90’s in a 4.6-mile radius of Riverside. Bordered by South Parkway, West Mallory, I-55, and Florida Street, the targeted area is home to 4,000-plus residents. The injunction, which was implemented in September 2013, declared the gang a public nuisance and outlawed them from associating publicly, possessing firearms, distributing drugs, and a host of other things. Anyone violating the city ordinance can be arrested, charged with contempt of court, and fined.

“It’s made great strides in bringing some stability back to what many describe as a war-torn area,” says Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich with regard to the gang injunction. “That area had just become the playground of the Rollin’ Riverside 90’s Crips.”

Justin Fox Burks

Fred Tibbs, father of slain 18-year-old Lafonso Patton

Victim by Association

Some people join gangs to feel accepted and appreciated, others because they’re looking for a way to make fast money. Whatever the motivation, after joining, the chances of that person being placed in a life-threatening situation or facing incarceration increases greatly.

And gang activity doesn’t just endanger the lives of gang members; it places those who associate with them and live around them in peril as well.

The last time Fred Tibbs saw his son Lafonso Patton alive was March 31, 2012. The 18-year-old East High School graduate left the house that night to go hang out with three friends in Orange Mound.

As always, Tibbs told him to “come home safe.” But Lafonso never returned home. Close to midnight, a frantic voice alerted Tibbs on the phone that his son had been shot.

“He was with a friend, and the friend had seen a female that he used to talk to. He said something to her and they got into a heated argument,” Tibbs recalls. “Some of the guys on the street heard it, and they started hollering at him. [Lafonso’s friend] hollered out, ‘I’m Piru. [Fuck] Orange Mound. We ain’t from the Mound, we from [Binghampton].’ And out of that crowd, somebody ran behind a house, got a gun, and started shooting at them.”

As he and his friends began running for their lives, Lafonso was the only one who failed to escape. Struck in the head, he was able to take a few more strides before collapsing. When Tibbs arrived at the scene, Lafonso was slumped over in a drain, lifeless at the corner of Deadrick Avenue and David Street.

“I went into shock,” Tibbs remembers. “I actually had to go get psychological help. I lost it.”

Tibbs says Lafonso wasn’t a gang member. He was scheduled to start his first day at Lit, a wholesale restaurant supply company, the day following his murder. Two years later, no arrest has been made in his homicide.

Gangs in Schools

Memphis is home to various Chicago- and California-based gangs: Crips and Bloods subsets, Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Latin Kings, Black P. Stones, Four Corner Hustlers, Mara Salvatrucha 13, Sureños 13, and numerous others. There are also Memphis-based gangs with notorious reputations, including Young Mob, Dixie Homes Murda Gang, Fam Mob, and Kingsgate Mafia.

Some boast a significant juvenile membership, which can lead to gang-related issues infiltrating local school systems.

The Gang Reduction Assistance for Saving Society’s Youth (GRASSY) Program provides resources to students affiliated with gangs, which helps make resisting street life more feasible for many. Since 2009, GRASSY has helped reduce gang expulsions in school by 63 percent, increased school attendance and graduation of gang members, and decreased office referrals.

“We’re not trying to necessarily get a kid out of a gang; we’re trying to get them resources to make them productive and proactive citizens and give them pro-social skills,” says Ron Pope, director of the GRASSY program. “Children have to want to get out of a gang. All of the programs are voluntary. They have to want to receive the services, and it’s up to them to determine what their activity level in the gang will be. Our goal is to convince them to be as inactive as possible.”

GRASSY provides all Shelby County Schools (SCS) students with the opportunity to work with a gang prevention specialist and receive intervention services. Two of its primary targets are Hamilton and Trezevant — high schools that possess a significant gang presence. A caseworker operates in both schools 40 hours per week, providing counseling, financial assistance, and other resources and services to identified gang members to help deter them from gang activity.

Other schools located in areas with gang problems can also access assistance from a part-time GRASSY caseworker.

