While Watching the Watchers, researching for several years and making a documentary, at some point we seemingly got ahead of the curve and pointed out some ways the police and the city could improve. Of course, "local" people do not often get credit for knowing a thing or two -- especially if there's not a big consulting fee from an out-of-state corporation, which is how Memphis tends to roll.
In April, we asked Memphis police brass if they were paying attention to how the Department of Justice was coming down on cities the DOJ civil rights division had investigated. The idea was for MPD to keep up with best practices and recommendations, not only to have a better police force and city but so the city could avoid the multi-million-dollar monitoring costs borne by cities such as New Orleans and Cleveland that had been subjected to DOJ consent decrees.
We got a fuzzy answer. Yesterday, we got a better answer when the DOJ said they would undertake an assessment of MPD -- not an investigation as such -- at no cost to the city.
Back in July, one day after protestors shut down the Hernando DeSoto Bridge across the Mississippi River, Live at 9 on Memphis TV station WREG interviewed Who Will Watch the Watchers? producer Gary Moore.
It was some timing. The divide between law enforcement and community and regular images of police killing unarmed men make up the hot topic of the day in America. Who Will Watch the Watchers? is a documentary which examines the increasing ways we see police abuses, and it tracks the struggles of citizens in Memphis who were arrested by police for taking video of police officers.
While waiting to go on the air in July, in studio we watched a press conference that included Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland and interim (now full-time) police director Michael Rallings. Strickland and Rallings said they needed an "action plan," but did not have one just yet.
The city's typical response to a situation seems to be paying a bunch of money to an out-of-state corporation. Like, when they paid $40,000 to the International Chiefs of Police to help them hire a new police chief -- then the city settled on local interim chief Rallings, whom they already knew! We wrote that the whole process was flawed, dead in the water pretty much, before it got off to a late start.
We interviewed nationally recognized police administrators such as Dr. Cedric Alexander, public safety director in DeKalb County, Georgia, and native Memphian Anne Kirkpatrick, a former FBI trainer and police chief in Washington. Kirkpatrick was hired by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel this year to take on the onerous task of changing police culture at CPD. The city of Memphis further had expenses in bringing candidates to Memphis for interviews and tours, plus who-knows-what other costs, even after the decision had already been made to retain Rallings.
Then yesterday, Oct. 26, the U.S. Department of Justice announced they would undertake a two-year assessment of the Memphis Police Department -- at no cost to the city -- in order to improve the police department. During the press conference, police director Rallings for the first time publicly cited the President's Task Force as the proper blueprint for Memphis and PD's everywhere.
Shazam!
Not trying to go all, told-you-so three and a half months ago, but it usually takes someone from out of town -- I guess no one thinks anyone "local" knows anything -- to say the same thing we said for it to be accepted.
At least one clue they took: Instead of blowing a lot of money on a nothing-burger, this checkup will be paid for by the federal agency.
A government contractor has been arrested for doing approximately what Edward Snowden did,
revealing wrongdoing by the National Security Agency (NSA). We talk about this like it's a crime, "stealing" government secrets. But, where is the crime here? The government spying on private citizens and other wrongdoings seem like the real crimes and contain the real criminals.
Journalists expose themselves when they frame these as stories of people stealing government secrets, because if they report the information, they legally share in the "crime."
Is it criminal to report crimes? Not usually.
Here's the story: http://www.opednews.com/articles/NYT-Declares-Snowden-a-Thi-by-Fair-org-Crime_Journalism_NSA_Snowden-161008-799.html
Whatever threat -- veiled or overt -- the U.S. government laid on Yahoo to get it to spy on its email users, it worked, turning the Internet giant -- and who else that we don't know about yet? -- against people who trust and use its services.
As state legislatures have continued to put corporate profits and kickbacks ahead of people, and for-profit prisons have been built to warehouse children as well as adults, Just City in Memphis, TN, is rightly striving for reform and humanity. Children are the future, as they say, but Children are the Now as how we treat children today turns into our future.
After reading this Smart City story, I flashed back to when the chairman of the Williamson County (TN) Republican Party blasted the county for accepting federal money to serve (at no cost to the county) breakfast to poor and hungry kids. TV reporter Kara Kumari interviewed me for a counterpoint. Skipping over the screwed-up values and everything immoral that goes with the no-breakfast-for-hungry-and-poor-kids position, how about we cut to the cynical and tweak how the No-Breakfast Club thinks, anyway:
What it costs to feed and educate kids today costs vastly less than what it will cost to imprison them as adults.
