- (female announcer) Production funding for Behind the Headlines is made possible in part by the WKNO Production Fund, the WKNO Endowment Fund, and by viewers like you, thank you.

- Republican candidate for County Sheriff, Brad Less, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I'm Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian, thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by Republican candidate for County Sheriff, Brad Less.

Thanks for being here.

- Thank you for having me.

- Along with Bill Dries, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

Before we get started with Brad Less here, just some housekeeping on elections, as this airs on Friday, July 17th, early voting has started.

There'll be two weeks of early voting leading up to election day on August 6th.

That is for the county general election, so, the final races for, say, county mayor, County Commission, school board, and, of course, sheriff, and many, many, many other races.

You can get those at the Election Commission site, and learn more about what's gonna be on the ballot.

It's a big one.

That's at shelbyvote.org, or you can go to The Daily Memphian, our voter guide should be up there, our other sources, because it is a big ballot.

Also, this is the election where federal and state primaries take place.

That includes, of great importance to Memphis, governor, U.S.

senator, and the new three districts that'll be on the ballot.

Once we get past the primaries, we'll attempt to have some of those folks on there, the winners of the primaries over the next coming months as we lead up to the big election day for federal and state, that's November 3rd.

A bit more housekeeping, we recently had the Democratic candidate for county sheriff, Anthony Buckner, on the show.

That was probably a month ago, just because of scheduling, so, there's no... Just, the scheduling is what it is.

You can get that interview at wkno.org, The Daily Memphian, our YouTube, or download the show as a podcast.

We've also had Mickell Lowry, the Democratic candidate for County Mayor on the show, I believe that was last week.

And John DeBerry, the Republican candidate for County Mayor, that was probably a few weeks ago.

All of those, again, available WKNO, Daily Memphian, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts.

With all that housekeeping on this election season, Brad Less, thank you for being here.

- Thank you.

- You are, I'll give a brief bio, you're 29 years at the sheriff's office, it's been a couple years with the Memphis Police before that, what, 12, 13 years in the U.S.

Coast Guard Reserve?

- Yes.

- You're currently a lieutenant over investigations at the- - Yes.

- Shelby County Sheriff's Office.

Give me your quick, you know, 30 second or less, or whatever, you know, your quick pit-, why you, and what do you want to- Why you for sheriff, and what do you want to get done?

Then we'll go deeper into all the issues.

- So, what we have is a second chance, we have a second chance to get it right.

We've had the Memphis Safe Task Force come in, it was the highest crime numbers that Shelby County had ever seen in violent crime over the past, I'd say five years steadily going up in crime, and I believe that when you have a Memphis Safe Task Force and you need the National Guard to come in, we've gotten to the lowest of the low.

We're at the lowest of the barrel.

That's not a good thing.

So, I believe that we need to do things differently.

We've got a failing jail, we've got a lot of finger-pointing going on, and I think with my leadership through out boots on the ground and being able to lead our troops to a successful mission of lowering and keeping the crime, it's been dropped 40%, we have to keep it down.

And if we're not moving up, that's- - Yeah.

- That's not a good thing.

- So, we'll dig into all those issues you brought up.

- Sure.

- Let's start with the jail, because it's just so top of mind right now, at least for a lot of people.

I mean, the jail, the problems, the physical problems with the jail, the AC, the water, as we, you know, record this, I'm not quite sure where all that stands, but it kind of comes and goes.

People have talked about, you know, the need for a billion dollar plus new jail, but, also, that would take many, many years.

So, you've got issues of just the maintenance, and of the facility, but also you've got staffing issues, and you've got questions about the number of people who are died, or sick, or the amount of drugs that seem to be getting in, and those kinds of things.

- Right.

- So, let's talk jail.

What is your plan to, I don't know what the word would be, stabilize the situation, if not improve the situation of the jail on all those fronts?

- We have to do something right now.

I mean, since 2019, you've had over 65, sixty-five jail deaths.

Some of those are jail overdoses, where fentanyl or K2 synthetic marijuana took place.

That's not a good thing.

So, we have got to do something right now to reduce the amount of people that we have in that jail.