KeAnna Mitchell, a 17-year-old Northwest Prep Academy student, says peer pressure from friends motivated her to join the Bloods. Since being initiated, Mitchell has lost several of her close friends to violence. And her boyfriend, a Gangster Disciple, was fatally shot in the head after trying to rob someone.

“Now that I’m in it, it hasn’t done anything for me,” Mitchell admits. “Before I made the decision, I was a normal kid. But after I joined the gang, I went to jail, [because] I had a pistol on me. It was peer pressure. I just wanted to be that hard person.”

Although she still considers herself a Blood, Mitchell is no longer active. She’s a graduate of Hope Academy, an educational program provided by Shelby County Juvenile Court to teens arrested for crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felonies. She has plans to attend college.

Organized Crime

The gang culture has become more organized over recent years. A lot of high-ranking gang members don’t look like a stereotypical hoodlum. Many run their criminal operations using business practices more common to legitimate enterprises.

Carter F. Smith, co-founder of TNGIA, has been researching gang culture for a quarter century. Throughout the years, he’s observed the transition in Tennessee’s gang climate. Smith says more gang members are infiltrating the military, law enforcement, and college campuses, making it more challenging for law enforcement to observe and combat gang activity.

“Most gang members don’t even get detected by the police,” Smith says. “They’re more organized-crime oriented, and they avoid detection because they’re not committing the typical street crimes that most people will report. The stereotypical gang member, if you ask any member of the public or most cops, has baggy pants, some color of choice, depending on the nation he’s representing, tattoos everywhere, and symbology from his gang on everything he owns. In reality, the typical gang member in advanced form blends into society. You can’t pick them out of a line-up unless they actually committed a crime.”

In July 2013, Tennessee Governor Bill Haslam signed into law a bill that enhances sentencing of any proven gang member who commits a crime identified as a “criminal gang offense.” If a prosecutor can prove that the perpetrator is a gang member, they can be punished one classification higher than the offense requires with charges such as first-degree murder, aggravated assault, kidnapping, robbery, and rape. And if the accused is an identified gang leader, they can be punished two classifications higher than the offense requires.

Justin Fox Burks

Dionysus Sisson with Detric Golden, director of Greenlaw Community Center

Changing Lives

Dionysus Sisson, 42, grew up in a South Side Chicago neighborhood dominated by Black P. Stones, a Chicago-based street gang that now operates around the world — including in Memphis.

At age 11, Sisson joined the Black P. Stones. By his teens, he had garnered a chilling reputation for being heartless and trigger-happy. He rose in rank, going from an officer to a general of the organization.

He has spent half of his life behind bars for numerous misdemeanor and felony offenses. His outlook on life changed during his most recent prison stint when he decided to cease gang-banging and embrace Christianity.

Justin Fox Burks

Youth Foundation with youth

After being released in 2011, Sisson began working with the Youth Foundation, an entity that collaborates with gang prevention agencies in Memphis to restore hope to disadvantaged youth. Along with Youth Foundation founder Thomas Norphlet, Sisson travels to different neighborhoods to mentor at-risk youth, provide training and employment resources, and inform them of the consequences that come with gang activity and gun violence.

“It’ll change you when you look into a dying man’s eyes, but it’s another type of change when you look into a boy’s eyes and he realizes that he can live,” Sisson says. “I’ve seen them both, but this is the one I wanted. I wanted to be able to open somebody’s eyes instead of closing them.”

Gang culture isn’t going away anytime soon, in Memphis or nationally. But those working to fight the problem believe a collective response from the community and local government and law enforcement can help. A united approach is needed to provide youth with assistance, mentorship, recreational outlets, and employment opportunities.

Justin Fox Burks

“They want a sense of belonging,” Sisson says with regard to disadvantaged youth. “They want to be loved. They want to be respected. And if we don’t give them that love at home or that respect in the community, they’re going to find it in somebody’s gang.”

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News The Fly-By

Forum Explores Youth Violence Prevention Methods

CREDIT: Louis Goggans

The brutal beating of three people by a mob of teens in the Poplar Plaza Kroger parking lot Saturday night happened just days after a forum was held on ways to prevent youth violence.

