- (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.

- US Attorney Mike Dunavant, tonight, on Behind the Headlines.

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

I'm joined tonight by Mike Dunavant.

He's the US Attorney for the Western District of Tennessee.

Thanks for being here again.

- Thank you, Eric.

- Along with Aarron Fleming, reporter with The Daily Memphian.

You are back, this is your second time as US Attorney for the Western District.

You served for three and a half, almost four years under the first Trump administration.

You're back in, let's, I guess the main thing, we'll talk about a lot of aspects of law enforcement, what your office does, how it's similar, and how it's different from local DA's, local court system, all those sorts of things.

But I think we have to start with the Memphis Safe Task Force, and that has been such a big presence and topic in Memphis, other communities as well, but we're focused on Memphis here.

Broadly speaking, what has your office's role been in the Safe Task Force effort?

- Well, of course, it's a White House operation, and President Trump issued the executive order at the end of September, and that includes us as a federal component agency.

The presidential executive order ordered hypervigilant policing and aggressive prosecution.

So aggressive prosecution is in fact what we do at the US Attorney's Office.

And so I'm very involved and engaged with the task force members.

They're mostly federal agents along with Memphis police officers and highway patrol officers.

And our job is to accept as many cases as possible for federal prosecution that emanate or result from those arrests during the operation.

- Well, what does aggressive prosecution mean?

- Aggressive means charging the highest and most readily provable offense under federal law and seeking the maximum guideline sentence under federal law.

- I think some people would listen and think, well, the Trump administration, that would've happened anyway without a task force.

But was this a sort of even higher bar of aggression or aggressiveness that was set with the executive order?

- Yes, and I would say in addition to that kind of posture of charging and disposition, it would be prioritizing those things that are focused on in this operation, which is violent crime and firearms.

You know, the federal government has something to say about the regulation of firearms.

We have a whole bureau dedicated to it, the ATF.

And so there are specific federal statutes to deal with possession and use of firearms during violent crimes that carry significant sentences.

- We'll talk a bunch about this and dig into things you're saying, but let me do one more question then I can get Aarron in here.

Has it, from your point of view, been successful, and where have things not gone?

Where in this efforts, in the purview you have, are there areas where it hasn't gone as well as you would've liked?

- The short answer to your first question is yes, absolutely.

It's been successful.

Overall violent crime in all major categories is down about 42% during the operational period since October 1 until the present.

That's an extraordinary drop in violent crime in that short a period of time.

And so in all categories, whether it's robbery, aggravated assault, homicide, firearms offenses as well, and then other, what I consider kind of non-traditional areas of, such as auto theft, burglary, sexual assault, things like that.

So all across the board has been successful.

I think that most people would agree that it's been a successful operation thus far in its intended purpose to reduce violent crime and overall crime in Memphis.

I don't know really how to answer the second question that is how it's not gone as well as we would like.

It's gone quite well.

We struggled at the beginning, I think, of just manpower issues in the US Attorney's Office.

I walked into the office the first week of October during the longest government shutdown in American history and in a period where, as a result of some of the previous efforts of the administration, we were short-staffed.

I was down attorneys.

And so that's been the real challenge, is making sure that I have enough attorneys to handle the volume, the large volume of cases that are coming our way.

- I guess, and apologies to Aarron, I guess it is there, have there been any points where you feel like, people are coming to your office that why are we spending, we have limited resources.

Prosecutors make these choices all the time.

We talked to the local DAs, we've talked to your predecessors about this.

Did you feel like the appropriate cases from your point of view and the Trump administration's point of view were being brought to your office?

- Yes.

Yes, absolutely.

And we pride ourselves in being a full-service office, and ultimately, I'm the ones that are, I'm the one that's making the charging decisions on what is a substantial federal interest.

And so, yes.

- So what do we know as far as numbers for people that you guys have charged under the task force?

I think last year your officer said it was around 195 people have been charged.

The number of those have been indicted also.

Where do those numbers stand now, you know, six months in to the task force?

- As of this morning, we have indicted and charged 368 people with federal offenses as a result of the task force operation since October 1.

- And so what, as far as charges go, you talked about that a little bit, but where are you guys kind of focusing?

What are these cases looking at?

Is it firearm stuff?

Is it, you know, what's the bulk here?

- So the vast majority of those are prohibited people in possession of firearms or using or discharging firearms in the city.

And the big bulk of those are convicted felons in possession of firearms, that's a violation of federal law.