Now, my suggestion was to bring in a misdemeanor facility, and move our misdemeanor inmates, or mental health inmates, the incarcerated that are injured, and can't... I mean, I saw a guy with one leg in there.

He's not a flight risk, he's got one leg.

So, move these people out into a lower-risk facility of escape, give them the assistance that they need for either getting them off of the drugs, or medical attention that they need.

Use the 201 Poplar system where we've got the doors that were just replaced.

I mean, they spent a lot of money on that, so, we have to get those doors, or put the people behind those doors and keep them there, and those are your violent felonies.

- One more for me, and I'll go to Bill, where would those misdemeanor folks be moved?

Do you have a place in mind, or a cost, or, like, how that would both cost and logistics work?

- Well, I definitely believe it'll be under a billion dollars, for sure.

And we have existing buildings in Shelby County that are vacant, and we have vacant land, or land that can be vacated around 201 Poplar, and I think that we've got an established criminal justice system downtown.

- Yeah.

- You have federal courts, you have state courts, you have the criminal court and general sessions courts, traffic courts, everything is down there.

So, initiating a facility that could be built quickly on land that's close by reduces traffic of having to transport inmates back and forth to court.

We have this availability of Zoom, and using our technology to have courts that aren't person and present.

So, I think that there's all kinds of options, but we have to be willing to try.

- Yeah.

- And if you're not willing to try, then we have the same problem.

- Okay, Bill?

- Brad, we've talked before about the Memphis Safe Task Force, and you have some very definite ideas about that, and about the fact that the deployment here is probably going to end quickly, right?

- I believe so, I believe so.

And here's the thing, being a military member myself, I know about deployments, and deployments come to an end, and if you look at what happened overseas when we pulled out of Iraq, it went quickly, and they left a lot of equipment behind.

I don't see our state Guard doing that, but, they will end a deployment.

It's not gonna be forever.

And these are not all police officers, these are individuals that serve our country and serve our state, and they work in fields just like you and I, other fields other than law enforcement.

They're trained, but it's not their everyday job.

We need to get to the point where we have got a reduction in crime, and we, the leaders of Shelby County, can take our county back without having the excess police that are on the ground that don't know this area.

We know this area.

I know what Shelby County needs, and I know the needs of every individual in the community, whether it be from mental health, drug abuse, our violent criminals, we need to give them attention.

And incarceration works, but we have to be the one doing it, and we can send them to the federal government for prosecution on certain cases that they'll accept, but, otherwise, we have to get back to being the police in our own community, without oversight.

- So, what do you do when you have several hundred federal and state law enforcement officers, what do you do when they leave?

Because the thinking is, well, the reason this is doing so well is because we've got several hundred extra folks out there helping to enforce the law.

- Right, good question.

We have to put boots on the ground, and when you hire, you have to retain.

We cannot be the slow, or, I say slow, we cannot hire and then immediately get people to move to another agency because we're not taking care of them.

Good people don't leave a good job because of the work that they love to do, they're leaving it because of the benefits, they're leaving it because of poor leadership.

They're leaving it, leaving the job because they're not happy where they're at, and they're going to lesser paying jobs to be the police.

We got to unhandcuff our police and let them do their jobs, and additional training, and additional mental health response, and let our police, again, do the job to reduce crime, boots on the ground.

So, hiring, utilizing the military resources, utilizing other agencies, being competitive to be where we are taking their people from them, not giving our people to them, if that makes sense, because we're losing them.

- What's been your view of the immigration part of the task force?

Because, as you know, there's been a lot of discussion.

Mayor Paul Young has said, "We don't have an immigration problem, "we have a problem with violent crime, but no immigration problem."

What's your view on that?

- You know, immigration problems are at a national level, it's not just Memphis, Tennessee that has that problem, and it's not just one particular group that's coming across the border.

So, that's at a national level, and Immigration and Customs is a federal agency.

They've been given the power and authority by Congress to do their job, they're always gonna be here.

They were here before the Memphis Safe Task Force, and they'll be here after the Memphis Safe Task Force.

My position is we will assist everything in every way that we can to support the mission, because some of those people are violent criminals from overseas that are coming here to continue their efforts here, we don't need that in Shelby County.

