- (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.

- What the Guard deployment could mean, potential school closures and remembering Les Smith, tonight on Behind the Headlines.

[intense orchestral music] I am Eric Barnes with The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for joining us.

I am joined tonight by a round table of journalists talking about some of the biggest stories of the week, including Kailynn Johnson from The Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here, again.

- Thank you for having me.

- Laura Testino from The Daily Memphian.

Thank you for being here again, and Sam Hardiman with The Daily Memphian, thanks for being here.

We'll start with the Guard deployment.

We all have been part of covering this, you know, all the news organizations have, including nationally in some cases.

But why don't we, as we sit here taping on Thursday morning, I'll start with you Sam, and just give us a rundown for someone who maybe only saw a headline of just what we know right now, and then we'll start getting to what we don't know, which is also a lot.

- Yeah, so what we know right now is officially this week on Monday the 15th, President Donald Trump signed a memoranda that created what is known as the Memphis Safe Task Force.

And the Memphis Safe Task Force really includes and is, if you read the actual text of the document, is really focused on 13 federal law enforcement agencies, the alphabet soup of federal agencies, if you will, that are gonna come to Memphis and help reduce crime.

As part of that memoranda, he requests that Governor Bill Lee, who is the Commander of the Tennessee National Guard, activate the Tennessee National Guard, okay?

And bring them to Memphis.

So, that is very clear.

The president himself has not exercised any authority to bring the National Guard here.

So, that is what we know today.

We spoke, I spoke with the governor this week, I guess on Tuesday, and he was very sort of circumspect on where things actually stand in terms of the planning of the Memphis Safe Task Force, where things are, because this appeared to be sort of playing out in terms of announcements before actual plans were being really steadily developed here.

And, you know, there was a real recipe for what is actually gonna happen in Memphis.

And he also said in that interview that he would be very surprised, or maybe not even surprised, he expects that the National Guard, the amount of personnel that come here is gonna be about 150 people, could be more, but he said he didn't think it would be much more than the 150, 140 Highway Patrol people that are already in Shelby County.

- And I think that was the kind of startling thing because, you know, in D.C., and these are different cities, but still in D.C.

it was 2,300 troops, give or take, deployed in D.C., in LA it was 2,000 National Guard plus 700 Marines.

I think we all sort of were braced for this big number, this big, big presence.

I mean, I always hear a lot of complaints that people don't see the Tennessee Highway Patrol enough and they're 140 somehow deployed or assigned to Memphis.

So, I don't know.

I mean, Kailynn, I mean you've been covering this as well.

Thoughts on what we know so far and what we don't know so far?

- Yeah, so last Friday, Mayor Young actually held a press conference after that news was announced.

And he was very honest in saying that wasn't his way to go.

But with him being the mayor was a, I guess a decision between Trump and Governor Bill Lee.

And he also talked about how on Fox and Friends, Trump had said that the mayor was excited that the National Guard, and he said that was an overstatement.

The mayor himself is unsure about what that's gonna look like.

But there has been a lot of pushback, especially from elected leaders saying that that's not really gonna do much for people here in Memphis, because while some people are excited about the resources, like Sam had mentioned, the DEA, ATF are gonna come in Memphis, people are already have this historic fear of security guards and things of that nature.

That's only gonna, I guess, intensify tension here with the citizens here in Memphis.

- Laura, your perspectives on this?

I mean, thoughts in terms of what you've been covering and seeing with the Guard?

- Yeah, I mean I think we went and colleague Lydia Williams talked to students at the University of Memphis, folks across the city just about what they're thinking on this.

And I think, you know, I've talked to a lot of people about the potential takeover of Memphis-Shelby County Schools.

You have people who fall on either side of that.

But there are a lot of people who say, you know what I'm really just frustrated about is that I want to see something change.

And I think that that was sort of the, at the heart of what a lot of community members talked to us about in that interview is that crime is a problem.

