This is What Dysfunctional Looks Like Down at Memphis City Hall

Memphis City Council obstructs the people's business with politics, fear-mongering and slander

         It’s midnight.  Do you know where your city council rep is? 

Better yet, do you know if he or she is making you proud out in the community or is up to childish mischief?

Too scared to look?  You should be.

But, if you can work up enough guilt about needing to be a better informed voter, watch this video, “This is What Dysfunctional Looks Like:  Memphis City Council Aug. 4 2015.”

Was this politics over progress?

Council members Kemp Conrad and Berlin Boyd and others running for re-election said they were making a bow to police by putting off a much-delayed vote on improved police oversight until November, after the Oct. 8 city elections. 

Police Director Toney Armstrong made a dramatic appearance and

Officer Sean Bolton

leveraged the tragedy of a police officer’s death into spiking an ordinance which already had been put off twice at the request of police administration.  He and Boyd pleaded for respect for the officer’s family. 

Can anyone honestly imagine that officer Bolton’s family was sitting there worried about minor amendments to a 1994 ordinance?  Or that the concept of citizens reviewing internal affairs complaints was connected with Mr. Bolton’s death?

You’ve heard of shoot the messenger?

Complete with a slide show of Facebook pages, Conrad launched a personal attack against one Memphis resident who had worked hard to upgrade oversight.  Conrad demonized an entire class of citizens, whom council members unanimously had voted to do a bunch of research and work –- for free.

You want to set up the City of Memphis for libel and slander lawsuits?

Conrad called concerned citizens and members of local community organizations “law breakers at heart” among other things.

Do you believe citizen oversight of police would increase crime?

That’s preposterous, or it’s Opposite Day, right?  Conrad said it would increase crime and the murder rate.  But then, Conrad also said civilian oversight was a good thing, see next.

You’ve heard the political adage, Watch what I do, not what I say?

Conrad, Boyd and crew shot down the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board while they all said they thought it was a good thing and wanted to vote for it – except, they didn’t. 

That made it super easy for editorial writers and commentators to analyze this stunt, since council members admitted it had nothing to do with substance, and everything to do with trying to impress police while spiting citizens in the community -- you know, those irritating people council promised to represent.  Also, there’s an amateur political notion that if they put things off until after election day, they won’t have a voting record to catch flak over.  Wrong – now they have a not-voting record!

Maybe the city should just dock the obstructionists' pay for not doing their jobs, huh?

It seems as though many, or most or maybe all of those council members who voted against internal affairs accountability had not actually read the ordinance in front of them – which was prepared by the city administration, Chief Administrative Officer Jack Sammons and his staff.  They claimed it was written by Memphis United, whose earlier draft of proposed ordinance changes had been shot down in July.

How can they get away with it, you say?  You could vote them out, which would be not-getting-away-with-it.

Since most people tune government out because of these kinds of antics, or because we are too satiated with celebrity news to pay attention to anything else, or because we are working two or three jobs to make ends meet and are too tired to watch -- that enables the dysfunction to continue.

As the charge of “anti-police” goes, Conrad voted against the compensation and benefits that police had asked for earlier in the year.  On the contrary, Memphis United members had supported the police union then.  Funny how nobody slandered them at that time.

Shouldn't police officers and teachers be paid more like doctors and lawyers?  Those are important roles in society, in position to do a lot of good and a lot of harm.  Many police-related problems that show up on the news result from policy makers rather than the men and woman in the field.  Hiring standards, policy, training and culture -- which starts at the top -- most impact citizen complaints.  Did you know that the number one trait which predetermines an effective police officer is outgoing personality?  De-escalation usually works better than amping up the tension.  

The better narrative and action for the city, the police and the police union to follow would be to build a bridge with the community, rather than a wall of belligerence and suspicion.  Sure, they have community policing and outreach programs now, but citizen oversight of complaints hits more at the essence of the job.  Criticism does not have to be taken as a personal attack, and police don't have to play the persecution card.  No doubt, it's hard out here for a cop.  But, unless we critically self-examine, we will never improve.  Better police and better Memphis seem like worthy goals.