So, you know, I believe that supporting them is my 100% on board with that, because there is a mission behind that.

Now, you know, don't get me wrong, it's not a deputy sheriff's job to just run out there and look for illegal immigrants.

Our job is to answer 911 calls and keep the peace and good order of Shelby County, and that's my stance on that.

- Talk a little bit about the federal agreement that comes into play in the jail when someone is arrested.

Would you continue that working arrangement with the federal immigration officials?

- Absolutely.

Absolutely I would, and there's a reason behind that.

I mean, again, we're mandated by the state law to do that, and I will be following and enforcing all of the laws, federal, state, county ordinances.

We will follow those, and we will enforce them.

So, the 287[g] agreement, when you're bringing in somebody who's been arrested for whatever crime they were suspected of, they're not guilty of it, but when we have that checkbox and we go through those lists, and they don't have what it takes to be considered a United States citizen, then we have to report that back.

When we do that, it's the government that says, "We want to put a hold on that person."

Well, we will hold them.

We will not release a violent criminal for whatever they've been charged with, from crimes against the children, our children in our community, or crimes against our adults in this community, we will hold them as long as it takes to get them moved out, and we're gonna press them to get moved out, not hold them in our jail forever, that's not what it's about.

So, there's gonna be time restraints on that.

- If, though, just to wrap up that, the... you mentioned some possibly horrific crimes, what if it's a misdemeanor?

What if it's shoplifting, what if it's an expired tag?

Is that also a time in which, you know, you want to continue to look and say, "Well, this person is not a documented citizen, and we need to report that?"

- Well, it doesn't say what crime it is, it says whether or not they hold the identification to show them as a United States citizen.

So, the crime, as far as that list that I've seen, didn't say what crime they were suspected of.

- Yeah.

- And it's usually that the government has already put a detainer on that person, or has a reason to put it on there.

We give them the option, either take it or leave it.

If they don't want to, then we're gonna follow our processes and release, like we're supposed to.

But, we've got to keep the flow of people in and out of that jail, and then stop the repeat offenders from coming in.

- Yeah.

- That's what we have to do, and that's part of stopping that repeat offender.

- About halfway through show here, you mentioned incarceration works, and some people over the years, as we've talked about crime and the criminal justice system locally, and this has been some Democrats, some Republicans, it's not necessarily a partisan issue, who have been, we've talked about the revolving door at 201 Poplar, talk about the court system not working.

There's lots of critics, and that has come from former Mayor, Jim Strickland, a Democrat, criticism of DA Mulroy releasing people, and DA Weirich releasing people that they felt shouldn't be released.

From your seat, incarceration, I assume when you say incarceration works, it means they're not out on the street, so they can't commit crime.

Does the system work to your liking in terms of keeping people incarcerated?

- Well, yes and no.

So, we have options.

Our options are utilizing the United States attorney for cases that they will accept, and that's through task forcing with our federal partners.

The system works when you have somebody that's convicted or going to be convicted of murder, that they have enough evidence to get that conviction, but the problem that we run into is how long it takes to prosecute these cases, and I think that with the age of technology coming in with, I mean, even your glasses, your watches, all these things that you have that are technology driven, it takes longer to get that evidence.

So, now we're seeing these cases lag for five years, and they're not convicted.

So, we're housing somebody that's awaiting a trial, and when you have 300-plus homicides, and, almost, what, a 70, 80% solve rate with our police departments, if not higher on violent crime, because most of the people know them, who commit the violent crime, you have a bottleneck in that system.

- Is that bottleneck at the point of the DA's Office, or the judges, or somewhere else?

Again, from your 20, what, 29 years in the sheriff's office, and as you look to be, you know, the sheriff, where is that bottleneck?

- I think it's both.

- Okay.

- I think it's both, I think it's involving looking at the cases, making a decision, and not holding it for hours and hours and hours, and days and days and days, and years and years and years to figure out.

- Yeah.

- We've got to make a decision.

