- (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.

- Crime continues to fall, the legislature's in session, an election update, and much more 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 a roundtable of journalists, talking about some of the biggest stories of the week, including Toby Sells from the Memphis Flyer.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks for having me.

- Laura Testino from The Daily Memphian.

Thanks for being here.

- Thanks.

- And Bill Dries, also with The Daily Memphian.

We'll start with crime and a number of things that came out in this past week.

And I'll start with you, Bill, and others can chime in.

There were two things.

One was MPD, Chief Davis reported to City Council on January, February crime, which showed continued, you know, really dramatic overall drop in the numbers and a poll from the Shelby County Crime Commission about attitudes, perceptions, and so on of crime.

Let me start with just the crime stats that continued the trend that we've talked about and certainly we report about, The Daily Memphian and the Flyer, other folks.

Chief Davis reported to Council, there were 48%, call it 50% fewer Part 1 crimes.

Those are, you know, homicide, rape, murder, burglary, larceny in January '26 versus January '25.

I mean, total incidents from 3,700 to 1,900.

There was a 40% drop in February from '25 to '26.

Motor vehicle thefts were down 68% year to date compared to the same number of last year.

And these continue the same numbers that we've seen from the Crime Commission, which does quarterly numbers on a broader set.

Thoughts when you read that.

- That obviously the main elements of the task force, not including immigration, have accelerated a decline that was already under way starting about two years ago.

There is still a disconnect.

The folks who wanted the federal surge here, who were active in bringing it here, continue to say that the drop in crime is totally and completely attributable to the task force.

The cops and the city leaders, Mayor Paul Young, continue to say, "No, it's helped but the crime decline was under way long before that."

- Which the numbers show.

I mean, they were trending down, they were trending down nationally.

I mean, we sort of get in the bubble of we do have a high crime rate compared to many, many, most other cities.

But it's been trending in the same direction when it trended up in COVID and then coming down.

- But I think it's just emblematic of the dysfunction that you have two sides to this.

And they're both talking past each other and neither one is really calling the other out.

- That's different then.

I mean, Chief Davis talked and Paul Young has talked.

We'll have Paul Young, Mayor of Memphis, on in a couple weeks from now, talked about they welcomed the federal intervention in terms of, you know, sort of FBI, the ATF, the US Marshals, really essentially everything but ICE that's been here.

They were here in a big Operation Viper.

These names are what they are.

- During the summer.

- During the summer.

And they are hoping, I think Chief Davis said to Council, "We hope that we continue to have this assistance from again, everybody.

but ICE" is essentially what she said.

- Yeah, and one of-- - So they're not saying it's not helpful, they're just saying it was a lot of things, not just the task force.

- Yeah, and, of course, Mayor Young has said basically his goal has been to steer those federal resources toward the strategy that was already in place.

- Yeah.

- But what's also interesting about this I think is that you're seeing people kind of becoming used to this.

Like, great, crime's going down.

What's next?

- Yeah, yeah.

- What's the next step?

- Yeah.

- Absolutely.

I think people, Bill, sorry to step in there.

They're asking what can we do with this?

You know, we've got these low crime numbers.

What's next?

You know, do we build back business?

How do we use this moment in time that we've got here that's unlike any moment since I've been here in 20 years?

It's kind of incredible.

So we'll see what's coming around the bend.

And as far as bringing in the federal folks and all that, I think a lot of the notion that's kind of settled in here for a lot of folks is okay, the National Guard is window dressing.

You know, they're here as political theater and ICE is, you know, we don't agree with any of that that's doing here.

But everything else, I mean, they brought the Department of Agriculture in, you know, to help in Memphis.

And folks are like, "Well, "we're part of the state of Tennessee.

"We're part of the federal.

Like, why didn't this happen before?"

You know, instead of like trying to make a character out of Memphis where there's violent, you know, whatever.

You know, you should have helped a long time ago.

- Well, at a campaign opening, Anthony Buckner, who's the chief deputy sheriff, opened his-- - And running for sheriff.

- And running for sheriff.

Opened his campaign headquarters at Chickasaw Oaks a couple of weekends ago.

And one of the things he said to the crowd there was, and I'm paraphrasing here, so basically the secret of this is is we're basically doing what we've been doing, but now we've got several hundred more people helping us do it.