As much as we have heard "Nazi" tossed around and misused by the American extreme right, and repeated by the media, I cringe that I just used it in a headline. Because, it's a correct use of the comparison between Hitler's movement and what we are experiencing in the U.S. at this time.
Authoritarianism, as used to whip up the masses who feel disenfranchised but whose suffering is better relieved by democracy and equality than a self-serving dictator, is not only opposite America's founding principles. It is incredible to see it in action, to see how an "authoritarian populism" as amplified by Donald Trump stirs emotions and draws a Pied Piper line of mindless followers.
"Hillary's a criminal," said an otherwise rational man (I thought) and retired federal employee whom we ran into recently after not seeing him for several years.
"If a candidate's for abortion, that stops it right there with me," he said. When we pointed out that Trump most assuredly has no problem with a woman having an abortion -- indeed, if he were the impregnator, he would insist on it -- our guy said:
"I would rather vote for somebody who says he's against abortion and is lying about it than somebody who says she's not against abortion."
It seems as if some sort of alien mind meld has mass-infected the populace.
Another former acquaintance, who discussed with me years ago how Americans had become mentally mushed by celebrity TV, recently decried the Democratic National Convention as full of "perverts and child molesters" while the RNC was full of patriots and police and Christians.
I do not get it. Authoritarians vs. Empathizers is the basis of the divide in America. While populism naturally fits with the Empathizers, it's this Authoritarian Populism that has taken over the national conversation.
Don't have a bird? They used to call it fish wrapping, or it's used to stuff packing boxes. Have you
ever got a mail-order package and it had Chinese newsprint in it?
Talking about newspapers here, printed stuff, you know, what paper boys used to throw.
The demise of journalism, and especially print, is one of the two great threats to democracy in the 21st Century -- the other being unlimited, anonymous money to buy elected officials and thus public policy.
The Commercial Appeal's new corporate master, Gannett, is aggressively reshaping "content management" and "reader experiences," to cut out real people who write, photograph and edit the news we need to be an informed democracy.
Straddling the fence between building a solid pay wall between accessing content online are these odd little survey gatekeepers. Like this one which asks, "Which Tampon brand do you most use?"
A reader who does not have a subscription must answer the survey before being allowed to view the story. After so many views in a certain period of time, the user of a particular computer is blocked from content. This is between requiring a paid subscription and having all content freely accessible.
Surprise, surprise! After spending a $40,000 fee plus expenses to go through the charade of a flawed process, we searched far and wide and found the guy we already had. Scroll to our story three posts down if you can stand to read background and analysis. Here is link to the mayor's release on naming Rallings:
Scroll down to see our story on one Memphis chief candidate, Philadelphia Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan, who was in charge of Philly streets during the just-completed Democratic National Convention, and down one more to see our analysis, "Was City's Cop Search Doomed from the Start?"
"They disrupt traffic, but so what?The First Amendment is more important than traffic."
Memphis police chief
candidate and Philadelphia PD Chief Inspector Joe Sullivan will be the cop most
on the spot in America next week as Philly PD’s point man for
the Democratic National Convention.
Of the five out-of-towners
who were turned up by a national search, Sullivan will be in the national spotlight like no other
as it will be his task to keep peace on the streets outside the Wells Fargo
Center.
Sullivan has somewhat of a
reputation for peaceful protests, and he says that during protest rallies, he
is on the front lines with his men; that he does not want them to don tactical
attire, and that “a verbal insult has never hurt me once in all my years.People can scream and curse me all they want,
and I’m not going to react.”
Was
the city’s search for a new chief of police a political exercise in futility
that cost taxpayers $40,000 -- or more?
When Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland this spring asked his interim appointee, Michael Rallings, to apply for the permanent post of director of police services, it signaled to some potential national candidates that the mayor's mind was made up. Moreover, why did Strickland or the search entity not even talk with arguably some of the top police
administrators in the country -- even one who was a former Memphis police officer? Now that city council has formally asked Strickland to appoint Railings -- as has the NAACP, the police union and even protestors against police violence -- is Strickland wasting taxpayer money and the time of other law enforcement candidates to continue the charade of a "national search?" Strickland announced that he will be interviewing five out-of-town candidates in August, and the mayor even posted their bios online. What the mayor failed to say was how much that will cost the city in travel and related expenses. At this point Strickland would seem to have no choice, this side of a political death wish, but to appoint Rallings. That's not to slight Rallings, who may be the best pick.