- You said incarceration works, and we had your opponent, I mentioned at the top of the show, if people missed it, Anthony Buckner, the Democratic candidate for county mayor, he was on the show about a month ago, you can get that at wkno.org, Daily Memphian, or YouTube, or as a podcast, but, he talked, we talked about incarceration, and I don't want to say that he was not, you know, he didn't say incarceration works, but he definitely believed in incarceration.

That's a fair, I think, summary of it.

He also talked a lot about rehabilitation, how we, as a county, as a community, treat people who are in jail.

And again, I'm paraphrasing, said, you know, many of these people are gonna come back out, so how we treat them, how we help them in the jail is very, very important, and in the criminal justice system broadly.

Where have you seen, in your years, rehabilitation, intervention, diversion, those kinds of things work, and where has it not worked?

- Well, I'll tell you where it doesn't work first, and we think about this, we have a lot of homeless in Shelby County, and if a homeless person gets arrested and comes into our facility, where do we release them to?

We release them back into homelessness, right out the door with a paper check, if they have any money on them, and they have nowhere to go.

That's a failure.

We're not helping people.

Mentally ill.

We have people that have mental illness, that committing crimes, that may not know what they're doing, and, again, releasing them right back into the public to do that again.

So, rehabilitation of the repeat offender is one of my platforms, of my four platforms that I have, is, A, law enforcement, B, education, C, fixing that broken jail, and then repeat offenders, recidivism.

- And I've mentioned Anthony Buckner, I said he was running for county mayor, he's running for county sheriff.

Of course, that's on me, excuse me for that.

And we've done a number of shows on various homeless issues, and the programs that work, and how they, the challenges, so, you can get those in the archives too, but let me go, we have 10 minutes here, and go back to Bill.

- Brad, this is your first time running for office, right?

- Yes.

- What's it been like?

Was it what you thought it would be at the outset?

- Look, Bill, I'm not a career politician, I'm a career law enforcement officer.

I've been in Shelby County for 52 years, I went to Ridgeway High School here, I'm a lifelong Memphian.

I... It's been an awesome experience so far, because I've met so many great people, and I've gotten a lot of support, and the support continues.

Every day I'm finding new supporters that say, "Hey, we love what you say, we want you to be our next sheriff," and all I'm asking is for voters to, if you like the change of doing something better and what's right, I'm asking for your support.

I'm asking you to get out there and vote, we have to vote.

16% of our voters?

That's too low, we got to get those numbers up.

So, if you want change, and you want to see positive things happen in Shelby County, please, vote for Brad Less.

Take a chance on me.

Let me help make Shelby County the great city and the great county that it is.

Memphis, the great city, Shelby County, the great county.

We've got a lot of things to offer our visitors that come here, and if we're not protecting it and there's violent crime downtown, they can't come see our National Civil Rights Museum, they can't go to Beale Street, or go to Elvis Presley without being a victim of crime, and having their windows broken out.

We don't need to go back to that.

So, when I say that it's been a great experience, it's been challenging getting out into the community and getting them to believe what I have to say, because they don't know me.

I'm not getting on the TV as much as my counterpart is, because he's a chief deputy, but I know law enforcement, and I've known it for 31 years, and I know what Shelby County needs, and they need Brad Less to be their next sheriff.

- Do you think that, because nationally, our politics is so polarized, do you think that people go into that voting booth, because there are primaries ahead of this general election, do you think people are gonna go into the booth and go, "Who's the R, and who's the D?"

- I think there are people that do that.

I think that doing your research and understanding what's working and what's not working, what you have working now isn't working, we've seen that.

You have a failing jail.

You have a task force that was submitted to the state of Tennessee all the way down to Shelby County from our president.

Presidential recognition of violent crime is not a good thing, it's not what you want to be number one in.

So, we have got to step away from being number one in the wrong things.

And violent crime, a Memphis Safe Task Force, federal oversight, a failing jail, failing school system, that's not what's gonna drive people to come to Shelby County, and we're losing residents by the thousands, and that's not a good thing.

- Let me ask one thing, and you alluded to it, but we talk a lot about the jail, because it's just been such a top-of-mind issue, and the problems, and so on, but, there's a big part, and a big part of what you've done in the Sheriff's Office is patrolling, is being part of task force, task force before there was a Memphis Safe Task Force, right?