- Yeah.

We talk about perceptions of crime.

I mentioned the Shelby County Crime Commission, is an independent nonprofit, that has been doing polling around attitudes, asking people in Memphis and Shelby County, you know, is crime their top priority?

It's at 32% overall.

That's down from almost 60% just two years ago.

Jobs and the economy is up for a lot of people as the highest priority.

It's interesting where... You can get the full information at the Shelby County Crime.

All the surveys are really interesting 'cause it has the overall attitudes inside Shelby County, inside Memphis, black, white, male, female, college educated, not, and most all of it's pretty similar except for this sense that, you know, is crime the highest priority?

For black people in Shelby County, 24%.

It's the highest priority.

White people, it's 42%, so not quite double.

And outside Shelby County, it's a much higher priority, forty percent versus inside.

But beyond that, it was really interesting that, you know, over 50, 60% of people across all demographics welcome more police in their neighborhood.

About 50%-plus want the state troopers to be about the same.

There's an overall theme that belies, and I talk about this probably way too often, what you see on national cable news about what people or black communities or, you know, majority democratic cities or whatever want from police.

They generally want the police and welcome the police and they welcomed by and large the task force, minus ICE, is hard to identify.

Thoughts on that from anyone.

- Yeah., a lot of people do, as you said, you know, support more cops, right?

And that's been a conversation in this community for a very, very long time.

And to put numbers to it, the Tennessee Highway Patrol, they were in a Senate budget hearing, this was earlier this week or late last week, and they said, you know, 2009, there were eight troopers assigned to Shelby County.

Doesn't mean there was only eight working here, but that number today is closer to 75 and if they get budget increases, that'll be closer to 100.

And they tied that directly to highway fatalities.

You know, we've all seen these people driving crazy on 240, doing loops and all that.

And they said, you know, 2023, there was 259 fatal car wrecks on interstates around the city.

And last year that was 143.

And they tied that directly to, you know, there's a lot of folks have a lot of opinions on can you tie this to that.

But for him it was pretty plain.

- Yeah.

I wanna get Laura in.

I wanna just mention one more part of a big part of the question, the poll that they did that ties to a recent show we did, that across all subgroups, demographics, about 62% of people think that the Shelby County DA's Office is too lenient.

About 80% say the state court system is too slow.

That's been a kind of common theme.

And we had DA Mulroy on the show last week, a couple weeks ago, I think it was.

You can get that at wkno.org or Daily Memphian or get it wherever you listen to podcasts.

He certainly pushed back at that perception and so on.

But it was just interesting that that is a thing that black, white, young, I mean, all the demographics, seventy to eighty percent want more pressure on and, you know, tougher sentences and so on.

And we also had the former chief public defender and the current acting public defender on talking about those issues.

So complicated issues that we've been trying to get into.

But I wanna bring in Laura.

We're deep into the legislative session.

They're moving real fast.

I was up there last week and talking to some folks and they're trying to move real fast 'cause one, they wanna get out and they wanna start campaigning.

It's election year for virtually all of them.

What, you can start with education and touch on anything else as well, are you seeing?

Obviously we've done a number of shows on the takeover.

I laugh only because it's just one of these things that's just, you don't know where it's gonna go as dramatic and big as it is.

But what all are you seeing up there?

- Sure.

Yeah.

For the takeover specifically, you know, as the legislators came back in January, really wanted to see that pass and it's definitely had a lull.

I think we will potentially see it pick back up again once this interim forensic audit report is made public and completed in mid to late March.

That's what we know is going to happen from the Tennessee Comptroller's Office.

But we haven't seen any kind of huge movement on other education bills quite yet.

As far as vouchers go, of course, we know Governor Lee has wanted to expand the current expansion program, citing all of the interest in applications from across the state to expand that Education Freedom Scholarship.

I think that you're going to anticipate to see that continue to kind of be difficult to pass through with the budget the way that it is this year with not as much extra room to add, pour, you know, an additional $100 million into the expansion in the way that he wants to see it.

We haven't seen as much motion either from an idea that House Speaker Cameron Sexton proposed also earlier this year that would've expanded the pilot program, which is already existing in Shelby County, Davidson County and Hamilton County.

- Pilot program for vouchers.