Although no one was killed in the Kroger incident, situations involving youth violence don’t always have such endings — 58 of the 119 lives that fell victim to homicide in Memphis this year were between the ages of 18 and 34.

Memphis Police Department (MPD) Director Toney Armstrong announced these statistics during the “Youth Violence Prevention Forum” last Thursday evening.

“I’m using every resource [and] all the manpower that I have, but I can’t do everything,” Armstrong stated during the meeting.

Along with Mayor A C Wharton, Armstrong said he thought it would be helpful for local agencies and organizations that contribute resources toward combating youth violence to congregate. More than 100 representatives of city government, Shelby County Schools, and nonprofit agencies, as well as concerned locals gathered at the Benjamin L. Hooks Central Library.

Attendees selected one of four breakout sessions including one on literacy and education. The session was intended as a gathering to generate ideas to help increase literacy among young minorities, but it also served as an outlet for participants to vent about the city’s crime, gang, and parenting issues.

One woman was almost in tears while reminiscing about her son, who was among the city’s homicide victims.

“I’m tired of seeing our black youth die in the street like it’s something calm,” she said. “Those are my young men out there in the street, and I feel responsible. We have to start with our children. I don’t care how many programs you produce, you’re trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Until we take the time to teach our children as parents and neighborhood people what’s right and what’s wrong, and teach them the truth, it’s not going to work.”

Other sessions focused on employment opportunities and job readiness, parenting and mentoring, and after-school and athletic activities. At each session, strategies were established to better utilize current resources, and ideas were presented to create new efforts to decrease youth violence.

“The group felt that the community’s disconnect from support for families and communities was a root cause [of youth violence],” said Lisa Moore, facilitator for the parenting and mentoring session. “If there was community support for families and youth, then there would be adequate jobs, better education, and more activities.”

Ron Redwing of the Redwing Foundation and 100 Black Men of Memphis facilitated the employment opportunities and job readiness session. During the gathering, the group discussed creating a centralized database to share information on services offered to help young people find jobs. The group also thought it was important to motivate Memphis-based corporations to hire and retain local talent.

“We looked for specific opportunities to help increase young people’s employment, so that they were either well-trained or had better opportunities for jobs they could seek and become employed with,” Redwing said.

Although the Youth Violence Prevention Forum was arranged to produce new violence intervention strategies, some worry that it will simply be another event involving a multitude of locals who talk about making a change but fall short when it comes to implementing action behind their suggestions.

“I think it was well-intentioned, but I’m not sure that anything occurred that will move the needle,” said a city government official, who asked not to be identified. “It was a lot of preaching to the choir.”

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Letter From The Editor Opinion

Let’s Go Krogering: A Rorschach Test

When a mob of black teens rampaged through a Kroger parking lot one night last week and attacked three people, it started a storm of controversy, mainly because a store employee caught much of it on video. As is inevitable these days, the video was put on every media site in town and shared countless times on Facebook and Twitter. Some national websites then picked it up.

The Flyer‘s Louis Goggans posted a report and a link to the video on our website. The incident — or better said, the video of the incident — served as a sort of social Rorschach test. Viewers mostly used it to enhance and support their own narratives in the comments section.

Racists found it the perfect excuse to use the “n word” and/or to disparage all black teens as “thugs” or “animals.” For Memphis haters, it offered a wonderful opportunity to bash the city and brag about how they “got out in time.” Gun lovers pointed out how much better the situation would have been if someone had just shot some of the teens. Liberals saw the incident as the inevitable result of income inequality.

Also getting some play were: “Where are the parents?” “The school system sucks!” “This was a hate crime!” And “Where’s Al Sharpton?” (Which is apparently comedy gold for a lot of angry white people.)

Then a few facts emerged: The teens left a nearby pizza joint en masse and came after a guy getting out of his car; probably the first person they saw. The police called him “non-African American,” which could mean he was Hispanic or Asian or white. Two Kroger employees — one black, one white — came to his assistance and were attacked and knocked unconscious.