And a lot of, you know, I think that some of the people that we found that were supportive of it were just sort of like, you know, I hope that this works.

There was a man that we spoke to in Southland Mall in Whitehaven who was just talking about how, you know, he was across the street from an armored car being stolen a few weeks ago.

A couple of months before that, a regular, he was pretty popular there was killed walking home from work.

And so, you know, his thought was, well, what if the guard is here, would that have changed?

I hope so.

But then he had a friend who was sitting at the same table with us also talking about this and brought up some of the concerns that you talked about Kailynn, which is like, you know, yes, if we talk about crime as a problem, maybe we can't say don't come National Guard.

And he, this guy, you know, had a lot of concerns about young black men who might be interacting with the Guard, not quite understanding whatever the stakes are, tensions are high and that that can go poorly.

We saw that with Tyre Nichols.

- Yeah, yeah, and we don't know, again, back to these things we don't know, Bill Lee, I think said to you, Sam, "I hope they're military police, I hope they're trained."

'Cause that's a big concern.

I mean, that was a big point of focus in LA and D.C., that most of these troops were not military police, they're not trained to do this.

They're not out there, they're not trained to do policing and any investigation and road stops and all that.

That's not what they've been trained to do.

And we, but we still don't know fundamentally what these 150 or so National Guard troops will even do.

- Yeah, I mean, and that's really gonna depend on how the governor activates them, what powers he uses when he activates them, right?

And that's gonna be a big key thing as to what their orders are.

What are they gonna be?

And so like what I want to emphasize for people is we don't know these things.

What we do know is we've listened to the Chief Executive of the State Governor Bill Lee, be very intentional with what he said.

In his interview with me, he was very intentional saying he wanted this to be a force multiplier for MPD, okay?

He said that he would tell the people that are gonna be leading this team essentially go where MPD tells you to go.

And so like that message, and this is just the message from a politician at this point, right?

But that message, like I think is pretty clear that to the tensions that people are worried about, right?

Maybe the National Guard is backfilling a desk duty for MPD.

Maybe the National Guard is the people patrolling the Main Street Mall ahead of a Grizzlies or a Tigers game, right?

They're may be not necessarily the crime fighters here that are happening, but yeah, the governor is saying, yeah, military police and that what he wants is the people that he sent, because many states across the country sent troops to Washington, D.C.

as part of this, of that deployment.

He wants those troops back.

He wants those Tennessee troops back and coming to Memphis, Tennessee.

- A couple, that one is that, I mean, Governor Lee could have deployed the Guard theoretically anytime in his seven and a half years in office, right?

I mean, in peak COVID, I heard people sort of anecdotally like, when are they gonna bring in the Guard?

- Well, they were here.

- Peak crime.

Yeah, and that's right, they were, right?

- And they were here during the 2020 protests as well.

- Right, right, right, in relatively small numbers- - Yeah.

- They were here helping with crowd control, sort of just all that.

The other thing is, and it's funny, I think nationally it hasn't been covered as much is, you know, the Governor of New York about, I think it was last fall, maybe December in 2024, deployed first 250, and then I think a total of 1,000 Guard troops to just be in the subways.

There was just a lot of fear in the subways.

The transit workers were kind of doing work slowdowns.

Anecdotally, my daughter lives there and she was like, yeah, I mean this, it still hasn't really come back.

It's pretty creepy on the subways depending on where you are on the subways and depending on the time of day.

And they really weren't there to arrest people or bully people, they were there to do the show of force of just sort of, will the presence of someone in a uniform with a gun sort of slow down or deter some of that stuff?

That's what I feel like some people are expecting here in Memphis.

Maybe I'll look at one of you, but other people are thinking they're gonna be putting cuffs on people, right?

I mean, they're gonna be out there as police force.

And I think it seems like that expectation, the latter is unlikely?

I mean, but I don't know.

- I think it's still a question that we had or that, you know, a lot of people that I spoke to had.