- For vouchers.

- Yeah.

- Yes.

That one has the, you know, more stringent eligibility requirements related to lower family income than the newer expansion universal voucher program.

Some things that have seen some movement.

Yesterday there were some big committee votes on immigration bills related to students in education.

You know, the school districts don't track who, you know, whether students are documented or not.

And this bill would suggest that they should have to.

It's been revived from last year.

What was removed in the House version that passed was a requirement that would require undocumented students to pay tuition.

But we're starting to see another kind of situation from last year where this version is divulging from the Senate version of the bill.

So unclear if it will pass, but would be quite costly for the bill to take effect.

- Yeah.

On the audit, you and I have done a number of shows.

I talked about, we recently had two school board members, I think that was last week.

You can get that episode online and they pushed back on this potential takeover and the likelihood, that if it does pass, there'll be lawsuits.

And so it's just real murky what's going on.

We'll talk about elections of school board members here in a minute.

The audit also, you know, this forensic audit, we had Brent Taylor, the state senator who's been pushing for the takeover and pushed for the audit.

And Mark White, the State House member, who's also been, you know, in the lead on this some, maybe a month ago, talking about, certainly Brent Taylor talking about just, you won't believe how terrible, all these horrible things.

But we still don't know what's in that audit.

I mean, it seems clear there's gonna be some messy financial, you know, record keeping and some, you know, outdated systems.

But it's not at all clear that there's some sort of fraud, abuse, people, you know, taking trips and stealing money.

None of that's real clear.

What we will get end of March will still be kind of an interim audit, right?

I mean, they need more time, they've said, the audit firm.

- It's an interim audit.

We knew when this firm was picked, CLA was picked and started in the summer, they went with an 18-month contract instead of a nine-month contract.

It was kind of the window that it could have been based on procurement materials.

And so this interim report is also a new development.

That was never promised.

That became a new development and a new agreement that would happen after lawmakers went to this process update that happened at the beginning of February, sort of the end of January, and sort of started talking about what they heard from this process update.

Then interim, now Superintendent Roderick Richmond spoke to The Daily Memphian and others about their response to that report, they didn't know that it was going to happen, but they also talked a lot about the systems that they have, how some of them, you know, are the same ones that they've had in place since the merger.

And that, you know, acknowledging that they wanted to update some of these systems.

- One more thing, I was talking to somebody, this takeover idea would be a nine member... The general idea is basically a nine member of Shelby County folks represented or appointed by the governor, head of the House, the head of the Senate but they have to be in Shelby County.

And it was a person who has been talked about, has been talked to as a potential person on this board who has the kind of background, lifelong expertise, whether or not you agree with this person's, you know, philosophies around education, highly qualified, has worked in public education for decades.

And I asked them, "Well, would you do it?"

"No," they said, because it's just gonna be a mess, was their take.

And one of the things they pointed out, and I'm curious if you agree with this, Laura, is the bill to do the takeover really doesn't have much of any policy prescriptions.

It's not sort of saying, "We wanna get this takeover board "to do X, break up the system, make up all charters, make it all..." There's no... It's not a policy prescription at all.

It's just an appointed takeover.

So it reminded me that if that happens and if it survives the lawsuit, and if, if, if.

You got nine people who gotta sit down and figure out what they're gonna do.

On day one, I mean, are they just gonna start sort of firing people and moving parts and pieces around?

We don't know.

- Depending on when this bill takes effect, it could be very interesting for this current budget year.

If it's passed and it takes effect immediately and this nine-member appointed board immediately, and lawsuits not withstanding have line-item control over budget materials, that could be interesting.

Again, you have to assume that these people have the time to go through this $2 billion enterprise, that they're completely on board.

You know, I think it'll be interesting to see.

I think that local business community has a lot of interest in the school district performing really well.

Whether or not they, you know, put up some of their financial folks to volunteer for these appointed seats could be fascinating.

But again, in Texas, which is where this is modeled after, the superintendent there, Mike Miles, and then Mike Morath, who was the state commissioner of education there, that's how, you know... Their relationship I think is kind of really important to the way that the Houston takeover has worked.

And neither of the pieces of legislation that passed last year allowed for the board to appoint, hire or fire a superintendent.

Rep.