Within a couple days, the MPD had rounded up 11 of the teens; some of whom had been turned in by their parents. The mayor and the police chief, both African Americans, held a press conference, denounced the incident, and pledged to arrest all involved. This calm and professional handling of the incident disappointed a lot of commenters, mainly, because the teens were not charged with a hate crime, which is difficult to prove and likely not applicable in this case. But apparently, for some folks, if someone you hate commits a crime, it’s a hate crime. Case closed.

And I learned something interesting about those “discussing” the incident on the Flyer website. After deleting more than 20 racist and/or vile Memphis-hating comments one evening, I decided to use our site technology to see where they came from. Seventeen of those comments came from out of town, and I don’t mean Bartlett. People from Michigan, South Carolina, Florida, North Carolina, Pennsylvania, Illinois, and elsewhere were flooding the Flyer site with ignorant racist remarks and Memphis-bashing.

It’s a good example of how a discussion about how to deal with a local problem can be distorted by those with no real knowledge of the situation and no skin in the game — except a desperate need to promote their own sad hatred.

Bruce VanWyngarden

brucev@memphisflyer.com

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News The Fly-By

Few Rebuked After Blue Flu, Red Rash

CREDIT: Toby Sells

So far, seven Memphis police officers and zero Memphis firefighters have been reprimanded for missing work during the Blue Flu and Red Rash protests last month.

Hundreds of public safety officers with the Memphis Police Department (MPD) and Memphis Fire Services Department (MFSD) called in sick during a two-week span that included the Independence Day holiday. The absences were part of an apparent protest over cuts to health-care benefits for current and retired city employees. At the heights of the separate protests, more than 550 officers and 80 firefighters called in sick. 

Toby Sells

Blue Flu at a news conference last month.

When the protest began, MPD Director Toney Armstrong said a process was in place to review those officers who called out during the work action. Corrective actions against any non-compliant officers absent during the time of the protest could range from an oral reprimand to termination, he said.     

Seven police officers have been reprimanded for absences during the Blue Flu time frame, according to MPD public information officer Sgt. Karen Rudolph. Statements of charges against the officers are pending approval, she said, and range from abusing the sick leave policy and missing court dates to not being at the location where they stated they’d spend their sick day.

“It is important that you understand that these officers are being presented with a statement of charges for these violations only; they should in no way be mentioned as ‘officers involved with the Blue Flu,'” Rudolph said in a statement. “These officers were off sick during this time period; however, it was not determined that these officers were off in order to participate with a work action such as the ‘Blue Flu.'”

Memphis Police Association President Michael Williams said he was not aware of a single reprimand to any Memphis police officer related to the Blue Flu protest. 

“I know that all of those guys had to have the right documentation to be able to come back to work,” Williams said.

Alvin Benson, director of Memphis Fire Services Division, said he did not see a “noticeable spike” in sick days among Memphis firefighters as Blue Flu began. But as it waned, a similar action, the so-called Red Rash, began in his shop. At its height, though, only about 80 MFSD employees had called out sick.

MFSD spokesperson Lt. Wayne Cooke said no reprimands related to the Red Rash have been served on MFSD employees. He said when employees call in sick, each instance is evaluated separately. If the absence doesn’t adhere to the city’s leave policy, action is taken.

“In the case of the recent spike in illnesses, at this point, no disciplinary action has been warranted,” Cooke said. “All absences, though some suspicious, were within existing policy and supported by required documentation.”

The cuts that spurred the work action and other protests were part of Mayor A C Wharton’s budget for the year and were passed by the Memphis City Council. Savings from those cuts are to help patch the massive hole in the city pension fund. 

Since the budget was passed, alternatives to the health-care cuts have come forward. Actuaries are now checking the figures in a new, high-deductible health-care plan brought to the council from the Memphis Fire Fighters Association.

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News The Fly-By

Learning From Ferguson

Almost seven years ago, I stood under a clear, blue September sky in Jena, Louisiana, as more than 20,000 African Americans flooded the streets of that rustic community in protest of the conviction of six teenagers for the alleged beating of a white student at the town’s high school. I thought then, in 2007, that that demonstration of unity of purpose might lead to a new awakening of social consciousness in America regarding race relations. It didn’t.