Like that was a basis of concern, particularly with students at the University of Memphis who we spoke to was, we know that they're here and it seems there's like a lot of talk about what's coming and right now the only example is what's happening in D.C.

You know, we've had officials call what this is going to be, you know, supposedly a replica of that.

But we know that it can't be that way just because of the way that D.C.

is, you know, set up reporting straight to the president rather than Tennessee reporting to the governor.

And so I think that those questions, you know, were, we may not know until the Guardsman arrive.

- Yeah.

Kailynn, you mentioned the mayor.

I mean, obviously the mayor's trying to, I mean, I don't know, maybe it's too sympathetic to say he's in a hard place, but he said, you know, I'm gonna work with this, I'm gonna make the best of it.

I think one quote was, "You know, I want the world to see Memphis succeed under this."

But he also pointed to a lot of work that the MPD and the Mayor's office does with other federal agencies, you know, FBI, the various task force.

There was what, 200 and something people that a joint task force arrested of, you know, the charges are violent criminals, gang related, drug stuff, the stuff that pretty universally people want off the streets.

Not everyone, but pretty universally.

Talk more about the politics there and Council and Commission, I don't know how much you've covered them.

More of them have sort of said, no, we don't want this, it seems like.

- Yeah, that's correct.

the mayor was very, really emphasized how much that crime had already been down with the things that he was already doing within the agencies that we already have.

But even then, like you said, councilmembers don't really want to have state representatives Justin Pearson, London Lamar, a lot of people are saying this is what other people wanted, but it's not what the people of Memphis necessarily wanted as a way to get that crime down.

- Yeah, it was interesting too, I think Jody Callahan our staff, I think you contributed this, Sam, he talked to some of the federal, you know, trying to figure out what the Guard's gonna do.

And he did speak to the special agent in charge in Memphis from the FBI, Jeremy Baker, who said [laughs] I thought this was a great quote.

I mean, and I love the honesty.

He said, "I apologize, but every question you've asked me so far, "there's really no value in my answering it.

"I have no information or control "over any of the things you're asking.

"We have no details at this point, I'm sorry.

We're waiting for their guidance."

I think that's a quote probably from Wednesday as we sit here.

Any other stuff we missed in this?

- I mean, no, that quote that you just read, Eric, I think people need to like be key on that.

Here we sit on Thursday, September 18th, right?

There is a difference, and I'm not trying to be pejorative here, from what the president says on cable television, what the president says during a news conference in the Oval Office, and what the reality on the ground here will be.

And we don't know what the reality is.

And the people, you know, Mr.

Baker's likely one of the professionals tasked with deciding what that reality is gonna be and he doesn't know yet.

And so, like, I think people need to, like, there's a lot of parse and talk about this right now, and that's justifiable.

But let's wait for what the reality is actually gonna be.

- Let me do one more thing on this.

You had a, Laura, a really good story about a meeting about a train merger in the Oval Office and a connection to Memphis.

- Yes, so, you know, I think highlighting how, you know, the National Guard coming here continues to highlight that crime is a problem on the forefront of everybody's mind in Memphis.

Cargo theft has been a problem for a really long time in Memphis.

You know, which could stand to put it on the map for why the CEO of Union Pacific, Jim Vena suggested to Trump in Trump's words that Memphis be next for National Guard deployment.

We know from Union Pacific that CEO Vena met with President Trump earlier that week to discuss a merger that's supposed to happen between Union Pacific and Norfolk Southern, which is another large train company that would essentially create a massive network of trains East to West Coast across the country.

This needs regulatory approval, which is probably, you know, likely why the president and Mr.

Vena were meeting.

While Union Pacific confirmed the meeting, they did not, you know, confirm any of the details about the way that the president characterized it.

What's also important and relevant for Memphis about Mr.

Vena is that he was a one-year member on the Board of FedEx.