Memphis
native Anne Kirkpatrick recently was named to head the city of Chicago’s new
Bureau of Professional Standards with the huge task of reforming police culture into
a force of “guardians, not warriors,” as reported by The Chicago Sun-Times. Kirkpatrick was a Memphis patrol officer in the 1980s; moved to Washington state where she got a law degree, and then climbed a law enforcement ladder that included serving as a police chief and as a trainer of police brass for the FBI.
The ink is barely dry on a Memphis City Council ordinance that refreshed the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB), and the board's already limited subpoena power is being challenged by its own city council rep. New councilman Worth Morgan questions the value and legality of seeking a subpoena to compel evidence and testimony, and he has produced a new ordinance that eliminates subpoena power entirely.
"Without subpoena power, I don't understand the point or purpose of CLERB besides being a show," says CLERB member John Marek. "Subpoena power is the one 'tooth' that we have." (At the bottom of this story is a link to a history of CLERB ordinances, passed and proposed. There is also a timeline of CLERB milestones. Click here to see Video Clips from the June 14 meeting. )
The People of the United States won the latest round in the battle to keep the Internet open and not the lock-stock-and-barrel property of the giant U.S. telecoms, such as AT&T, Comcast and Verizon.
Do you want the corporate profit motives in charge of the Internet? Or, the First Amendment and what's best for the American people?
The U.S. government developed the Internet, first as a military project, and then UCLA scientists working from a government grant helped round the Internet into what we use and enjoy today.
We the People paid for the Internet. We are not about to give it up.
The next city of Memphis police chief will get a raise of between about $40,000 and $98,000 over the present pay scale.
Salary Range Posted for Next Memphis Police Chief
In its recruiting brochure, the city states that the salary range for the next director of police services, aka chief, will be $190,577 to $247,750. The present salary for the position, held by interim director of police services Mike Rallings, is $150,000. That itself represented a raise in pay instituted by mayor Jim Strickland earlier this year. Former chief Toney Armstrong was paid an annual salary of $126,001.46. Strickland previously had said the going rate based on other cities was about $250,000, in his estimation, and Memphis may need to raise its salary level to get the best candidate. This posting is the first time the city has published a new salary range for the job.
Memphis has retained the International Association of Chiefs of Police to manage a search for the next chief. The job was posted May 6, 2016.
Police Career Search Website Shows City of Memphis Chief Job Was Posted May 6, 2016
Other Cities Recruit Memphis Native for Police Chief
While Memphis Finally Starts Its Formal Search
While
local news media press Mayor Jim Strickland about the city’s murder rate
Anne Kirkpatrick
and a search for a new police chief, one nationally prominent candidate for
top cop in Chicago and other cities is a Memphis hometowner.
Strickland
was reported as saying February 15 that the city would retain the search
services of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and that the
process would begin within three weeks.
More than 11 weeks later, the city has just finished getting its information to the search organization, and the job was officially posted late today May 6. Deadline for submissions is June 17. While Memphis has an interim chief in place, and the mayor would say, better to get it right than get it fast, movement on a new chief would quell clamor and uncertainty.
The
Chicago Police Board sifted through 39 candidates and spent $500,000 to conduct
a search for a new superintendent of police after Garry McCarthy was fired in
the wake of a scandal over a police officer killing 17-year-old Laquan
McDonald.
One
of three finalists for the Chicago job was former Spokane, Washington, police
chief Anne Kirkpatrick, who grew up in Memphis and served as a patrol officer
for more than three years in Memphis, 1982-1985.
Dysfunction in the Windy City
If
there is any comfort to Memphians in knowing that other cities have trouble getting
out of their own way, consider this: Chicago Mayor
Rahm Emanuel rejected the board’s three candidates and named his pick from the
existing Chicago police force – but only to be an interim chief, replacing the “old”
interim chief of five months.
Emanuel offered the job to DeKalb County, Georgia, director of public safety Cedric Alexander, but then withdrew the offer under pressure from certain Chicago council members and political powers who insisted on a local guy. Alexander, along with Kirkpatrick, were the top two police chief candidates -- not from Chicago -- who were selected during that city's search.
Strickland
has asked interim Director of Police Services Michael Rallings to apply for the
permanent post, and Rallings says he will apply.
There
are two schools of thought on the subject of a new, permanent chief – that it
should be someone who came up through the ranks of the Memphis department, or
it specifically should be someone with a fresh perspective from outside.