Most of this video came from the City of Memphis media archive, and you may notice an audio lag when people are speaking.  Website:  http://www.memphistn.gov/Government/CityCouncil/ArchivesofMeetings.aspx

Watch the video, then if you really want to geek out and be informed, below are links to the following documents:

1---Resolution passed unanimously by city council May 6, 2014, which tasked Memphis United, a coalition of concerned citizens and local community organizations, with holding nine town hall meetings across the city; researching civilian oversight of police, and reporting back to council with their findings – at no charge to the city.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/03molt619zbelru/CLERB%20resolution%20May%206%202014.pdf?dl=0

2---Amended ordinance proposed to city council by Memphis United on April 7, 2015:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9intft8jrf9c4us/CLERB%20Primary%20Draft%20Amendment%20to%20Ordinance.pdf?dl=0

3---Edited ordinance as ready to be voted on July 7; this version of the ordnance made two key concessions to police – taking away subpoena power from the oversight board and taking away the board’s power to conduct an independent investigation:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/8mz5g0tchvkllf5/CLERB%20Ordinance%20Amended%20July%207%202015%20PrimaryDraftAmendment%2007072015%20as%20amended%20blue%20highlights.doc?dl=0

4---Version of the ordinance prepared by the city administration and up for vote Aug. 4, 2015:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/9uuz8usbm3ygp2e/CLERB%20ordinance%20Aug.%204%20FINAL%20REVISED%20CLERB%20Amended%20Ordinance.%20080415.pdf?dl=0

5---The original CLERB ordinance which was enacted in 1994:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/y6ct5zta9ifie18/CLERB%20ordinance%20original.doc?dl=0

6---Memphis United’s findings and report as commissioned by and presented to Memphis City Council:

https://www.dropbox.com/s/qsn0dlrojt358x1/CLERB%20Report%20Increasing%20the%20Effectiveness%20of%20Civilian%20Law%20Enforcement%20Review%20Board.pdf?dl=0

Police Union Concerns about Citizen Oversight May Be Overblown, Based on Atlanta and Knoxville Results

Memphis Police Association concerns in opposition to a stronger citizen review  board may be overblown, based on experiences of police departments and citizen oversight boards in Atlanta and Knoxville.

Major Byron K. Martin

The Atlanta Citizen Review Board and the Knoxville Police Advisory and Review Committee both have the authority to issue subpoenas, and both those boards allow citizens to bring complaints directly to the citizen boards – without first making a complaint about the police to the police Internal Affairs office.

The Memphis Police Association does not want a citizen board to be able to independently investigate a complaint of police misconduct, MPA attorney Deborah Godwin told a meeting of stakeholders Monday July 27 at City Hall.   The MPA wants the oversight board to function merely as an appeals body, using MPD’s Internal Affairs report to review the complaint of a citizen who is not satisfied with the way MPD’s investigation turned out.

A proposed amended ordinance before Memphis City Council would strengthen the effectiveness of the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board and would make filing a complaint more user-friendly to the public. 

POLITICIANS CHANGING THE PLAY

Ordinance sponsor Councilwoman Wanda Halbert has scheduled a meeting for 2 p.m. today at City Hall to include police and union representatives, the people’s coalition Memphis United and members of the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board.  Although Halbert’s ordinance is on the brink of approval by the full Council, she has thrown open a discussion which may lead to changes in the ordinance. 

Atlanta Police Chief George Turner was asked about citizen oversight earlier this year, and he told radio station WABE:

Chief George Turner --photo by Mike Eloy WABE

“I think it is absolutely encouraging that we have a citizen review, that citizens have another opportunity to look at the work of the police department, that some outside entity is looking at the officers' actions as well." --Atlanta Police Chief George Turn

The Memphis police union’s primary, stated complaint for months has been that it does not want the citizen board to have subpoena-issuing authority.  However, a provision in the ordinance that the board would have subpoena powers was recently negotiated out of the proposal, thus eliminating the police union’s complaint about subpoena usage leading to privacy issues.

“We always get responses from officers,” said Charles Curry, outreach specialist at the Atlanta Citizen Review Board.  “Subpoena power is not extensively used.  The police chief is cooperative, but we have subpoena power in the law, because the next chief may not be cooperative.”

ATLANTA BOARD UPDATED

The ACRB did not initially have subpoena authority, but the city ordinance was amended in 2010 to give the board the power to compel testimony and documents. 

“ACRB investigators do not have to subpoena officers,” said Major Byron K. Martin, commander of the Atlanta Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards.  “If officers are contacted, they come and talk to the investigators. 

“The investigators present their findings to the board.  As for requiring officers to testify before the board, I don’t believe that has been occurring.  

“Officers are compelled to cooperate with the ACRB, and if not they can be sanctioned.  To date, I’m not aware of any that don’t cooperate,” Martin said. 

