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Stockard on the Stump: Memphis rep says Shelby needs ‘real’ Crime Commission – Tennessee Lookout [1]
['More From Author', 'August', 'Sam Stockard']
Date: 2023-08-04
As the U.S. Department of Justice commences a civil rights investigation of Memphis Police, state Rep. G.A. Hardaway is calling for an overhaul of the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, as well, including removal of director Bill Gibbons.
“We need a real Crime Commission,” Hardaway says, challenging the next Memphis mayor to appoint a group accountable to the public.
The Memphis Democrat explains he had an “epiphany” amid the federal government’s decision to probe Memphis Police and decided that local leaders need to quit “running up behind” Gibbons and those who’ve been trying to quell violence for decades with only up-and-down results. He’s also irritated with Gibbons’ hefty salary as head of the Institute of Public Safety at University of Memphis.
Gibbons, who’s paid $130,000 by the university and serves as leader of the Crime Commission, has also been Shelby County district attorney general, Tennessee Homeland Security commissioner, Memphis City Council member and Shelby County commissioner.
“And yet we keep looking at him and his buddies for solutions to the problems they created. It ain’t gonna happen,” Hardaway says.
Granted, Hardaway is prone to sound off when frustrated.
In this case, he says he and a group of local leaders provided information to the Department of Justice that laid the groundwork for its investigation.
The feds announced last week they’ll start looking at Memphis police practices to determine if they’re violating people’s civil rights. The probe stems, in part, from the beating death of Tyre Nichols by a team of officers working on the SCORPION Unit, which was set up to cut down street violence.
Video showed the officers hitting Nichols repeatedly after a traffic stop and short foot chase in early January. They face criminal charges in connection with the incident. The feds say their probe will touch on several other areas of potentially discriminatory police work.
The Department of Justice “didn’t just flip a coin in making the decision to come,” Hardaway says. “The reason the DOJ showed up is that we put enough evidence in front of them to pique their curiosity.”
Gibbons, a longtime Republican, is miffed by Hardaway’s statements, saying he doesn’t know exactly what he’s complaining about.
The Crime Commission, which started in 1996, initiated a new plan in 2022 to reduce crime after violence escalated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The 50-member Crime Commission board, a list of Memphis who’s who, approved the five-year plan based on “evidence-informed best practices that have been proven to work in various other cities and to some degree in Memphis as well,” Gibbons says.
The plan is detailed and involves efforts to pinpoint Memphis’ most hardened criminals, reduce juvenile crime and offer incentives for people to get out of a criminal life.
“I don’t know if he’s ever looked at it,” Gibbons says of Hardaway.
Who could blame him? It’s long as hell and harder to read than ancient Beowulf.
Sen. London Lamar, D-Memphis, a Crime Commission Board member, points out the commission’s purpose is to use data to come up with crime prevention solutions, a challenge that requires every sector of the community.
“As citizens and board members, we can support the DOJ and its right to conduct a civil rights investigation and continue our work to prevent youth and at-risk community members from falling into the destructive patterns that get them entangled with police in the first place,” Lamar says.
She didn’t weigh in on Hardaway’s complaints about Gibbons and the commission. Rep. John Gillespie, R-Bartlett, who also serves on the board, didn’t return a call.
The Crime Commission took no position on forming the SCORPION Unit but years ago pushed for a multi-agency gang unit, which is more of an investigative unit than a street-level enforcement group, according to Gibbons.
Another initiative involved creation of a gun crime unit set up by Memphis Police last year to investigate aggravated assaults involving the discharge of firearms, some 2,000 since June 2022, Gibbons says.
Memphis has been rocked by violent crime more than usual the last two to three years since the pandemic started affecting people’s lives.
Gibbons, however, says it’s too early to tell whether the DOJ investigation is warranted.
“Some good things could come out of it,” he says, pointing out cities such as Newark, New Jersey benefited.
Two “potential concerns,” Gibbons says, are whether the investigation will affect Memphis’ efforts to recruit and retain police officers and whether it will stop “legitimate proactive enforcement” efforts by Memphis Police. He acknowledges the Nichols case did not fall into that category.
The Nichols case alone could be enough for the feds to investigate. The Rodney King-type beating was so severe it was tough to watch and impossible to justify.
With that in mind, Hardaway points out the only times Memphis has seen true justice took place when the feds came calling.
“And this is one such time that we’ve got to have the feds participate with all of the power, the authority, the money and other resources that the federal government can bring to the table,” Hardaway says. “Nothing else will do.”
Making the sale
State Rep. Caleb Hemmer, a first-term Nashville Democrat, says his bill for safe storage of guns could be “in the mix” at the Aug. 21 special session Gov. Bill Lee is planning to call.