Inside Out
If
any candidate is uniquely positioned to bridge both those concepts it is
Kirkpatrick, who presently travels the country as an instructor for the FBI's Law Enforcement Executive Development Association. As such, she teaches leadership to executives in local agencies and covers such topics as the problem employee, credibility, discipline and liability.
This
week Kirkpatrick was in Arizona teaching a class.But, it seems Memphis is never far from her
mind.In fact, Kirkpatrick’s’ parents
and two brothers live in Memphis, and she seems to find herself in Memphis
regularly – sometimes for work with the FBI and sometimes to visit – as
recently as last weekend.
“I’m
a change agent,” Kirkpatrick said while on a break between class sessions.“I think I would be a good fit for Memphis.
“Memphis
has almost double the murder rate per capita as Chicago,” Kirkpatrick noted.
“What
I am looking for is to be a part of a city and police department that wants to
really change the culture of violence,” Kirkpatrick said. “Chicago met that
criteria.Memphis meets that.
A Time to Heal
“I
want to come into an agency that struggles or has some major issues, and I want
to be part of the healing of that.I
actually think I would be a good healing leader for them and could set them on
a course for an excellent future.
“As
a community, too, Memphis needs to not accept the level of cultural violence
that they have accepted.They play a
part in that as well.
“If
I were to apply for the Memphis job it would be as an outsider with an insider’s
foundation,” said Kirkpatrick, who also is a licensed attorney in Washington.
Politicians and Lawyers Meet in a Room Called "Bluff"
Sounds sketchy, right?
Even the district attorney wasn't sure.
"Fasten your seat belts," Shelby County District Attorney General Amy Weirich quipped before an invitation-only forum on body-worn cameras and in-car videos April 6 at University of Memphis.
Judges, defense attorneys and community organizations showed up to hear what a daunting and costly task will be managing body-cam footage and public records requests. Weirich co-hosted the pow-wow with Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland.
"Body cameras are here to stay," Weirich told the gathering. She didn't seem to be bluffing.
Click photo link to watch video of the presentation and question-and-answer session.
Departing here from the usual working over issues that are not covered in the mainstream media. Although the following story involves bad decisions by an official city body -- and have we seen a bunch of that lately -- this is a piece of Memphis history, a bit of nostalgia and a twist of fate.
The Story that Never Ran
Just how close did Memphis come to
getting a National Football League team in 1974?
So close that as a 22-year-old Commercial Appeal sportswriter covering pro football, I had a story in the can, which was to run
the day after the NFL made its announcement,recounting the history of the successful effort to bring big-league
football to town.
Of course, it was a story that
never ran.
In fighting the unending battle
against clutter and keeping way too much stuff, I recently came across the 10-page hard copy
of my story in a trunk stored off the garage.
On April 24, 1974, the NFL named
Tampa Bay as the location of a new franchise, and the league said a second city
would be named June 4.
The Commercial Appeal had thoroughly
covered efforts of local businessmen, including promoter Mike Lynn, to convince
the NFL expansion committee that Memphis was the place to be – next.
We ran a story saying the deal was
about to go down, per unnamed NFL insiders, and E.W. ‘Ned’ Cook was to be the
owner.
Instead, the NFL picked Seattle on
June 4, 1974.
What happened?
Although there was much gnashing of
teeth and finger-pointing at the time, the Memphis Park Commission cast the
city’s lot with the fledgling and short-lived World Football League on May 6,
1974, instead of waiting one more month
for the NFL to act.
After the park commission had voted
3-1 to lease Memphis Memorial Stadium to a World Football League team headed by
John Bassett of Toronto, the NFL could not award Memphis a franchise for fear
of a certain anti-trust lawsuit.Besides, the lease terms that the park
commission approved effectively barred another team.If the park commission had turned down the
WFL, it would have been on the city – and the NFL would not be bowling over a
new team in a competing league.
Park Commission members, including
chairman E.R. ‘Bert’ Ferguson, took a bird-in-the-hand view of things.
Some bird.
Only ad executive John Malmo voted against
the lease, urging fellow commission members to wait on the NFL to come
around.Since the World Football League was a new
outfit, and since its owners and cities were already being shuffled around, it
seemed likely that Memphis would have ample opportunity to get a WFL team
later, should the NFL fail to come through.
Bassett, who owned TV and newspaper
outlets in Canada and who was married to Carling Beer (“Hey Mabel, Black
Label”) heiress Susan Carling, had famously signed Miami Dolphins Larry Csonka,
Jim Kiick and Paul Warfield to give the new league credibility.Bassett’s WFL franchise, originally the
Toronto Northmen, turned to Memphis when Canadian politicians threatened to
enact a law forbidding a foreign football league from entering Canada.