MPA representatives raise concerns about officers’ privacy, but in the case of Knoxville’s oversight board, no officers or citizens are named in summaries of complaints, which appear statistically on its website. 

The Atlanta board posts meeting minutes on its website, and cases are succinctly summarized.  The complainant and the officer are named, but no one’s address is posted, and there is no personal type information about the officer -- other than his or her history of misconduct. 

KNOXVILLE REPORTS 

On the Knoxville Police Advisory Review Committee website, statistics for cases are broken down by categories and demographics, such as ethnicity and sex.  The Knoxville board also reports on such things as police adherence to video recording policies and racial profiling cases. 

Although citizens may make complaints directly to PARC, the committee also exercises oversight of cases which originated with Knoxville Police Department Internal Affairs. 

Discussions in Memphis about the citizen board have played out in a context of local and national instances of police shootings of unarmed citizens, including the July 17 fatal police shooting of 19-year-old, University of Memphis-bound Darrius Stewart.  Memphis United presented its report and amended ordinance to City Council committees on the morning of April 7.  That night, millions of Americans watched as network news led with images of Walter Scott being fatally shot in the back by a policeman in South Carolina.

The outcome of Memphis’ citizen board further has become clouded by politics as city elections loom, but in Atlanta, Martin says, “We have to work together and make sure we are on the same page.  Having a citizen board is a great thing, and we keep working to make it better.

“The vision and purpose of the ACRB is the same as ours.  Our purpose is to get the truth, not to convict or exonerate anyone, but to find out what the facts are and do it as impartially as possible, then to administer discipline, and put forth the training, or whatever needs to be done,” he said. 

“Sometimes incidents expose a gap in policy that needs to be changed.  Our purpose is to make sure we are the most professional police department in the country.  Their purpose is to make sure we are able to do what we need to do properly. “

Asked about some police departments’ inclinations to be defensive and self-protective, Martin said, “Is your goal to get better or feel good about where you are?  We should always aim to be better, not just to be comfortable where we are and survive another year.”

“We have access to the video from in-car cameras, access to the officers, and we have subpoena power,” Knoxville PARC executive director Avice Evans Reid said in an interview with WATE-TV. “We want to make sure citizens understand why officers do the things that they do, and by the same token we want the officers to understand we want them to do their job, but we want them to do it and respect citizens at the same time.”

In one case, PARC’s review led to KPD adding more training for officers on the use of knives, particularly when it comes to cutting car crash victims out of seat belts and when medical attention is needed.

CHIEF CHANGES HIS MIND

KPD Chief David Rausch told WATE that although he was skeptical of PARC as a young officer when it was first created, he now believes the group has benefited both the department and the community.

“Since the creation of PARC, clearly there has been more engagement with our community, and we have seen an increase in trust,” Rausch said.

Back to the Future at City Hall

It was a Time Machine, surely, that enveloped Memphis City Hall on Monday July 27, causing city officials conveniently to blot out vast expanses of history while they appeared to onlookers to be speaking in real time.

City Council

Although an ordinance she sponsored to strengthen police oversight was on the brink of passing the full Council, Councilwoman Wanda Halbert trashed more than a year of painstaking progress and started back at zero, bringing together polar opposites to agree on a new ordinance.

Mayor and Administration

Not to be outdone, the city administration rewound history to mid-2013, before Mayor A.C. Wharton pushed for a policy about citizens filming police and before Wharton said the police oversight board needed to have more clout.  Chief Administrative Officer Jack Sammons of Wharton’s administration sent his administrative assistant to say, “Never mind,” about all that talk we have been doing for more than a year about supporting an upgrade to a citizen police oversight committee.

Police

Rounding out the absurd, Police Director Toney Armstrong, who is sworn to uphold the law, apparently has not cooperated with the existing Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board ordinance by failing to refer Internal Affairs appeals to the citizen board.  Straight-faced and pushing the “reset” button on his four-year tenure as chief, Armstrong said now he is ready to go to work with the ordinance as it has existed since 1994.  In an April 21 City Council committee hearing, Armstrong acknowledged that his department has not sent a single case to CLERB, thus being a key roadblock to the board not working.

While the existing ordinance allows for the CLERB to independently investigate complaints, in practice, the board in the past operated as an appellate body, receiving complaints from aggrieved citizens who were not satisfied with Internal Affairs' findings.  At some point CLERB’s subcontractor investigator was terminated by the city, and the board thus became dependent on receiving cases from MPD.  This system apparently functioned for a while, although not during Armstrong’s or Wharton’s tenures. 