The measure, which was sponsored in the Senate by Nashville mayoral candidate Sen. Jeff Yarbro, didn’t get much traction during the 2023 regular session, even though House Republican Caucus Chairman Jeremy Faison made overtures toward backing it.
Hemmer says a revamped version could include grants for gun locks, public awareness campaigns, allowances for municipal fines of $50 and civil liability protections.
Despite a steady and shocking increase in firearm thefts from vehicles since the Legislature passed the “guns in trunks” bill more than a decade ago, Republican leaders keep stopping gun storage bills, saying law-abiding people shouldn’t be punished for someone else’s wrongdoing, i.e., stealing their poorly-kept gun.
Democratic Rep. Caleb Hemmer will take another run at passing a bill to require safe storage of guns in automobiles.
In other words, it’s OK to hide a pistol under the car seat and run into a bar for a couple of beers, creating a target for gun thieves and eventually putting the weapon into the hands of a potential killer.
It happens all the time for the sake of a well-regulated militia.
No can do
Former state Sen. Brian Kelsey, preparing for sentencing on a federal campaign finance conviction, moved nearly $197,000 from his state election account to his Red State Political Action Committee in early June, state records show.
Lawmakers have a little more leeway with PAC spending than with their regular accounts, even though sometimes the Registry of Election Finance orders some to come explain how they spent money, mainly because it looked as if they were living off their PACs.
Kelsey, though, won’t be allowed to use that money to pay his attorneys, according to Bill Young, executive director of the Bureau of Ethics and Campaign Finance.
Young says the bureau and registry have taken the position that a candidate can’t use money from a political campaign committee to pay for personal expenses, based on state law.
“The reason being that any political campaign committee paying a candidate’s personal expenses is in fact making a contribution to the candidate under T.C.A. 2-10-102(4), and again such a contribution cannot be used to pay for the candidate’s personal expenses under T.C.A. 2-10-114(b),” Young says via email.
Since Kelsey’s legal fees involve litigation against him personally and not his campaign account, he wouldn’t be able to use the money to pay legal fees, according to Young.
The former state senator pleaded guilty to two counts of violating federal campaign guidelines by directing a scheme to shift money from his state account through two political action committees to the American Conservative Union, which bought radio/digital ads for his failed 2016 congressional race.
U.S. District Court Judge Waverly Crenshaw last week allowed Kelsey to hire Nashville attorneys Alex Little and Zachary Lawson last week and drop Todd Warrington and the team of Paul Bruno, Jerry Martin and David Rivera.
An increasingly agitated Crenshaw also allowed Little two more weeks, until Aug. 11, to prepare for Kelsey’s sentencing. Sentencing was supposed to be done by June or earlier, but Kelsey tried to renege on his guilty plea, an idea Crenshaw rejected.
Federal prosecutors are planning to seek a harsher sentence, mainly because of the recalcitrant Kelsey’s “stall tactics.”
Kelsey’s also considering suing his former attorneys who guided him through the guilty plea after co-defendant Josh Smith, owner of The Standard, a downtown Republican hangout, pleaded guilty and promised to cooperate with the feds. If he sues the Bruno team, it would run parallel to his sentence.
But the money transfer to his Red State PAC could be opening the door for another court date. Does anyone foresee yet another legal battle if Kelsey pays his new counsel with PAC money?
Getting into the game
Voices for a Safer Tennessee, a group forged from The Covenant School shooting, is set to launch a TV and digital advertising campaign Thursday, spokesman Todd Cruse confirmed.
The group is producing its own ads, the first one of which features a family member of one of the slain Covenant staffers. It will point out the shooter shouldn’t have been able to buy weapons, a matter lawmakers should discuss at the special session.
“It’s not calling for them to do anything. It’s just raising the awareness that we have a challenge in this state when somebody in a mental health crisis can get access to weapons and not have an opportunity to cool off,” Cruse says.
Another ad to run in the coming weeks will deal with secure storage, one of the group’s main concerns. The others are background checks and temporary confiscation of weapons from mentally unstable people.
Looking to leave – immediately
Word keeps leaking about an “Adjourn Caucus” forming in the Legislature among those who don’t want to attend the August special session or vote on any gun-related proposals in the aftermath of the Covenant School mass shooting that claimed six lives, including three 9-year-olds.
Nobody is confirming the existence of this caucus. But it is painfully obvious that numerous state lawmakers would join if their arms weren’t being twisted. I hear it’s coming out of the Senate.
Meanwhile, Democrats are taking a bus tour of the state, Gov. Bill Lee is talking to anyone who will listen, and some Senate leaders are working on bills.
But a big chunk of folks would rather just stay home, and several are considering leaving the Legislature after 2024 if things turn too toxic.
“Everybody listen to me / And return me, my ship / I’m your captain, I’m your captain / Though I’m feeling mighty sick.”
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