Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland said Monday, Aug. 17, the public will have to decide who prevails in what amounts to a tug of war over police reform.

“I believe the community wants us to have more police officers, more patrolling their neighborhoods, more engaged in community policing, more trying to solve these crimes,” he said. “The community needs to stand up and let the other elected official know they want this help.”

DeCarcerate Memphis group speaks out against Operation LeGend

Two weeks after the council voted to remove a ballot question from the Nov. 3 ballot allowing police and firefighters to live outside Shelby County, other fronts in the larger issue show up in several places during the Tuesday, Aug. 18, committee sessions and council meeting.

The council has a 10:15 a.m. committee session discussion on council member J.B. Smiley Jr.’s call for an online portal with data about complaints of police misconduct. And the council will get a presentation on MPD’s involvement in the federal Operation LeGend.

At the 2:30 p.m. council executive session, council member Michalyn Easter-Thomas presents her resolution opposing Operation LeGend, calling for a vote by the full council to be added to the agenda for the 3:30 p.m. council meeting for a vote.

Follow the livestreams of committee sessions and council meeting. Get live updates @bdriesdm on Twitter.

Easter-Thomas, the sponsor of the move to take the residency question off the ballot, is sponsor of the resolution that questions whether the federal agents assigned to work with Memphis Police is appropriate, given calls for police reform and better relations between police and civilians.

The resolution questions whether those goals would be “thwarted by an outside police presence, namely one that lacks transparency and operates outside the sole control of the city of Memphis Division of Police Services.”

The resolution would also declare “the Memphis City Council stands firm in its belief that the continued militarization of local law enforcement is counterproductive to the long-term goal of improved community relations, and thus, improved community outcomes.”

Strickland says the presence of federal agents has nothing to do with crowd control as it did in several other cities as ordered by President Donald Trump.

“It’s literally to investigate violent crimes and help us solve some crime that we haven’t been able to solve – some murders,” he said. “This has been successful in several other big cities and has not been controversial. The controversial aspect of federal agents that you saw in Portland or Seattle – this is not it.”

The day the federal presence in Memphis was announced by U.S. Attorney Michael Dunavant, Strickland said in a written statement: “As long as these federal agents are focused on this task, we will be supportive.”

Meanwhile, a resolution by council member Worth Morgan that would back the idea of a Memphis Police force of 2,800 is not on Tuesday’s agenda for a vote, two weeks after the council’s first discussion of the proposal.

Easter-Thomas: ‘Something missing’ in way police recruited

At the same Aug. 4 council session, the body of 13 voted 7-6 to remove a ballot question from the Nov. 3 ballot that would have allowed police officers and firefighters to live outside Shelby County if approved by voters.

The vote reflected in part reaction on the council to a significant change two weeks earlier in the city administration’s long-held goal of a police force of 2,400 to 2,500 commissioned officers with a short-term goal of 2,300 by the end of this year. The force numbers just below 2,100.

That changed with a report council members got July 21 from criminal justice consultants Richard Janikowski and Phyllis Betts recommending a police force of 2,800.

Morgan says local reaction to George Floyd still awaits real legislative police reform

Close behind was Morgan’s resolution that would put the council on record as supporting the new goal and setting a date of the end of 2023 to meet the goal, with a specific plan by Mayor Jim Strickland due to the council later this year at its Oct. 6 meeting.

The resolution arrived at council the same day the third and final reading vote was scheduled for Easter-Thomas’s resolution to remove the November ballot question.

The critical vote on third and final reading was council Chairwoman Patrice Robinson. It was Robinson who crafted a compromise that got the measure on the ballot in the first place.

With original sponsor Ford Canale, Robinson suggested limits on how far outside the county public safety employees could live and put in a plateau of 2,300 that, once met, would do away with the broader residency rules and revert to within the county.

Robinson said last week that since her vote in 2019 with a majority on the council to put the question on the ballot, the Memorial Day death of George Floyd in Minneapolis police custody has cast a long shadow in Memphis.

Floyd’s death was followed by 12 consecutive days of protest in Memphis and the arrest of dozens of protesters by Memphis police along with criticism from several quarters, including religious leaders and nonprofit leaders of police tactics in handling the demonstrations.

First 12 days of protests in 12 photos

“That brought us to a whole new platform and thinking around what happens in policing,” Robinson told the online Memphis Rotary Club meeting last week. “Is this the model that we want to continue? Our new members pressed us to the wall.”

Robinson commissioned one of several polls that have surfaced in the last month.

The council poll of more than 1,000 Memphians on police residency and several other unrelated issues found 38% of those surveyed favored allowing police officers to live outside the county, 31% opposed it and another 31% were undecided.

Police force of 2,800 key to community policing, city experts say

The poll was broken down by council districts and Robinson said in her district, the results were overwhelming against police officers living outside the county.

“I thought my district was a little bit more progressive,” she said. “They said absolutely no.”

Robinson says she intends to vote accordingly.

“This is a difficult job as an elected official,” she told the group of 33 on Zoom. “I’ve had to take some hard stances. My district has been very durable. It’s been very clear. They know exactly what it is they want.”

The Memphis-Shelby Crime Commission unveiled its own poll last week by Public Opinion Strategies of 450 Shelby County voters – 294 living in the city and 156 living in the county outside Memphis.

A majority of the Memphis voters – 77% -- said they favored having the Nov. 3 city referendum with 18% opposed.

Strickland and Crime Commission President Bill Gibbons have touted the results.

How many more MPD officers do we need, and how do we get them?

The survey also asked respondents to rate the job local police are doing in neighborhoods.

Countywide, 71% rated it as excellent/good. But by race, 56% of African Americans polled gave the MPD a positive rating when it comes to neighborhood policing. That compares to 85% of the white voters who responded.

Council member Jeff Warren, who voted against taking the residency question off the ballot, touted the poll results. He also warned that under benefits restored to police in a 2019 referendum, 300 officers would be eligible for immediate retirement that could put the city further behind whichever goal it is pursuing for the optimal size of the force.

“In the end, I felt it was more important that we had to have people realize we may be in a police shortage,” he told the Rotary audience. “I didn’t really vote on this as a racial issue. I voted on it as a manpower issue. I thought about not voting for it so it wouldn’t look racial. But being down 300 officers carried the day.”

City Council Scorecard: The canceled residency referendum and the door prize

The 7-6 council vote featured seven of the eight African American council members voting yes with the eighth Black council member, Edmund Ford Jr., voting with Warren and the four other white council members.

The six new members of the council who took office for their first term this past January split 3-3 on the matter.