In those ancient days of print
journalism – you know, when every city had two major newspapers as God intended
– the ongoing pro football story created an opportunity for competition between
The Commercial Appeal and The Press-Scimitar.The Commercial Appeal’s editorial position basically was, Run the WFL scoundrels
out of town (which made things extra dicey for me as the beat reporter covering
the team).So, the Press-Scimitar
decided to take the opposite tact and became the new team’s biggest
cheerleader.In fact, it was the Press
that somehow ginned up calling the team “Grizzlies,” instead of the official
name, “Southmen,” although the closest grizzly bear to Memphis is 1,500 miles.
The World Football League folded in
the middle of its second season, and a spate of lawsuits with various theories
from various persons got nowhere in pursuit of the NFL.We don’t know for a dead-solid fact if the
NFL would have chosen Memphis over Seattle as its next expansion city, but
there is little doubt that the park commission sealed the city’s fate when it
voted to lease Memphis Memorial Stadium to the WFL team, instead of waiting 29
more days.
We have some pro “Grizzlies” now,
and Memphis is happy about that.But,
amid some dried and faded newspapers shoved in a box in my garage, oh, what
could have been and almost was.
The Tennessee House of Representatives may vote as early as Monday Feb. 8 on HB1049 to allow "vouchers" to take millions away from already underfunded county schools.
Masked and misnamed as "opportunity scholarships," the idea is to give families of poor kids a fixed amount, based on the local public schools' per pupil expenditure, for one year of private schooling.
According to the state, that amount for the 2014-2015 school year was $11,221.60 in Shelby County and $11,496.30 in Davidson County. For every other county, that amount is less -- significantly less in rural counties.
Where is the "opportunity?" First, there is an opportunity to prioritize profit over education. You might ask, How is $11,000 or less a year per student enough to make a profit?
If your corporate, for-profit school gets enough funding in the early days of the school year, at which time the definitive head count is taken, and then expels students at a higher rate than public schools (which is the practice of charters), that per-student amount increases. With fewer students, maybe you can terminate a teacher and her compensation, thus bolstering your most meaningful metric of achievement -- the bottom line.
Then, if your only corporate goal is profit, and you are paying teachers less than public or most private schools, and if you don't have a gym, or an auditorium, or a cafeteria, or a playground, or music or phys ed, you cut down your costs. You do whatever it takes to make the numbers work, and your "students" are merely the cattle or commodity. For a for-profit charter, two students at $11,000 each would pay for a secretary for one year; three students would pay for a classroom teacher.
The traditional independent schools won't be accepting these students, unless the parents have the other $20,000 or whatever it takes to make up the balance of tuition.
Besides the bottom-line corporatists, the only other angle for bidding on this voucher money is political indoctrination, meaning schools which claim they are "religious" and have an agenda not to educate but to bend young minds.
Money taken away from public schools on a per-student basis hurts them by more than the per capita amount -- they still have to run the buses, pay teachers and staff, pay utility bills, etc. Eleven thousand dollars taken out of their hands does not reduce their costs by nearly that much.
"Opportunity" two: Return to "separate but equal," a concept struck down by the Supreme Court in Brown vs. Board of Education. The voucher scheme not only separates students by color and demographics, it separates them from their communities as we continue to shutter neighborhood schools.
"Opportunity" three: Continue the assault on teachers and unions from the regressive state legislature. Charter schools do not have to meet the standards of public schools and their teachers, and the erosion of bargaining (less pay, benefits, and prestige) pushes otherwise bright and passionate people from becoming teachers.
"Opportunity" four: Churn out cheap labor. Maybe this should be number one or number two, actually. Wealthy political forces have for years schemed to keep students out of higher education, instead diverting them to service and low-tech jobs. This and other moves by legislatures in many states lead to a cheap labor force.
More and more people competing for fewer jobs has already made wages pitiful for many jobs and has taken away the value entirely of other jobs and businesses. With a minimum wage currently at $7.74 per hour, that's about half of what it takes at minimum for a person to subsist in even a Southern state.
"Opportunity" five: Make America poor. With limited education opportunities come limited opportunities generally and for work, let alone prosperity. America works best when the most people participate in democracy and the economy. We built a robust middle class in the 1950s through 1970s, only to steadily erode the lot of working families since the mid-1980s.