And drugs, and we talked about some of the things you've done before we started the show, so that whole notion of patrolling and doing the streets in unincorporated Shelby County is a big part of what the Sheriff's Office does.

And I was looking at some numbers from, this is from Memphis Shelby County Crime Commission, and we've talked a lot about crime being down at Daily Memphian, you know, 30, 40%, lots of categories year over year.

It was starting before Memphis Safe Task Force, it seems to have accelerated since.

And categories back from 2026 to 2011, major property crime is down about 50% compared to 2011, down, you know, robbery down 70%, rape down 60%, but weapons violations are up 140%, and it's pretty wide.

I mean, the polling within Shelby County shows people want common sense gun control, and the widespread availability of guns is not very popular, right?

- Right.

- Where are you on that?

Do you think the state's laws that have really enabled kind of sort of feels like anyone who's, you know, barely an adult to get a semi-automatic weapon, and what is that like as a person out on patrol and doing investigations when the people, the potential bad guys are really heavily armed?

- Right.

Well, I'm 42A.

I carry everywhere I go.

And not just as a law enforcement officer, but I don't want to become a victim of our violent city.

So, you mentioned crimes, and here's the thing about numbers, numbers can be skewed.

It's how you report, and what you report.

If I have five people that are shot, then that's one aggravated assault report.

That's not five aggravated assault reports, it's one report with five victims.

So, your numbers might not all reflect of how each agency's reporting.

So, and then if you have somebody who's been shot and still alive, that's not a murder, but they may die from 2024 to 2025, and those stats go on 2025 stats.

So, numbers are not always the thing to go by.

You have to go by what the people feel, and they don't feel safe.

Now, they feel safe with the task force here, but are they gonna feel safe after the task force is gone?

And that's what we're looking forward to, so- - But, where do guns play into that, the widespread availability of guns?

- The widespread availability of guns is you're getting them into the wrong hands because of education, and knowing that, you have a firearm, don't leave it in your car.

If you have a firearm, lock it up in your house, and don't let your kids get ahold of it, and that takes it away from the criminal.

So, there's things that we can do differently, but, I am for firearms, because our good people have to protect themselves, and we have to take them away from criminals.

- Just a couple minutes left to go back to Bill.

- Given what Eric said about crime going down over the last two years before the task force, what does that indicate to you?

Were we doing some things right here?

- You said before the task force?

- Before the task force.

- You know, again, I look at how it's reporting.

I mean, every day we're seeing on the news numerous shootings, numerous violent acts, numerous disrespect to our law enforcement, and you have good people out there that support law enforcement, but when it comes to the numbers and how it's being reported, we have to look at what's actually going on in the community.

When you go downtown, and you see the fighting, and you see the unruly juveniles, or the unruly adults doing things that they shouldn't be doing, and the amount of time that it takes the police to intervene in that, that's not a good thing.

So, again, I think it has to do with reporting, and the fact that people really see what's going on.

It's not hidden, it's out there in the news every day.

- They do, but, the thing is, if that was a problem before the task force got here, and it's still happening, is that a failure of the task force then?

- Well, we've seen the reduction of crime by the task force by over 40% of violent crime, that's what the problem was, violent crime, windows being broken out, and cars being stolen.

That was the big crime drivers, and the other big crime driver is domestic violence.

A lot of people that know each other are committing crimes against each other, it's happening every day.

So, we have to do a bigger part of that, which is part of my plan is education, we have to educate.

We have to do better at recruiting and keeping boots on the ground, and keeping our police here, along with mental health.

- Brad Less, thanks for being here.

We appreciate it.

Bill, thank you.

Again, if you missed any of the show today, you can get that online at WKNO, at The Daily Memphian, YouTube, or download as a podcast.

We had a Brad Less's opponent, the Democratic candidate, Anthony Buckner, on the show some weeks ago.

Early voting starts today, goes for two weeks leading up to, today being July 17th, leads up to August 6th.

Learn more about that at shelbyvote.org, or go to the Daily Memphian for our voter guide.

There are many, many, many candidates on the ballot, so, don't go in there without having some idea of who's gonna be who you're voting for.

So, thanks very much, and we'll see you next week.

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