Here’s a look inside the group influencing Memphis crime policy

This article was produced in collaboration with The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization based in New York that focuses on national issues in the U.S. criminal justice system.

For more than 20 years, the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission has brought together leaders in business, government, law enforcement and other fields to seek ways to solve one of the area’s most difficult problems: violent crime.

But critics have argued the crime commission operates in secret and emphasizes a law-and-order approach that relies too heavily on prison sentences.

Some new members of the board, notably Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris and Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer, say they want to emphasize softer tactics such as bringing greater opportunities to youth. “I will advocate for reform that matches with what the community requested as we see the changing tide of criminal justice reform happening across the country,” Sawyer said.

The leadership of the crime commission argues the organization’s strategy already mixes calls for strict enforcement with other approaches. For instance, rather than sending parole violators back to prison, the crime commission supports the development of a system of lesser sanctions that can be imposed more quickly.

“We’re all interested in criminal justice reform,” said Ben C. Adams Jr., CEO of a law firm and chairman of the crime commission’s executive board. “The question is what’s the right vehicle to pursue that.”

The crime commission’s focus is on the reduction of violent crimes, he said. Other topics, like changing juvenile court procedures or fighting poverty in general, might have to be handled in other forums.

The future direction of the crime commission matters because of its power to influence elected officials. Harris calls it “the intellectual and policy-making arm of crime prevention in our community.”

Its actions can spur change, sometimes behind the scenes. When the crime commission hired former New York City police commissioner Raymond Kelly and his colleagues to evaluate the police department in 2016, he recommended expanding the local Multi-agency Gang Unit to better keep tabs on violent criminal groups — and local officials quietly did it.

Some are arguing that given its power and close ties to local government institutions including the University of Memphis and the Memphis Police Department, the privately-funded group needs greater transparency. A recently filed journalists’ lawsuit seeks to open up the group’s records, which the organization currently maintains are private.

A mall shooting and a call to action

On Christmas in 1996, a 27-year-old woman named Angela Kyle received a sapphire and diamond bracelet as a gift from her boyfriend. The next day, she went to Oak Court Mall to have the bracelet adjusted, according to her friends.

Her body was later found in a car in the mall parking deck. She had been shot to death.

A 16-year-old boy was charged with shooting her in a robbery attempt. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life. Another teen was convicted of driving the shooter to and from the crime scene and got 15 years.

Ira Lipman, a philanthropist and leader of Memphis security firm Guardsmark, had championed the idea of a crime commission for years, and shortly after the mall killing, then-memphis Mayor Willie Herenton made a public call to finally make the crime commission a reality.

”We are going to establish a crime commission in 1997,” he said. ”We’re going to have a very close relationship with the Memphis Police Department to make sure we are focusing our resources on where the escalating crime is occurring.”

Business interests involved from the beginning

Guardsmark and The Commercial Appeal helped fund early fact-finding trips to send officials to learn about crime commissions in Chicago and other cities.

Guardsmark and the Plough Foundation

Who’s on the crime commission

When people leave the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission, the existing members elect new members, said board chairman Ben C. Adams Jr. The 50-member group meets quarterly. Its executive committee meets somewhat more frequently, Adams said. Chairman: Adams, CEO of law firm Baker, Donelson, Bearman, Caldwell & Berkowitz. Treasurer: Johnny Moore Jr., president and CEO of Suntrust Bank, Memphis region. Secretary: Blair Taylor, president of Memphis Tomorrow, an association of local CEOS. Other executive board members John Dudas, an executive with real estate company Belz Enterprises. Adams said Bill Gibbons, current head of the crime commission, often attends executive committee meetings, though he’s not formally a member. Other members of the crime commission board Dave Carlson, Smith & Nephew James “Jim” Baker, Owen Brennan’s Restaurant Larry Jensen, Commercial Advisors Pierce Ledbetter, LEDIC Management Group Tom Campbell, Servicemaster, Inc. Law enforcement, prosecutors, prison system: 7 members including Weirich, listed above Shelby County Sheriff Floyd Bonner Tennessee Department of Correction Commissioner Tony Parker Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland Shelby County Director of Community Services Dorcas Young Griffin Shelby County Commissioner Tami Sawyer Rick Masson, Plough Foundation The Rev. James E. Kirkwood, Executive Director of the Memphis Christian Pastors Network Judges: 3 members Criminal Court Judge John Campbell

Commissioner Mark Billingsley, Christian Brothers University. (Billingsley is still a member of the Shelby County Commission, but the crime commission currently lists him as a private sector representative.) K. B. Turner, University of Memphis Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice contributed $375,000 each to launch the first two years of the commission’s existence.

