City needs real police reform
On Thursday, Mayor Jim Strickland and Police Department Director Michael Rallings declared they’d reached an agreement with “clergy and concerned citizens” on a five-point police reform plan.
My colleagues and I, all African American clergy serving Memphis congregations, attended those meetings during which a supposed agreement was reached. Here’s a sampling of what we’ve been texting to one another about the administration’s assertion of progress:
“This is a smokescreen,” “underwhelming, to say the least,” “a slap in the face,” and “placebo.”
I do not claim to speak for all who attended the four meetings convened by Memphis’ leaders in the wake of our city’s protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
I can say that we – nine Memphis faith leaders who crafted a letter to the mayor calling for substantive and specific reforms – came away from each meeting largely disappointed and frustrated.
And in the aftermath of last Thursday’s press conference, I conclude that the Strickland administration simply wants to dress up the status quo as a reform plan.
Not only that, but in response to a statement my colleagues and I issued Friday objecting to the agreement we didn’t agree with, the mayor’s office countered that we had not contributed anything of substance to the discussion and proceeded to pit us against Black Lives Matter representatives.
Respectfully, I ask the administration to stop playing games, refrain from trying to divide and conquer, accept that Memphis has major systemic equity issues, and continue to work with all of us to substantially address them.
Most concerning, the current administration plan states:
“MPD has policies in place for 8 of 8 Can’t Wait.” But current policies do not completely ban the use of choke holds or firing at moving vehicles; nor do they require warning before shooting in all cases. The MPD continues to insist on exceptions to these three policies. As has been repeatedly demonstrated, police departments and their unions too often use exceptions to justify excessive force.
“Citizen Law Enforcement Review Board (CLERB) Improvements.”
These improvements are not substantive. Instead of giving CLERB real subpoena or enforcement power – or promising to prioritize securing it at the state legislative level – the plan will give CLERB more marketing dollars, training, and part-time staff.
Also disheartening to me about the mayor’s last Thursday press conference was his assertion that he listened. He is clearly not hearing the cries from the streets of Memphis or from the neighborhoods that have endured the knee of systemic racism bearing down on their necks for generations.
Yet in the face of a community’s anguish, the mayor and police director last Thursday either asserted that policies were already in place to address inequities in policing or offered baby steps.
For example, they released a plan that did not touch the subject of department transparency even though there were more than 650 complaints of police misconduct to MPD internal affairs in 2019, and MPD refuses to release information about the nature of these complaints or who they were filed against.
To be clear, neither I nor my colleagues are antipolice. In fact, we believe too much is expected of our police officers – which is why we are calling for a radical reimagining of public safety in Memphis.
Among other ideas, we are calling for utilizing objective data to assess and solve problems, thereby taking pressure off law enforcement; for moving to a more cooperative policing model that is shaped by open discussions with a wide variety of community groups instead of a cherry-picked few; and for giving CLERB real power that cannot be overridden and so will restore public trust in the system.
My colleagues and I are willing and able to continue to discuss implementation of these major changes and consider other bold ideas.
I will no longer accept lip service without change.
Jason Turner is the Senior Pastor of Mississippi Boulevard Christian Church in Memphis, Tennessee