Here is information and a call to action from TREE -- Tennesseans Reclaiming Educational Excellence:
TAKE ACTION: PRIVATE SCHOOL VOUCHERS ARE NOT THE ANSWER
House Bill 1049 Advances to Full House where it will be voted on as early as Monday February 8.
It is time to act and help us defeat vouchers. TREE would like you to call and email your House Representative, thank them for supporting public education and educate them on the destructive nature of this legislation. The bill could be heard on the House floor as early as MONDAY February 8.
Legislators say they are not hearing from parents & public school supporters. So we need your voice and we need it to be the loudest it has ever been. A phone call is the priority action. You may even hear directly from a TREE member encouraging you to personally call your representative.
We have made it easy with our take action button.
PRIORITY #1: CALL THEM OR EMAIL and mention the following:
Thank them for making public education a priority in Tennessee. And encourage them to continue that focus by voting no on private school vouchers. You want your public schools protected and strengthened.
The bill is aimed at a small group of kids in the bottom 5% of schools but once established, TN will expand the program just like every other state that has a voucher program. This bill is already focused on expanding with a clause that allows unused vouchers to go to children outside of the most needy and at risk. You do not want your county’s public school funding to be affected in the future.
Tell them you want solutions such as improved teacher to student ratio, Community Schools and full funding for public education which improve outcomes for ALL kids, not just a handful.
Numerous voucher studies show they do not improve academic outcomes. Fraud, no accountability, rising taxes to keep the program in place and fewer resources for public education is the outcome that has consistently been shown in other states and that is wrong for TN.
Vouchers do not empower the student with choice but rather the private school who picks and chooses who THEY want,
It is unfair that private schools would not have to use the rigors TNReady tests like public school do to show our tax dollars are educating children. Other tests will show pointless comparison.
Ask them to vote no to private school vouchers. Tell them your name and address and if you are a public school parent, let them know.
PRIORITY #2 EDUCATE YOURSELF, YOUR REPRESENTATIVE AND YOUR NEIGHBORS
Feel free to use any of our solid research and information that shows Tennessee is proposing a program that is just another step in privatizing government services and the abandoning of our constitution calling for our state to “provide free public education, including maintenance, support and eligibility standards.”
Your favorite high-quality private schools indicated, in a Vanderbilt survey, that they will not be taking vouchers. (link to survey info) There are two main reasons. First, they do not want the potential of government intrusion into their testing and curriculum. Second, the proposed voucher amount is not enough to cover the cost of private school tuition. The gap would have to be covered by raising tuition on everyone else. In Nashville, the voucher amount is a mere 20% of average tuition rates.
Remember that the “only for the poor” angle is just a short-term ruse. As we’ve seen in Florida and several other states, vouchers, just like charter schools, were expanded from “only for the poor” to families of higher income levels. Stratification and inequality are magnified in a voucher market for students without forms of social and economic capital. Vouchers have the potential to promote even more segregation and inequality than we see today. Civil rights and equality are not the true priorities for the out of state special interest groups that have poured millions into promoting a voucher program in TN to our legislators. This bill already has an expansion piece, offering vouchers to all students in a district with failing schools if the voucher allocation goes unused by the FRL population.
If your county has any schools that are in the bottom 10% you should consider your school system a target once children in Memphis and Nashville are shuffled with vouchers. There will always be a bottom 5%.
Minority Groups Are being Co-opted, poor kids in priorities schools will not be saved. From Julian Vasquez Heilig (Link to full article here.)
“In the case of vouchers, the long-term impact on civil rights is already known. A decade of peer-reviewed research in Chile has demonstrated that a voucher market has increased inequality for students living in poverty and closed public schools.
A voucher approach escalates inequality because capital rules the day. Test scores become negotiable capital in addition to hard currency. Students without this capital are denied access to attractive schools because there are other individuals in the market that are more desirable to schools.
School choice becomes exactly that in a voucher system — schools choose. So, if you are a proponent of school “choice” and interested in civil rights and equity —- vouchers will not help you realize your goals.”