Angus Mceachran, former editor of The Commercial Appeal, was one of the crime commission’s founding members in 1997. Former editor Chris Peck and former publisher George Cogswell served in later years. (None of The Commercial Appeal’s current staffers serve on the crime commission.)

Today, representatives of local businesses are by far the largest group of members on the crime commission, occupying 22 of 50 board seats.

‘No deals’

Another central person in the crime commission’s founding was then-shelby County District Attorney Bill Gibbons. He said at the time a string of violent crimes made him want to put fear back into the criminals.

”If you commit these brazen acts, there’s going to be consequences,” Gibbons said in 1997. “We’re not going to make any deals.”

“No deals” was repeated in advertising campaigns throughout the years, as Gibbons and other local authorities aimed to drive home the message that plea bargains weren’t possible for certain violent crimes.

The crime commission hired several executive directors who came and went.

Meanwhile, as the county’s chief prosecutor, Gibbons pursued enhanced penalties for gun crimes — a goal that’s still listed prominently in the current version of the Operation: Safe Community blueprint, an effort organized by the crime commission.

Then in 2010, Gov. Bill Haslam chose Gibbons to serve as director of the Tennessee Department of Safety and Homeland Security.

In 2016, Gibbons returned to Memphis to lead a new Public Safety Institute at the University of Memphis, in a partnership between the university and the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission. Gibbons also became the new chief executive of the crime commission.

Current members of the crime commission’s executive committee Jeffrey Higgs, executive with Lemoyne-owen Community Development Corp. Ryan Ehrhart Sr., managing director with Raymond James. Terry Harris, Fedex corporate vice president for security. Amy Weirich, Shelby County district attorney general. Business: 22 members, including executive committee members listed above Craig Weiss, Central Defense Security / Tower Ventures David Slott, American Residential Services Henry Hooper, II, State Farm Insurance Jerry Blum, Autozone Corporation Kevin Clarkson, CB Richard Ellis Louis “Bo” Allen, First Tennessee Bank Paul Morris, Jack Morris Auto Glass Rob Delpriore, Mid-america Properties Thomas Cleves, International Paper Carol Ross-spang, Methodist Lebonheur Healthcare Melanie Blakeney, Memphis Area Association of Realtors (MAAR) FBI Special Agent in Charge M. A. Myers Memphis Police Department Director Michael Rallings Tennessee Bureau of Investigation Director David B. Rausch U. S. Attorney Mike Dunavant Other government officials: 8 members Memphis City Councilwoman Jamita Swearengen Bartlett Mayor Keith Mcdonald Germantown Mayor Mike Palazzolo State Rep. John Deberry, D-memphis Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris Nonprofit leaders, religious leaders, community activists: 7 members including Higgs, listed above Vinessa Brown, Lifeline to Success Stevie Moore, Freedom From Unnecessary Negatives. Olliette Murry-drobot, Family Safety Center

No defense lawyers on commission’s board

County prosecutor Amy Weirich and federal prosecutor Mike Dunavant currently serve on the crime commission board.

Currently, no public defenders or defense attorneys serve.

Chief Shelby County Public Defender Steven Bush had served on the board but resigned last year. In an April 25 resignation letter provided by his office, he cited the need for public defenders to remain independent and solely focused on representing their clients.

Josh Spickler is a former high-level official with the local public defender’s office who runs Just City, a nonprofit that calls for “a smaller, fairer, more humane criminal justice system in Memphis, Tennessee.”

“Our crime commission views crime and public safety from a singular lens of law enforcement, mandatory minimums, extremely harsh sentences,” Spickler said in an interview. He says this mindset has helped drive the jail population to unsustainable levels without reducing crime, and would like to see different strategies.

Crime commission leaders respond

One of the key people on the crime commission, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, said the criticism of the crime commission is news to him.

“First of all, I’ve never heard any criticism of the crime commission. No one’s emailed me. No one’s told me that. I saw Josh Spickler last week in this very room and he didn’t mention it,” Strickland said in a January interview.

Strickland says he thinks of crime prevention as both short- and long-term effort.

The quick fixes involve more police officers and stricter enforcement of violent crime.