MPD likes it that way.  In fact, MPD and the police union state they do not want CLERB to independently investigate complaints, but merely act as an appeals body after IA has finished its report.  This forces citizens to complain to the ones who abused them in the first place and thus discourages people from coming forward.

Political Calculations

Are Wharton, who is running for re-election, and Halbert, who is running for Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk, politically blowing the police?  Wharton has not replied to our interview requests, and Halbert had a political response about “doing the right thing” when we asked her about political pressure from police and the union.

Per the city’s new position, the impotent ordinance would remain as is, but the CLERB would have a website and a $200,000 annual budget, which Halbert got Council to approve June 16, for staff positions including an investigator. 

Armstrong and Memphis Police Association executive director Mike Williams have a biting disdain for the people’s coalition Memphis United, and Armstrong said he wanted to hear no more from them – he wanted to hear from a sitting member of the Civilian Law Enforcement Review Board.  Note to Armstrong:  Be careful what you wish for; you just might get it.  Armstrong got an earful from CLERB Chairman Rev. Ralph White, who squarely blamed the police department for sabotaging the civilian board by not forwarding citizen complaints to it.

“There’s a lot of underhanded things that have gone on,” White said.  “Citizens ask, ‘Who’s hiding something?’”

TRAVEL BACK TO AN ACTUAL EARLIER TIME

Since we have some grasp of history – and Internet access that often works -- in May 2014, Halbert and others on City Council’s public safety committee passed a resolution asking Memphis United to study the problem of police oversight, to have town hall meetings in the seven council districts and to come back to City Council with a report.  Memphis United did so, at no charge to the city, and the result was proposed changes to an existing police oversight ordinance which would give the citizen board subpoena power and would allow aggrieved citizens to complain directly to their peers rather than only to police internal affairs officers. 

This happened on April 7.  As Casey Stengel said, “You can look it up.”  On April 16, Armstrong and police union representatives; city attorneys; CLERB representatives including Rev. White, and Memphis United representatives met for an unofficial hash-it-out – you know, the same meeting they held yesterday but which police and Halbert act as if it never happened.  Memphis United had alerted the media of the meeting; however, when reporters and camera crews showed up, the city and police refused to let them in the room.

On April 21, council committees approved the proposed ordinance and sent it to the full Council.

Halbert was one of those who voted on April 21 to move the ordinance along as it stood. 

Continuing through the gauntlet of how an ordinance becomes law, the proposal was read out at three City Council meetings and came time for a vote on July 7.  However, Halbert voted to not vote that day.  And as sponsor of the ordinance, she got the vote put off again on July 21. 

Never mind that City Council had more than enough votes to pass the ordinance on July 7 and July 21, and since this ordinance was Halbert’s baby, she would be pushing to get it passed and declare victory – right?

Instead, Halbert retreated to the starting line yesterday as if none of this had ever happened -- must have been a dream or something. 

The time for a let’s-hash-it-out meeting that includes representatives of Memphis United, the CLERB board, the police and police union would have been after May 2014’s resolution and before the ordinance passed out of Halbert’s public safety committee on April 21 – and such a meeting happened, the aforementioned, closed-door meeting on April 16.

Needless to say, no good came out of Monday’s meeting.  Halbert said, Let’s meet again Wednesday, and we will come up with an ordinance “that we all agree on,” and I will carry that back to City Council.

The idea of getting this group to hold hands around the campfire and agree on a 15-page document when the parties are at opposite poles is even more far-fetched than, say, a time machine in City Hall.

According to Brad Watkins, executive director of the Mid-South Peace and Justice Center and an advocate for the upgraded police oversight policy, Mayor Wharton as recently as Thursday told Watkins that he would continue to support the revamped ordinance.

Wharton has publicly said the citizen review board needed more clout, including the authority to issue subpoenas.   Link to video of Wharton’s remarks Jan. 28, 2014, at Rhodes College:  https://youtu.be/Y6tPZP_5eRU

City Council had the votes to pass the ordinance – which includes recent concessions in favor of the police union’s position that the board would not have subpoena power and that the citizen board cannot see any information from Internal Affairs before it completes a complaint report – on July 7.  That version of the ordinance is what they should pass when they next meet on Aug. 4.  Then, the time warp can be closed.

Instead, Halbert plans to reconvene the same group at 2 p.m. Wednesday to do the same thing all over again.  Anybody got the lyrics to “Kumbaya?”