Five years later, I was reporting on the daily demonstrations of outrage in Memphis in reaction to the shooting death in Florida of 17-year-old Trayvon Martin at the hands of a self-appointed neighborhood watch captain, George Zimmerman. The outpouring of tears, outrage, and disgust at the fact that Martin’s “stereotypical” hoodie served as a catalyst for his being targeted by the overzealous wanna-be cop seemed universal — an appalled response from the majority of the general public. Surely, I thought, this would be the incident that would sustain a national dialogue about race, false perceptions, and tainted justice and result in sweeping positive social upheaval in the name of equality. It didn’t.

So, pardon me if the prospect of people taking to the streets of Memphis this week to demonstrate solidarity with those mourning the loss of 18-year-old Michael Brown in a police shooting in Ferguson, Missouri, strikes me as a hollow gesture — especially since we’ve got so much work left to do in addressing the plight of African-American youth here in Memphis. It’s blasphemous to focus on a tragedy 300 miles away when we should be concentrating on the atrocities within our own city. It doesn’t take much to know where to begin.

As I reported on television last week, there are an estimated 10,000 students who have not yet enrolled in school in Shelby County. Because of confusion regarding the various municipal, private, charter, and state-run achievement district school systems, clarity about who is going where might be a little muddled, but that doesn’t take away from the fact that thousands of students are apparently not in school anywhere. The SCS superintendent and school board members are only now, two weeks into the educational year, deciding to push parental procrastinators into action to get their children in classrooms through a series of radio and television ads.

Since when did getting a basic education become an option? There are laws on the books about the penalties parents can face because of their children’s truancy. Shelby County District Attorney Amy Weirich stands ready to enforce them. Let’s take her up on her word to do so. You can’t tell me there’s not a direct correlation between school truants and the youth violence in our streets. In the month between July 13th and August 13th, Memphis police responded to 27 shooting incidents involving juveniles. The youngest victim was 12. Apparently, these incidents have caught the attention of Memphis Mayor A C Wharton who now wants to call a summit to discuss ways to stop the violence.

Though I have my doubts, I hope the mayor isn’t content in this situation to surround himself with “yes men” who are going to give him a false sense that the city is doing all it can to turn around this distressing tide. If the city truly wants to help, it should join the D.A.’s office in cracking down hard on truancy. Join with the schools in reaching out to young girls to teach them that making babies out of wedlock is not a career path. Have MPD hold seminars to stress to young black males the less-than-attractive alternatives of imprisonment or death that could come from living the life of a “gangsta.” If you want to call it “scared straight” or some snappier title, it doesn’t matter. Just do it.

As history has proven, marches and public demonstrations of concern are usually after-the-fact reactions — too little, too late. We shouldn’t have to march in memory of our slain youth, not when we can be proactive in giving our children a fighting chance to succeed through education. You can’t bring Trayvon Martin or Michael Brown back. But we, and the leaders of our community, can do our utmost to work toward making sure their deaths and the temporary unity of purpose their tragedies generated were not in vain, at least not here in Memphis.

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News The Fly-By

Documentary Highlights MPD’s 1948 Integration

More than half of the Memphis Police Department (MPD) is made up of African-American officers, but that wasn’t always the case.

In 1948, the MPD welcomed its first nine publicized black officers. The historic occurrence is profiled in a new documentary titled True Blue — Memphis Lawmen of 1948.

The Earnest C. Withers Foundation along with the Afro American Police Association and Cinematic Arts collectively premiered the documentary last weekend at the University of Memphis.

Ernest Withers

Andrew “Rome” Withers, son of famed Civil Rights-era photographer Earnest Withers, who was also one of the first nine black officers, said the documentary profiles the historic feat of the officers and the struggles they experienced.

“Most of them, when they were hired, had to buy their own guns” Withers said. “Their roll call was on Beale Street, separate from the white officers. The pay was different. And, of course, they could not arrest white people at all. They could only detain them until a white officer came.”