“But the true, long-term solution to crime is young people picking the right path and not the wrong path in life,” Strickland said.

He pointed to expanded opportunities for youth through city libraries, community centers, summer jobs and other programs.

Gibbons likewise said the image of the crime commission as focused entirely on law and order is oversimplified. He said the current Operation: Safe Community plan was created with the input of hundreds of citizens throughout the community.

“The process produced a balanced plan composed of prevention, intervention and enforcement steps,” Gibbons wrote in an email.

He pointed to efforts such as the Safeways program for crime prevention in major apartment communities; the Neighborhood Safety Initiative, which aims to increase citizen involvement in neighborhood watch and in efforts to reduce blighted properties; as well as efforts to create work opportunities for ex-offenders.

The Rev. Keith Norman, First Baptist Church - Broad Shelby County Juvenile Court Judge Dan H. Michael Shelby County General Sessions Judge Gerald Skahan Staffers with schools and universities: 3 members Gerald L. Darling, Shelby County Schools

Questions about transparency

Early this month, The Marshall Project, a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization based in New York that focuses on national issues in the U.S. criminal justice system, and local reporter Wendi Thomas filed a lawsuit against the crime commission.

The suit says the journalists filed public records requests for information about the commission and were reject-

ed. The suit argues the commission does public business, including coordinating crime strategies for the entire area, and therefore its records should fall under Tennessee open records law.

Adams responded, “We’re a 501(c)3 organization, we’re privately funded and we don’t think we’re subject to that act.”

New members, new ideas

Harris, who was elected Shelby County mayor last year, said he’s attended two meetings of the crime commission.

“Progressives are more likely to talk about the intervention and re-entry side of crime prevention, whereas others are more likely to talk about arrest and prosecution side of crime prevention,” he said. “But in my view you’ve got to have all three.”

Before joining he said he had the perception the commission focused heavily on the law enforcement side of crime prevention.

Now that he’s on the board, he’s still forming his opinion about the crime commission’s direction. “I’ve known the people on there, many of them for many years, and I will say the people on there have the best of intentions and have a heart for the community and are people of service.”

Harris said he’s encouraged that more people are talking about similar changes in tactics for crime prevention. He said he attended the January inauguration for new Republican Gov. Bill Lee.

“He said in the inaugural address some things that were right out of the progressive playbook in terms of crime prevention,” Harris said.

He said he was pleased to hear him speak in favor of re-entry programs for prisoners, saying “95 percent of the people in prison today are coming out.”

Harris said he and Dorcas Young Griffin, director of the county’s Division of Community Services, made a presentation at the last crime commission meeting in January about opportunities to put juvenile offenders on a path toward rehabilitation and make detention a last resort.

Sawyer was a community activist who circulated a petition in 2016 asking the crime commission to sever ties with Kelly, the former New York City police commissioner.

At the time, Sawyer and others argued against adopting the stop-andfrisk tactics that Kelly had applied in New York.

Last year, Sawyer won an election to a Shelby County Commission seat. She’s been named head of the commission’s committee on law enforcement, corrections and courts.

So far, she’s only attended one crime commission meeting. “I had to remind them that because of my role as the chair of law enforcement, I’m supposed to have a seat on the commission,” she said. “But originally, I was not invited to join.”

Adams said crime commission didn’t bring Sawyer on board immediately because the prior commissioner in charge of public safety, Mark Billingsley, had elected to stay on the board, and the board had already filled openings and was back up to its limit of 50.

“And we told her if she was interested, as soon as we had an opening we would elect her, and a few months later that’s what we did, and she was elected at the next meeting.”

Future plans

Adams said that for the near future, the crime commission will stay focused on following through the steps of Operation: Safe Community, a five-year plan that aims to significantly reduce the city’s crime by 2021.

“I don’t see that we’re going to be doing anything different other than continuing to evaluate our strategies and trying to execute them better,” Adams said.

The Marshall Project is a nonpartisan, nonprofit news organization based in New York that focuses on national issues in the U.S. criminal justice system. Simone Weichselbaum is a New York City-based reporter for The Marshall Project, Wendi C. Thomas is the Memphis-based executive editor of MLK50: Justice Through Journalism, Andrew R. Calderon, a data reporter for The Marshall Project.

Investigative reporter Daniel Connolly welcomes tips and comments from the public. Reach him at 529-5296, daniel.connolly@commercial

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