Domestic violence offenders or people under order of protection in possession of firearm, illegal aliens in possession of firearms, habitual drug users in possession of firearms and people who are in possession of illegal firearms themselves, or devices such as machine gun conversion devices, otherwise known as switches, that converts a semi-automatic handgun into a fully automatic weapon, that's a violation of federal law, stolen firearms, obliterated serial number firearms, short-barreled shotguns, all types of firearms offenses.

And so I'd say the vast majority of those are those types of offenses.

But we are also charging carjacking, business and bank robbery, drug trafficking offenses and possession of firearm during drug trafficking, which is an enhanced punishment for that.

And then we do have, we've charged, I think 26 of those 360 odd cases, twenty-six of those have been for assault, resisting, or impeding a federal law enforcement officer.

- I want to hit on the immigration piece of this a little bit too.

The folks that I've talked with, you know, across the city and even different leaders and things, DA Mulroy has talked about this a little bit.

A lot of people seem to support the task force, at least on the sort of violent crime piece of this, but they've had some issues with the immigration enforcement.

So, I guess my question is, how often with these cases that you guys are prosecuting these, the ones that are involving firearms and other violent charges, how often is somebody undocumented that is coming into contact with y'all?

And then also how do you sort of handle that?

Because obviously there is like a immigration piece of this and deportation orders and stuff.

So how do y'all go about sort of managing that when y'all come into contact with somebody like that?

- As of this morning, 8,441 people have been arrested during the task force operation, Eight hundred and eighteen of those, less than 10%, have been taken into custody as a result of not lawfully being in this country.

A small percentage of those have come to my office for federal charging, not for immigration offenses, that is illegal reentry into the country, but rather it's an illegal alien who's been found in possession of a firearm or misusing a firearm in a violent crime, drug trafficking offenses or document fraud.

So the vast majority of that 818 have not even crossed my desk.

They're moving quickly from arrest to removal from the country.

The only ones that are remaining here are being taken into custody and charged with federal crimes where we will prosecute and punish them and then remove them.

- So that is often what happens with these people is typically they're going to a removal order versus being prosecuted for a crime.

- That's correct.

And our office doesn't really have anything to do to do with that.

That's the Department of Homeland Security.

- So is the net of that, give or take, seven hundred people of the, you said 800 had been arrested, 700 people have been deported or in the process of being deported through other parts of the federal government?

- That's about right.

Yeah.

- Has there been enough transparency on the numbers?

Do you feel like it's been kind of opaque to some people?

You're giving really detailed numbers here now.

Maybe some of that's on the local level.

It's just been, there's been a murkiness to the numbers that this conversation is bringing clarity to.

- I believe it's been transparent, you know, the US Marshal service is leading the operation and the Marshal service provides daily and weekly statistical reports in all arrest categories.

I've seen this publicly.

I get that readout every day.

I'm able to see that and then, and then scrub those lists to make charging decisions.

But yes, I believe, and they're sharing that with our local partners, the Memphis Police Department, the mayor, the Shelby County Sheriff's Office, the Highway Patrol, the TBI, all of those people get those numbers.

And those agencies are also then sharing that publicly.

- Has there been coordination at the right level or the right type of coordination with local law enforcement?

So the DA's Office, the Mayor's Office, which obviously oversees police department.

There's been probably, those are the two areas have been the most questions.

Sometimes criticism, sometimes criticism from the left and the right people who support this and don't.

From your seat, do you have good cooperation with the DA office and with the Mayor's Office/MPD?

- So yes, we have very good relationships with Mayor Young and Chief Davis.

Our office is involved and engaged at all levels in multiple different operations and meetings with Chief Davis and Memphis Police Department command staff.

We are routinely prosecuting cases involving Memphis police officers and detectives who are bringing these cases, whether it's from the multi-agency gang unit, the Organized crime unit, the PSN unit, the Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is primarily firearms.

And we do engage with the District Attorney's Office in that PSN unit, we have a, what we call a gun review meeting every week, we're reviewing firearms offenses that are brought and arrested for either federal or state prosecution.

We're coordinating with General Mulroy's office on that.

- A couple things, one is you've spoken a lot about guns.

I think some people listening would be sort of surprised to hear that a Republican administration, which in general, and I'm gonna ask you to be political, but in general, Republicans have been more opposed to gun control, gun, you know, assault weapon bans, all those kinds of things.

Would some of the problems that you are catching be solved by tougher gun control measures, or is that just outside your purview?