True Blue takes a trip through time to highlight the controversial integration of the MPD and how things have changed since then. The documentary focuses on two of the surviving members of the class of 1948, Jerry Williams and Roscoe McWilliams.

The first nine black MPD officers in 1948

True Blue reveals how the MPD’s black officers of 1948 were hired in the first place. After several African-Americans had been severely beaten and shot by white police officers, local residents became enraged. A community meeting was held by Memphis Mayor E.H. Crump, who promised to provide the black community with their own parks and recreational facilities to ease concerns about police brutality. However, one woman stood up and expressed that they would like black policemen instead.

Crump concurred, and African-Americans were allowed to apply for the police force. Out of 160-plus applicants, nine officers were hired. Several more came on board a couple weeks later. They were assigned to patrol the areas of Beale Street and Orange Mound.

Although it’s been publicized that the first black Memphis police officers were hired in 1948, the documentary conveys that there were actually two other classes before them.

One class of black officers was introduced during the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1878, and the other was in 1919. But according to the MPD’s History Timeline, the first two black men to serve with the MPD, William Cook and John F. Harris, were hired in 1867.

Others who participated in the documentary include MPD Director Toney Armstrong, the wives of Wendell Robinson and R.J. Turner (two of the first nine black officers), and Claudine Penn (the city’s first black female police officer).

Withers said the documentary will be submitted to film festivals around the world, and he hopes a major TV network will broadcast it. They also plan to show True Blue in Shelby County Schools.

“It’s an intriguing story that I think will appeal to people who do not know about Memphis history,” Withers said. “We don’t get enough of our history, so I’m hoping that [True Blue] will appeal to the community and we will get support to continue to make feature films about different aspects of Memphis that are unidentified and unknown. [The film] will bring hope and identification of history that’s never been told before. Not just for us but for generations to come.”

Categories
News The Fly-By

Memphis Police Director To Re-Design the Department

Many were surprised to learn last week that efforts are under way to “redesign” the Memphis Police Department (MPD).

Police Director Toney Armstrong delivered the news in a Memphis City Council budget hearing in his standard, flat, professional monotone that made the announcement seem expected, though many said it was the first they’d heard of the project.

The crux of the announcement was that the MPD’s proposed budget for next year includes about 188 fewer police officers than it had last year. The current budget allows Armstrong to have as many as 2,470 officers.

But it’s more than simply the number of officers influencing Armstrong’s decision to redesign the department. Armstrong had been directed by the city’s Chief Administrative Officer, George Little, to revise the department’s mission statement — that is, change what kind of services the MPD provides and how it delivers those services. The directive sprang from tight financial times for city leaders who are pressured to maintain services to taxpayers, which get more expensive every year, and pay at least $15 million more next year into the city’s ailing pension fund.   

“We’re at a time of reckoning when we need to decide what level of service we can afford to provide,” Little said Tuesday.

Armstrong said the redesign process is moving ahead, but it is far from complete, and he prompted city council members for guidance. 

“We are in the process of essentially designing a new police department,” Armstrong said. “As the police department stands now, we have [a complement of] 2,470 officers. If we scale back to 2,282 as we’ve proposed in this budget, there will be a level of services we will not be able to perform. We have to make decisions on what to do and what not to do.”

Fewer officers would likely come with a reduced mission. For example, the MPD could choose not to respond to burglar alarms or to fender benders. These ideas have been discussed in the past but were formalized in the city’s five-year strategic plan from consulting firm The PFM Group.

That study proposed a raft of changes that included a reduced list of services from the MPD, lowering pay for some police positions, hiring civilians to do office work that is currently performed by higher-wage sworn officers, cutting back on pay for college incentives and length of service, and cutting some holidays and sick days. 

Perhaps the biggest move suggested by PFM is to consolidate the office and dispatch services of the MPD and the Memphis Fire Department (MFD). The study said as many as 130 governments have consolidated police and fire to some degree. Some have even cross-trained police officers and firefighters to do both jobs, it said. 

But the study suggested the MPD and the MFD maintain independence but share back-office support and dispatchers. Doing so would save $7.6 million over five years with a reduction of 35 employees.  