And I think that's kind of the anecdote that really stuck with a lot of people who listened to this conversation in Memphis is that the president says, according to Mr.

Vena, that while he was here for board meetings, that he was transported for distances as short as one block in an armored vehicle.

You know, FedEx, we reached out to them, they didn't comment specifically about this, only just to say, you know, we take care of security of our staff.

- Last point, I should say the mayor has pointed this out, the Chief Davis from MPD pointed out that, you know, even before this was announced, that crime is at, overall crime is at 25-year low, the Crime Commission-- - Well, that's not true.

- But that's what they're saying.

That's what they're saying.

And the crime stats are a whole thing.

I just wanna give fair, you know, they're saying crime is at this low, it is low from, you know, murders are down, most violent crimes are down.

That we're going in the right direction.

And again, Mayor Young pointed to, and it's a lot of the work we've done with the federal government.

We want those resources.

We want the Tennessee Highway Patrol to keep crime going down, but go ahead- - Yeah, I mean, like, I'm, I don't want to be like argumentative here, but like crime rose- - You could argue with me.

- No, no, crime rose in 2024.

Violent crime, the actual violent number of incidents rose in 2024 from 2023.

2023 was almost a modern record, right?

It is down in the eight months that we have real data for in 2025, absolutely.

At the same time, Memphis' homicide rate is one of the worst in the world.

Like, we're not just talking the nation here, we're talking the world.

- 100%.

- It is a very violent city.

And so like that is something that like, as we talk about crime going down and the resources, there is good work being done by law enforcement, federal law enforcement, local law enforcement every day to bring crime down, absolutely.

But like, let's not lose sight of the actual fact that Memphis has a huge crime problem- - Yeah.

- As we talk about- - No, no, no, I don't ever wanna take away from the fact.

- Yeah.

- It's a good caveat that Memphis sort of say, because crime is down in certain categories and it's at lows in certain ways that Memphis doesn't have a crime problem, a major crime problem.

But I think it's fair to point out when it was rising and when it is going down and if it goes back up or whatever happens with it, we'll continue to report about it and to whatever degree will continue to talk about it here.

So, Sam argues with me all the time off camera, so I don't know why you wouldn't argue with me on camera, so it's fine.

It's all good, it's part of the process.

Let's move on a bit to potential school closures.

Something you've been very close to covering extensively, Laura.

We got a little more insight into at least the process that's underway.

Let's talk about that for a bit.

- Yeah, so we can expect some schools to be on a list proposed for closure by the end of September.

This will not be comprehensive of this multi-year plan that Board members had directed Superintendent Richmond to produce by September 1st.

Board Member Natalie McKinney, who, you know, said on this show a couple of months ago that she expected that deadline to get pushed back.

We now know that that big plan that's gonna talk about what's closed, what's consolidated, you know, what new zoning could look like for certain students, that that will come in December, which is sort of the very last time that the School Board could discuss that plan and still make decisions about school closures for next year.

Something that, you know, lots of politicians have been very key on the district pulling together just because of the utilization of its buildings.

Many of them are not enrolled to capacity, most of them are not enrolled to capacity.

And so it's something that, you know, we saw in some versions of the takeover legislation last year that would, you know, an appointed Board of managers would be able to make decisions about facilities.

And I anticipate that, you know, that pressure will still continue in the upcoming session in January.

- There was part of what you were talking, I mean, it was various people saying this and repeats a little bit what you said, but it bears repeating that some of the factors that they're looking at is student enrollment capacity, academic performance, demographic shifts and housing trends, repair costs for buildings, condition of those buildings.

And again, the repairs, birth rates.

I mean, there's all, it isn't, they're trying to look at all this data and put all this stuff together.

The other part I think is really interesting, and you've reported on this, is you'll sometimes hear people sort of say, yeah, these buildings can be turned into a community center, housing, like one perfectly wonderful ideas.

But there's two that you've reported on recently that kind of highlight both the potential and the incredible complexity and cost of converting these school buildings to other uses.