Think vouchers will not expand to your county? The game plan is to expand. Last year the General Assembly passed the Individualized Education Act, a voucher bill for certain special education students where parents can receive a debit card to pay for education services if they withdraw their students from public school and waive protections for students with disabilities through the IDEA. A year before the program is even set to go into effect and accept its first student, its sponsors have already introduced a bill to dramatically expand the program to children from any private school or even home school. It is obvious that any parameters set on any voucher bill will quickly be undermined in an attempt to make the program as far-reaching as possible. Don’t be fooled, any voucher bill will be expanded, which is why it must be opposed in any form. The proposed special ed expansion is here: http://wapp.capitol.tn.gov/apps/BillInfo/Default.aspx?BillNumber=HB2592&ga=109
Why are we proposing to waste our tax dollars on a program with a failing track record? Wisconsin taxpayers have paid about $139 million to private schools that ended up being barred from the state’s voucher system for failing to meet requirements. Vouchers would be investing in a failed experiment for our most at risk. Watch this video if you want to see how bad things got in Milwaukee.
Now is the time to do something! Public school parents, teachers and supporters want policy and laws that can impact ALL students. It’s time we demand it! Instead of an expensive voucher program for a few students in urban schools here is what urban teachers and parents want from lawmakers: Fund proven strategies — such as smaller class sizes, student support services, and opportunities in the arts and recess time — all essentials to a quality education. Special needs children, English language learners (ELL) and children struggling below grade level require many additional hours of direct teacher attention. We need to fund time with our students to learn with the focus on teaching instead of testing. We also need to value our high achievers and give them the support and resources they need to shine.
Expand local Community Schools programs creating a support mechanism for our high risk students and their families. Create more social justice discipline supports changing suspension from a ticket to prison into an opportunity for a child to find social and academic direction.
We don’t want our schools to be left behind by our legislature. We want our tax dollars to serve all children, not just those who are chosen.
As Americans increasingly view police abuses caught on camera -- and after police arrested persons who videoed them in Memphis, Tennessee -- a movement arose to enable citizen oversight of police.
Who Will Watch the Watchers? is an episodic series which examines police and community in U.S. cities. The series begins with episodes which tell a national story -- that we "drill down" in Memphis.
"Chinga la Migra!" die-in on MLK Day at National Civil Rights Museum Jan. 18, 2016, protesting unjust and inhumane I.C.E. (Immigration and Customs Enforcement) raids in Shelby County, Tennessee.
Attorney for Stewart's father reveals officer Connor Schilling was charged with 'leaving the scene' prior to MPD hiring
UPDATE FEB. 7, 2019
Civil trial brought by mother and father of Darrius Stewart will be heard Feb. 25, 2019, in U.S. District Court in Memphis. City of Memphis recently was dismissed as a defendant.
The DOJ investigated in 2015 but stated Stewart's civil rights had not been violated. However, this investigation led to the DOJ's Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) collaborative review of MPD, which was announced in October, 2016, as a hedge by Memphis officials to dodge a more serious possible "patterns and practices" review by the DOJ Civil Rights Division. In April 2017, Attorney General Jeff Sessions terminated the DOJ's review of policing in Memphis and such ongoing reviews in 13 other cities.
Below is our story from December, 2015, including these witness videos, which are disturbing and contain profanity. These are links published by the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation and then posted by local media on their YouTube sites. We show clips from these and other largely unseen, disturbing footage from the night Darrius was murdered as part of our documentary on citizen police oversight, Who Will Watch the Watchers?
ORIGINAL CITIZENS MEDIA RESOURCE STORY Dec. 15, 2015:
The Department of Justice will independently investigate the killing of 19-year-old Darrius Stewart July 17, 2015, by Memphis police officer Connor Schilling.
This news came before attorneys for Darrius Stewart's family held a press conference today to announce they had read a just-released, 918-page Tennessee Bureau of Investigation report and found that witnesses said Schilling's deadly second shot came as Darrius was trying to get away from him.
Memphis city officials, from the mayor to the police, have insisted this year -- mainly as they were talking against citizen oversight of police -- that "We're not Ferguson." Darrius Stewart's case differs from the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, MO, and from other infamous police killings in one key way:
Darrius Stewart was not the target of police attention; he was a bystander, a passenger in the back seat
Darrius Stewart
of a car at a traffic stop.
In the context of systemic problems which have led to police killings of men who appeared to pose no threat to officers, Memphis, Tennessee, is Ferguson, Baltimore, Cincinnati, North Charleston -- everywhere and Anywhere, USA. Granted, the public outcry in Memphis after the killing of Darrius Stewart was muted compared to protesters in Ferguson, and in Memphis there was no police rollout of tear gas and tank-like vehicles.
It's a cruel twist that Stewart was a passenger in a car at a traffic stop and was not being accosted by police for anything he was doing. The other infamous deaths at the hands of police that have made news the past two years involved men who were drivers, in the case of traffic stops, or who were being stopped by police for something they were doing or were believed to be doing. Not saying here that selling cigarettes on the street in New York (Eric Garner) or running when you see cops in Baltimore (Freddie Gray) are grounds for being choked, shot or beaten to death.