Michael Williams, president of the Memphis Police Association, said he read PFM’s report but didn’t know until Armstrong said it last week that the MPD was up for a redesign.

“The director’s got to do what the director’s got to do,” Williams said. “But what I heard him say to the council was, actually, the council has to decide what level of service do they want to provide to the citizens. If they want a full-service department, they have to increase the complement. If they do not, then the citizens have to be told and have to understand that they aren’t going to receive the same services they’re used to.”

• MPD calls 2012 – 1,637,200

• Radio dispatcher salary – $50,345 (34 percent higher than peer cities)

• MPD portion of city’s 2013 budget – 36.6 percent

• MPD/MFD holiday pay 2013 – $11.8 million

• MPD employees – increased by 314 from 2008-2013

Source: PFM Group

Categories
Opinion

Grit ’n’ Grind

Memphis police director Toney Armstrong won Round One in budget negotiations with the city council, where he found support for a 4.6 percent raise for employees.

Armstrong was the main event in a morning of budget hearings Tuesday. A majority of budget committee members voted in favor of his proposed budget, which includes the pay increase for 2,348 police department employees. Mayor A C Wharton has proposed a 2.3 percent increase. The final budget decisions are still a few weeks away, but the committee’s budget cutters — Jim Strickland, Shea Flinn, and Harold Collins — were outvoted roughly two to one.

Chief administrative officer George Little shook his head after the vote was tallied.

“It doesn’t add up,” he said. “We either have to raise taxes or go back to employees and cut raises.”

He called Wharton’s proposed 2.3 percent raise “affordable.”

Armstrong said the budget he presented “didn’t have any fluff,” and 87 percent of it “is for personnel and keeping boots on the ground.”

Sixty cents of every dollar the city administration spends is for public safety, and three out of every four general fund employees work in police or fire divisions. The proposed fiscal year 2014 budget is $622.5 million.

Strickland and Flinn said a 4.6 percent raise (restoring a cut made in 2012) would increase the property tax rate from $3.39 to $3.51.

“We are about to tax our city out of existence,” Flinn said.

Strickland questioned whether police officers have to take a “full service” approach and respond to every car wreck, house alarm, or barking-dog complaint. But Councilman Joe Brown countered that “we never know what is on the other end” of such calls, and “process servers or rent-a-cops can’t handle it.”

Other council members suggested chipping away at details of the police budget such as lawsuits, helicopters, and guns and ammo, but Armstrong gave up no ground. The lawsuits, he said, stem mainly from traffic accidents, and the department has to maintain the four aging choppers it has because a new one would cost about $3 million. The cost of weapons and ammo has been driven up by war, he said.

The director, 46 years old and a 24-year veteran, also threw retirement decisions into the mix. Officers with similar experience, he suggested, might decide to stay or go based on the 4.6 percent pay increase, and that would have a trickle-down effect on staffing and experience throughout the force. Several times he used the phrase “need to be proactive” to parry suggested cutbacks.

Bottom line: Round One to Armstrong.

Earlier in the committee meeting, Linn Sitler of the Film and Television Commission broke a little minor news. A BET production crew has been filming episodes of the reality television program Judge Mathis in Memphis for several months. Greg Mathis is a retired judge from Detroit whose courtroom program has run for 14 years.

“They didn’t even want a kickoff,” Sitler said of the low-key project.

The new episodes apparently will depart from that formula by having homicide detectives investigate cold cases and work the streets instead of featuring Mathis dispatching cases in a courtroom. Mathis will seek help from the Memphis community to, in Armstrong’s words, “bring closure to the families.”

Armstrong, himself a former star of another reality cops program, The First 48, in his pre-director days, said producers contacted him and Mayor Wharton last year.

“They reached out to us and asked for a meeting,” he said, adding, “I won’t be featured.” Instead, the stars will be “seasoned veterans” from the homicide division who “know their way around an investigation and a camera.”

Sitler, who sailed through her hearing unscathed in a couple of minutes, said the success of the television series Nashville might loosen the purse strings in state government for doling out incentives for film and television projects in other parts of the state.