White and Senator Taylor said that they want that now.

But it will be interesting to sort of see what that relationship might look like.

- I'm putting you on the spot, Bill.

I mean, it reminds me, hauntingly, 13, 14 years ago, fifteen years ago when we started the show.

And it was the point at which there was gonna be the merger of the Shelby County School system and the suburban school district and the de-merger.

And there was a big, it wasn't as powerful as this board, but there was a big board that was appointed to kind of what does merger look like?

- Twenty-three members.

- Twenty-three members.

- Geez.

- How long did they, again, just putting you on the spot, how long did they deliberate and then start coming forward with recommendations?

I remember it was a pretty long process of deliberation and discussion.

- It was and it was so big, the board was, that it actually broke into factions.

You had Shelby County Schools Board members, you had Memphis City School Board members.

Then you had the ones who were going to be the new board of the merged school system for that one school year.

And they really struggled because you had two boards that each wanted to go different directions and you had the folks caught in the middle.

- And I guess the thinking here is, well, you've got a Republican super majority at the legislature, they're gonna work closely with Shelby County, power broker, civic leaders, et cetera.

And they're gonna appoint a more unified group.

But that isn't always the case.

- Well, and you have this situation the same with crime, right?

Where you have what's actually going on and you have the perception of all of it.

And I think that that's gonna be a big thing in part because this bill doesn't prescribe what improvements have to take place, right?

And the way that the state tests are scored, there's only so much improvement I think that you could anticipate being able to happen mathematically if you're using those as the barometer.

- But we will do many more shows on this, and Laura, others will be writing about it and reporting on it as we go through the legislature if this gets passed and implemented.

But the legislature's in session, it's got a lot of other things on its plate.

Toby, you wanna run through some with what we have here, nine minutes in the show, some of the other items you all have been watching.

- You bet.

A big one that's kind of a sleeper one is there's a bill about hunting, right?

And that would allow kind of state rules to overturn local rules on this.

And so in the city limits of Memphis, you can't discharge a firearm of any kind.

That's city rules on that.

You can't shoot an AirSoft gun.

You can't shoot a BB gun.

Please don't come to my backyard.

But this new rule is framed as a hunting rule.

And so it stems from there was a court case in Sweetwater, Tennessee where six duck hunters, they were on private land, but they were inside the city limits.

They were shooting ducks and they got fined for all of that.

So state lawmakers, some of 'em wanna make really clear that we have state rules on hunting, which allows you to do it wherever you want.

We have to be like 100 yards from a building.

There's some other things like that.

But the sponsor of the Senate bill, Adam Lowe, said specifically, he said, you know, "We don't want, you know, city councils "or county commissions determining "how the Second Amendment is applied in the state of Tennessee."

And so what that would effectively do if that overruled the city laws on that was you could hunt inside Memphis and Shelby County.

And, you know, there were some urban lawmakers in on the committee where it was being talked about.

They just absolutely saw a problem.

But the GOP saw no problem.

They said, "Well, we're making it explicit that we have the rules on this."

So I think anybody that's ever lived in the city could see how this could be problematic.

- Yeah, I mean it's pretty consistent that even this recent poll, the Crime Commission poll, you know, of people concerned about crime for 50% say that within crime, their number one concern is gun violence.

- Yeah.

- You know, polls consistently show Memphis, Shelby County want common sense, however you define that, common sense gun- You know, they don't wanna take everybody's guns away, but they want some kind of restrictions on guns.

So again, this is one of those strange ones where there's a legislature that seems disconnected.

And I imagine the numbers in the city of Nashville are the same and probably in Chattanooga, maybe Knoxville.

Where should we go here?

Maybe we do election update because we're getting close on that.

You wanna do a rundown of where we are with various, you know, we've got the county mayor races, we've got the sheriff race we talked about, we've got all, you know, the assessor, trustee.

I don't know how much of that you wanna get into.

And then what?

A whole lot of state legislatures that are on.

- The May primary ballot is set.

And in the process, by the way, eight people got booted from the ballot by the party primary boards.

Five on one side, three on the other.

Where we are now is March 10th is the deadline to file for the state and federal primaries, which are on the August ballot.

- And they will be what?

Let's talk about county mayor.

So there are many Democratic candidates for county mayor.