SCHILLING'S RECORD
Carlos Moore, attorney representing Stewart's father, Henry Williams, noted that Schilling had been charged with leaving the scene of an accident in DeSoto County, Mississippi, in 2009, before he was hired to be a Memphis police officer, as well as having a DUI charge for which he was disciplined by MPD in 2014 with an 18-day suspension. In DeSoto County, however, Schilling's 2014 charge was dismissed after the arresting officer failed to appear.
UPDATE Nov. 29, 2017:
Schilling also caught a DUI charge when a Southaven officer found him intoxicated in a Taco Bell parking lot on July 6, 2017. Schilling got a "slap on the wrist," according to attorney Moore and with a fairly easy path toward getting his charge dismissed.
Was this the third time that the DeSoto County justice system had let Schilling off the hook for drinking and driving?
From The Commercial Appeal: https://www.commercialappeal.com/story/news/crime/2017/11/29/connor-schillings-dui-charge-southaven-could-dismissed/902886001/
"Schilling never should have been hired by the Memphis police department," Moore told us last month after learning of the Citizens Media Resource report about the leaving the scene charge.
No other media has reported this story, so far as we know, although Schilling and the case have gotten intense scrutiny, generally. Can anyone explain why? Anyone? However, the information is a matter of public record and was at one time accessible on the DeSoto County Justice Court website.
Since we confirmed the information about Schilling's Jan. 3, 2009, arrest with a DeSoto County Justice Court deputy clerk, the status of Schilling's case has been changed from "open/pending" to "not guilty."
Huh?
Conner Schilling was charged with leaving the scene of an accident on Jan. 3, 2009
We spoke with two DeSoto County court clerks on Nov. 12 and Nov. 13, and they confirmed that the six-year-old case status was "open/pending," with "no disposition" and with no indication of whether the case had been heard in court or whether Schilling had appeared. However, one clerk, who said she had looked up the hard file on the case, said that a fine of $190.50 had been turned over to a collection agency in an attempt to recover the amount from Schilling. The clerk knew Schilling was a police officer.
Somehow, between Nov. 13 and Dec. 3, the status of the case was changed online to "not guilty." The URL which had gone to the case record showing "open/pending" suddenly went to another person's case. The "not guilty" version of Case 9201454 appeared on the website -- and the URL was the same as that which contained the former record, except the last number was changed from "5" to "6."
Suddenly, after we talked to DeSoto County deputy clerk, Schiiling's 6-year-old charge was changed to "not guilty"
While a Shelby County grand jury failed to indict Schilling for voluntary manslaughter, there will be a civil lawsuit filed on behalf of surviving family members. That Schilling had a "leaving the scene" charge on his record before the city of Memphis hired him to be a police officer will bolster's the plaintiff's case, attorneys believe.
Dropbox file showing DeSoto County Justice Court record Connor Schilling Case 9201454 as it existed Nov. 11, 2015 (the date is in upper right corner of the page):
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5pzggv7ym3xooud/Connor%20Schilling%20case%209201454.pdf?dl=0
UPDATE FEB. 7, 2019
The following URLs have been changed since our story of Dec. 15, 2015. But, here they are, and you can see they no longer pertain to Schilling.
When we tried to use the link to look at the record online just now, we got an error message: "Safari Can't Open the Page." We got it to open once -- but it went to a different person's record.
We have not asked the DeSoto County court for an explanation.
Here is a link to Schilling Case 9201454 as we revisited this matter on May 18, 2017, showing the disposition changed to "not guilty:" http://desotoms.info/WEBPGMS/JCRINQDEF1.pgm?TASK=disp&rrn=000067314
Moore said that Schilling's hassling of Stewart represented racial profiling as he would not have asked a white passenger for his ID after a broken headlight traffic stop.
Anecdotes abound among African-Americans about police stopping cars with several black passengers and having everyone get out and show IDs, on the premise that somebody would owe back child support or would have an outstanding warrant on his record.
In April, we asked Memphis police brass if they were paying attention to how the Department of Justice was coming down on cities the DOJ civil rights division had investigated. The idea was for MPD to keep up with best practices and recommendations, not only to have a better police force and city but so the city could avoid the multi-million-dollar monitoring costs borne by cities such as New Orleans and Cleveland that had been subjected to DOJ consent decrees.