With bigger fish to fry, Little seemed less exuberant and said he had only attended one meeting about Judge Mathis.

“We’re open to it,” he said. “It’s better than Memphis being filmed in Georgia,” an apparent reference to TNT’s since-canceled Memphis Beat, which was filmed in New Orleans.

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City Of Memphis Issues Demonstration Permit to KKK

Photo from a KKK rally last year in Charlotte, North Carolina

  • Photo from a KKK rally last year in Charlotte, North Carolina

The city of Memphis has officially approved a demonstration by the Loyal White Knights, better known as the Ku Klux Klan, to be held on March 30th.

City officials and police director Toney Armstrong have been discussing the issue for days, and the permit was finally approved after Armstrong gave the okay to proceed.

“Based on director Armstrong’s decision, the permits office took appropriate steps earlier today to issue the permit and contact the applicant,” said city attorney Herman Morris. “We have known from the beginning that denying this application would result in a legal fight on constitutionality that would be long, divisive, expensive, and that would unnecessarily prolong the decision. We have all, however, been very attune to director Armstrong’s review given the critical role the Memphis Police Department will play in a proposed demonstration.”

The KKK submitted their application to demonstrate following the Memphis City Council’s decision to change the name of Forrest Park and other city parks named with Confederate themes.

“My primary focus is the safety of the public and all involved,” Armstrong said. “It will be in all of our best interest to have a demonstration where we are able to work with this group in setting the do’s and don’ts. Right now, my team has a strategy that will ensure everyone’s safety. What we absolutely do not want is some unplanned, spontaneous demonstration where my team has not been involved in planning and set-up.”

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Opinion

Wharton Speaks to Friends, Employees, and a Stuffed Polar Bear

polarbear-sideview.jpg

How many times do you get to write a headline like that? Not many. Mayor A C Wharton gave his state of the city speech Friday in the foyer of the Pink Palace mansion where he stared down a snarling stuffed polar bear along with a bunch of television cameras.

Wharton, a master of such occasions after a decade of city and county mayoral years, managed to give an upbeat speech despite the bear, the rain outside, the cramped venue (the closet must have already been booked) and the crummy headlines about Pinnacle Airlines and police shootings in the morning paper. He talked for 36 minutes, or twice as long as President Obama last week in his inaugural address. He tempered that factoid by noting that his wife reminded him to slow down.

Wharton got his biggest round of applause when he appealed for a cease fire on gun crimes. “We won’t rest until gunfire is no longer the accepted sound track for far too many of our citizens,” he said. The mayor and Police Director Toney Armstrong scheduled a press conference Friday afternoon to tout a new program.

He didn’t mention Pinnacle and the as many as 500 jobs that will be leaving downtown Memphis for Minneapolis. Instead he plugged Electrolux, Mitsubishi Electric, and “jobs coming on line this year.” He said they were “real jobs for real people located in the real city of Memphis” lest there was any confusion.

“The best is yet to come when it comes to jobs for the people of our city,” he said.

He also gave props to the City Council for reducing the city tax rate without going into the messiness of overdue bills to the former Memphis City Schools or the impact of shifting the city payment to county government after this year. As he has said many times, he supports a half-cent increase in the city sales tax if it goes into a trust fund for pre-K and property tax reduction.

His second-biggest applause line, by my unscientific estimate, was a pledge aimed at the airport authority, on which his wife serves as a board member, that “we will succeed in bringing in other carriers and bringing down the cost of flying.”

The rest of his remarks were about such chestnuts as Bass Pro (attention shoppers, half the space will be devoted to conservation exhibits), bike lanes, conventions (“our facilities are inadequate”), the river (“we need to reconnect”) and job training.

As for the bear, it has dual significance as a big-game trophy and a reminder of the fate of Clarence Saunders, the entrepreneur who built the Pink Palace. He went broke after betting the wrong way in a big stock-market bet but his fame endures as one of the inventors of the modern grocery store and such names as Piggly Wiggly and Keedoozle.