- There are seven.

- Seven.

It's come forward on the Republican side?

John DeBerry, former Democrat.

Always something of a conservative Democrat up at the legislature.

There'll be, you know, a whole lot of people running on the Democratic side and then the two of them.

Is anyone else challenging John DeBerry on the Republican side?

- No.

- Yeah.

- The lone person who was in the race against him was retired Judge Joe Brown.

- Okay.

- He got kicked off by the Republican Primary Board for not meeting the party qualifications.

- There was talk, Marie Feagins, the former superintendent is running on the Democratic side for county mayor.

But there was some kind of kerfuffle, can I say that word?

Is that still a word?

Apparently it is 'cause I said it, about whether she would qualify as a Democrat.

That is she did or they did not boot her off.

- Yeah, there were some local Democrats who were talking about their concerns about it.

Ultimately, the state party said no.

- They passed on any judgment.

- There's no challenge, yeah.

- Okay.

And sheriff, and is anyone running against Anthony Buckner?

Sorry, I said his name wrong.

- I believe he has four to five other people in the Democratic primary.

The Republicans have a two-way primary for this office.

And it is the only contested primary on the May ballot on the Republican side.

- County Clerk Wanda Halbert is by state constitution termed out.

She did file to run again.

- No, she pulled a petition.

- Pulled a petition.

- She pulled several petitions.

- Okay.

- And did not file to run for clerk.

She instead filed to run for criminal court clerk.

There are 11 Democrats in the primary for county clerk.

It's the largest race, Democrat or Republican, on the ballot.

- And numerous on the Republican side filing for the county clerk as well?

- No, just one person.

- Just one.

Okay.

We just have a couple minutes left here.

Why don't we do, let's talk xAI real quick.

Y'all have been covering that.

Or actually let's do this.

We'll do xAI in the podcast.

People can download the podcast and get that.

But we'll talk about the upcoming cover story for the Flyer.

- You bet.

Look out for it next week.

I spoke with a lot of members of a group called Vecindarios 901 and they're a group of volunteers who get together.

You know, a call goes out and they go and they have for months now gone and observed ICE and the task force as they've done their work in Shelby County.

Their job is simply that, to go and watch, maybe take some video and just kind of bear witness to this and report back to what they're doing.

I talked to several folks, enough to where it was clear to me that I just needed to get outta their way.

So I let them tell their story in a Q&A style.

It's powerful stuff, you know, people getting mistreated, you know, cops heckling these observers as they're doing their work.

It's great stuff.

- We'll look forward to that.

And I wanted to, actually, I should have got an update from you, Laura, on the school board elections, which were maybe gonna be moved and there was a lawsuit and where are we with the school board elections?

- There was a successful lawsuit from the school board.

There are only four, the original four that were set to be on the ballot will be on the ballot.

Nobody's terms are going to be cut short by forcing the election this time around.

But as Bill has reported, you know, both local parties move to make these partisan races this year, which is why this is such a, you know, big topic of conversation now rather than a few months from now.

But no Republican candidates in any of the four races.

So these will all be still decided by the Democratic primary.

- So the Democratic Party primary in May?

- That's right, - Yes.

- Can I say again?

We have too many election days in Tennessee, so there's May is the primary.

Then we go to August, November.

- August is the county general and the primaries for state and federal and November, the third election this year.

That's all general.

- I'm pretty close to this stuff and I get confused every year.

It's so insane.

You know, we'll have voter guides as we go through this.

Bill will be writing about, Laura will.

I'm sure you all will as well.

Shelby Vote has... Really, the Shelby County Election Committee has a very good website that lays these things out.

It's really, I mean, it's like a civics test every time you go into a big election year.

- It's a dance, Eric.

- It's a dance.

It's a kerfuffle.

Anyway, that is all the time we have this week.

Thank you all for being here.

Thank you all for joining us.

Again, if you missed any of the episode today, you can get the full episode at wkno.org or on YouTube or at The Daily Memphian.

You can download the podcast of the show.

I mentioned some of the recent shows.

We had Taylor and White, We had Phyllis Aluko, the former Chief Public Defender, Jerri Green, Steve Mulroy.

We've got other shows coming up, including Mayor Paul Young in a few weeks.

Join us then.

Thanks and good night.

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