- Sure, yeah.

So, you know, the School Board is also poised, and this is coming out of committee meetings.

School Board doesn't vote in committees.

So, this is all just, you know, based off of the way that the Board members were speaking then to sell Humes Middle School in North Memphis.

Board members seemed ready to potentially sell that to New Ballet who has been wanting the building for quite some time to turn into performing arts school.

It would be a contract school with the district, similar to the way that Goodwill Excel Academy is a contract school rather than a charter school.

And then you also have the Bayer building, which has not been publicly discussed very much recently, but was purchased to be relocated headquarters off of Jackson, the school district in 2018.

And has really just been damaged quite a bit.

It caught a lot of damage from the 2021 storm, the ice storm.

The district has put millions of dollars, thirty million dollars of repair work into that building and has never fully transferred it's headquarters there.

There are some administration offices there, but they're preparing to sell it in a deal to this new group that is going to, wants to come in and transform the entire campus to live and work facility for students, or excuse me, youth aging out of foster care.

- Quick things before I go to Kailynn, you did a big analysis on data that the district provided, this is some months ago, but people, it's still relevant throughout this, is there's about $1.4 billion in projected maintenance needs in the school system in the facilities over the next 10 years.

- Yep.

- And 13 billion, 13 buildings, not billion, sorry, thirteen buildings that would need to be replaced or closed.

I mean, this is huge money.

And then there's a lot of complaints from people talking about that these buildings that have been emptied, they go dark, they become blighted, the, you know, copper gets taken out, things get taken out.

So, there's all that.

Quick thing, the difference, do it again, the difference between a contract school, I've lost track of all these different statuses of schools, and a charter school, so- - A small, seems like a small minutia, but basically you're not held to the same charter school requirements.

So, this is important for New Ballet so that they can do things like dance auditions, singing auditions, where they would have a requirement for getting in.

They wouldn't, I think they have said that they would not have an academic requirement, but they would want to essentially say like, you know, what kind of talent in performing arts do you have?

- But it's a strict school?

- It would still be a public school.

- So, not with a separate board?

Not with a separate- - It would have a separate board, it would be its own separate nonprofit entity.

But in the same way that Goodwill Excel is its own nonprofit entity, it just- - Yeah.

- Has a different kind of contract than the traditional charter school contracts.

- Except we do a whole show on this.

But maybe we will, maybe we won't, let me go to Kailynn.

You and others have been writing about the ongoing debate and conversation about the jail.

You know, there was a vote by the County Commission, a resolution that said, you know, we want to take the new Chicago neighborhood, the Firestone plant that had been proposed off the table.

You've got County Commissioner Mickell Lowery, who's also running for county mayor, suggesting putting it out by Shelby Farms.

Lots of conversation.

I thought it was a really interesting thing from some faith leaders.

- Yes.

- Who had maybe for some people a surprising take on the situation.

- Yes, so some faith leaders sent out letters to the sheriff, the mayor of both Shelby County and the mayor of Memphis, City Council, the Shelby County Board of Commissioners, basically asking them to take a faith-based approach in terms of using the power that they have to do the best for the community.

And what that look like is they're asking the sheriff to, you know, exercise his rights to fix what's already happening in the jail.

They believe that we do need a new jail, that the cosmetic things are also not up to par, but they want the community to be involved in these conversations and they don't want it to be a rushed process.

- We also had some stuff come out from Just City and also they, I think they've been working with a group called, a national group called the Prison Policy Initiative saying, really they don't want a new building, the problem is the management of the building.

The staffing of the building, they point out the jail is short some, I think it's 150 people right now.

That won't change by creating a new building.

In fact, there's an argument that a new or bigger fancier building might take more people, others would push back on that.

It's just interesting to see the dynamics aren't always so clear and where you would think more liberal and conservative, it gets really complicated.