- No, no, I mean, I took an oath to support and defend the United States Constitution, and that includes the Second Amendment.

I'm a strong supporter and believer of people being able to own and possess firearms, legally.

What I'm focused on, is what's killing people in this city, which is illegal use and possession of firearms.

And it turns out the federal law is pretty strong about that.

And so the way you reduce violent crime in a city is you remove the people who have illegal guns before they pull the trigger.

That's what's working.

- One more for me, I'll go back to Aarron.

When you talked about the numbers that you've prosecuted, on some level, I mean, it's three, I think 365, something like that, you just said - Roughly, - Again, that's just the federal part.

There's been more arrest about 8,000-plus arrests of the whole task force.

In some ways feels like a small number when you say 365, right?

- Sure.

- I mean, the sense that, you know, Memphis has a very, most cities have a lot of crime.

Memphis has a lot of crime, it spiked during COVID.

All of that, is that small number reflective of, in fact, it's a relatively small number relative to 1.2 million people in the MSA who are doing the really horrible crime.

And it's just because it's so horrible it feels like everybody's doing crime or so many people are doing crime, or that number of arrests created a deterrent of other people who in this period of time may have not been committing crime.

Do you see what I'm getting at there?

- I do, and I have a theory.

I, you know, correlation is not always causation, but I do believe that the 360 odd people that we have charged thus far, number one, represents almost double what we had done in the past two years, in fiscal years.

So, our caseloads are up 200%.

We are targeting the most violent, the most dangerous, and then most repeat offenders.

And so I do believe that the ones that we have selected for federal prosecution, where by the way, we have a better chance of holding them pretrial without bond, and a better chance on the back end of sentencing them to more significant punishment and removing this them from this community.

I believe that is incapacitating them and deterring them.

And, it does appear that we have finally targeted the right people who are driving all the crime.

And I think as a result of that, there is a deterrent effect generally that is occurring across all categories of crime.

Either that or they've left the jurisdiction.

And that's fine with me as well.

- Will it last?

- Yes.

Yes.

- Even if the federal resources pull back?

- Yes.

I'm not leaving.

- Aarron.

- I wanted just to, so explain a little bit about, you know, I think, like you mentioned, the federal system is usually seen as a little, you know, more harsh than the state side of things.

And so y'all are more selective about the cases that you get.

I think we often say there's no parole in the federal system.

So what, like for somebody that's like sentenced, what does that exactly look like?

Are they always serving the entire sentence that they get?

Is there any like way that they get time shaved off?

How does that, if somebody gets 20 years, are they always serving 20 years?

- The short answer is yes.

Yes.

And usually there is a period of supervision, supervised release after that 20 years.

So they do the time in custody, and they don't do it here in Memphis or in Tennessee, really.

They do it at other Federal Bureau of Prison locations across the country.

So it's not just that we're removing them or incapacitating them, we're sending them away from this jurisdiction, right?

And there's punishment in that as well.

And, you know, I think it is important for us to say that this is the proper goal and priority for criminal prosecution.

That is to punish people, to incapacitate them because they're so dangerous or repeat, to deter others and to uphold the rule of law.

And so, yes, they're doing all the time.

That's why those sentences actually mean something.

And again, I'll go back to, Aarron, on the front end, unlike the state system, the federal system, we have a much better chance in certain crimes, especially the ones we're charging, they're called presumptive crimes to hold those people pretrial without a bond that is, they're not right back out on the streets re-offending over and over again.

We see that in the state court system, and that's unfortunate, but in the federal system, we're able to hold them until we prosecute them, convict them, and sentence them, and then they go do all the time, yes.

- To be political for a second, so on the task force in working with the DA's Office, so the Tennessee legislatures, this bill is passed this accountability measure for the DA's Office where he would be required to submit these reports about the task force and the kind of the work that they're doing on those cases, like the pleas that they take or a case is dismissed, one of those people that the report would go to is your office.

And so where do you come in on that and like if they dismiss a case, the DA's Office, are you able to then say, Hey, can we take this federal?

Like is there a way to pick that back up?

Like where do you come in on that bill and get that report?

- Yes, that's entirely the point, yes.

If a case is dismissed or compromised or declined or settled in such a way that it does not properly vindicate an interest of the United States of America, it is my job and my interest to go and take a look at that case and see if we can adopt that for federal prosecution.

We're already doing that now where we're trying to make sure that we're not missing any proper cases that we wanna select for prosecution on our side.

But I believe that that law is designed for that purpose so that if for some reason the state court system is not able to handle that in an appropriate way, it just doesn't go away.

