Tyler Merbler | Wikimedia | Creative Commons
United States Capitol, 2021
The Memphis City Council members want to know if any of the city’s public safety employees were present at the attack on the U.S. Capitol on January 6th.
A resolution on the council’s Tuesday agenda will request the Memphis Police Department (MPD) to “investigate whether any city of Memphis public safety employees participated in the U.S. Capitol riot in Washington, D.C.”
Council members then want Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland’s administration to “develop and present a plan to the council” revealing those employees and creating a “process to ensure former city of Memphis public safety employees re-hiring status reflects participation in [the] U.S. Capitol riots.”
City of Memphis
The resolution is sponsored by council members Michalyn Easter-Thomas, Martavius Jones, J B Smiley Jr., and Dr. Jeff Warren.
The resolution comes as “several sworn police officers from departments across the nation now face federal criminal charges as a result of their participation in the insurrection,” it reads. That becomes important, it says, to further “address concerns about the need for increased oversight and accountability within public-safety-based departments, especially in light of 2020’s international call for reform within the criminal justice system.”
While the council members say the council “supports the lawful expression of free speech, as well as the right to peacefully assemble, and is committed to upholding the tenets of democracy” that the “acts of violence and insurrection … do not align with the principles or
freedoms upon which our nation is based” and that the council condemns the actions of the rioters.