And you also have a whole lot of, you know, not in my backyard, that people don't want a jail in their backyard.

You, any other thoughts, Sam, on where we are with this conversation?

It's kind of so crazy because it's so far out and yet they do need to, if they're gonna build a jail, they gotta start making a decision soon because they've gotta start putting funding together, even though no one's talking about a new jail being built if it happens anytime soon.

- Yeah, I mean I think it's an interesting point.

And two of the things we just talked about, both the maintenance of schools and a new jail, they kind of come outta the same pot of money.

They're really coming out of Shelby County Property Tax dollars.

That's where you would try to find the money if you're a local government.

And so those are two competing priorities.

They really are, And I think we've seen with the deferred maintenance of the school district, the school district has really not gotten the deferred maintenance it needs.

At the same time, you know, there's the walk and chew gum thing at the same time.

You maybe need a new jail, you also need a better functioning existing jail because to your point, if we're building an eight-year project, right?

That it's gonna take eight, nine years for this thing to get up, but you're still gonna be operating the current jail during that time, it needs to get better.

The conditions there, the intake, our colleagues at The Daily Memphian, people at The Commercial Appeal have really reported how tough things are there and how really bad they are there.

And so those are really key issues.

And it seems right now, and I'm not trying to be pejorative here or biased, but like it seems, Memphis is doing the Memphis thing, which is we have a pressing community issue and we're gonna study it and we're gonna take time and we're not going to move with any action towards this really long-term issue with any alacrity towards it.

And that's what we seem to be doing right now.

- And I will just say a third competing priority, Regional One.

- Yeah, right.

- There's hospital, jail, and schools all at the same time.

- Yeah, yeah, and I think we talked a bit about that, but the kind of conversation of some people wanna slow down this idea of a whole new massive, you know, spending in Regional One when you've got the Methodist Hospital, you know, system isn't at full capacity.

And so, you know, how do you do this, and how do you do it relatively quickly?

You know, the other thing about the jail, just quickly that struck me is I think it was Steve Mulroy the District Attorney who, local district attorney, Shelby County District Attorney, who said, you know, if they start arresting a lot more people with the Guard here, we've already got a capacity issue with the jail.

I'm sure there are people listening who say, that's a problem, if they're criminals, they need to be off the street and so on.

But I do think that was another thing.

If you're surging not just the Guard, but you're urging all these other federal resources, which we again, don't know if that's gonna happen, the capacity to handle them is very much in question.

Let me take a moment to thank you all for being here.

And take a moment, Les Smith who was a journalist here in Memphis for, I think a TV journalist for 40 years, he worked for all the stations.

He was nice enough to be here on the Behind the Headlines set some 15 years ago in 2010 when we started this, he was a regular contributor when we just did round tables every week, we didn't do interviews.

He was a great human being.

He was a great guy.

He was kind of old school TV journalist in the sense that he told and different in the way he told narratives, he told stories, he could just do a thing that increasingly local TV news didn't really, that their formula didn't allow for it, but somehow Les managed to do that, to tell these really thoughtful stories in shorter and shorter periods of time.

He was incredibly patient with me as I have never watched the first season of Behind the Headlines, maybe I will if I'm forced to at some point.

I look like a high school intern and acted like one.

But Les sat here in the seat that Laura's in, and was patient and supportive and modeled how you do TV right and how you have conversations and how you share things without, you know, constantly giving your opinion or turning it into something that we have never wanted to do.

So, I thank him for all of his patients with me.

He's survived by his two sons, Jeff and Jason.

Jason Smith, many people know from his time at The Commercial Appeal, or they know from his radio show now over on 92.9, as well as grandchildren and other family.

So, he was 75.

He was a great person and a great journalist.

That is all the time we have this week.

Thanks very much.

Join us again next week.

If you missed any of the show, go to wkno.org, YouTube or The Daily Memphian.

We'll see you then.

[intense orchestral music] [acoustic guitar chords]