There is accountability and there's culpability that will be dealt with by my office.

- You were, for about 10 minutes here left in show, you're a former local county district attorney, what, 10, 12 years, 2 terms.

And tell me again the counties.

- Yeah, so I was the elected District Attorney General on the 25th Judicial District, Lauderdale, Tipton, Fayette, Hardeman, and McNairy Counties from '06 to '17.

- One thing that I think I've found over the years, especially as we did more stuff, we've been doing more stuff on public safety and criminal justice and talking to DAs and all the parts of the criminal justice system more, a lot of people don't understand that most of the laws that a local DA is enforcing are set at the state, right?

I mean, it's not the County Commission that's passing these laws.

It's not the City Council, right?

I mean there are some- - That's correct.

- It's certainly around violent crime.

- And most of the laws that an elected district attorney prosecutes are made and enacted by the Tennessee General Assembly.

They're state laws.

Yes.

- Did you find points where you were frustrated where your hands were kind of tied, that there were people you wanted to pursue more aggressively, you couldn't because you didn't have the tools you needed in state law?

- Oh, yes.

That was in fact the case.

Now, I will say that in more recent years, that's gotten a lot better.

The state, a few years ago, Speaker of the House, Cameron Sexton, they did pass truth in sentencing legislation that really kind of right sized and told the truth about how much time you'd be in custody on those offenses.

And so those, they've increased penalties and actually enacted better stricter punishments for certain violent offenses.

So it's gotten better over the time.

But yes, I was often frustrated with the fact that we could not pursue people and get them in custody the way we wanted to.

- Roughly, when were you a local DA?

- 2006 to 2017.

- Okay, so, okay, for you now in this role in the US Attorney role in this term, you can look back on your last time as US Attorney as well, you talked about there's another, what, 21 counties?

We've been very focused on Shelby County.

It's the biggest county.

What does crime look like in the rest of your district?

- So, we often say in the western district of Tennessee, that the district really kind of goes as Memphis and Jackson goes, those urban centers, right?

So we have Memphis and Jackson and those are the urban centers that people come into and go out of from the rest of the rural part of the district.

And so what happens in Memphis or Jackson does flow out into the rural parts.

Many, many times criminal element will traffic narcotics into the rural areas.

There's still violations of federal law all throughout those other 21 counties.

And so we never want to neglect taking those cases, working with local law enforcement, working with local district attorneys to make sure we're adopting those cases as well, as I always say, federal law applies in every square inch of those 22 counties.

And so what it looks like is, there is still gang activity that exist in rural parts of the district, including Fayette and Hardeman counties up into Madison County.

There is significant drug trafficking activity that flows of Highway 51 out I-40 out Highway 64 into the rural parts of the district, regionally, it's affected that way.

And so we take on all of those types of cases as well.

- With six minutes here, you were talking about sentencing and the way the differences for the federal system.

In the local system, I think both Republicans and Democrats have been at this table talking with, you know, varying degrees of pride or support for different types of, say drug court where you're taking somebody who's got, you know, not high-level offenses, lower-level offenses, and there's a different area to put them in the courts.

There's a VA court, I believe, you know, that former veterans and to treat them certain ways, that diversion, different approaches, are those kinds of pathways even allowed or possible within the federal system?

Or is it this person came in, this person committed a crime, this person's gonna be treated the same way?

- They're much more limited in the federal system.

We do have a reentry court program, but that is after you have served your time and you are reentering the community and there is a, while you're on supervised release after that prison term, we do have a reentry court program that provides assistance and services to people who are trying to get back into the community.

- Do you ever find that you wish you had for a certain individual, you don't have to name names, but you wish you had some other place, not to let them go, maybe necessarily, but to put them in a different place because of whatever circumstances?

- You know, Eric, I think it's important to understand the role and function of the federal government and Department of Justice when it comes to criminal prosecution.

Our job is not, we are not social workers, we're prosecutors.

It is not my job to cure or fix these people.

It's my job to punish and incapacitate them so they don't harm you tomorrow.

That is the role and function of the federal criminal justice system.

And that's what I took an oath to do.

And that's how it works.

And you're right, Aarron, we are highly selective of cases because it's a significant system whereby the time you graduate to a federal court, you've earned it.

- Again, do you find, not without looking at specific cases or DA's or courts, at the local level, is it appropriate for them to have those wider set of pathways for- - Sure.

I'll leave that to the policy makers at the state and local levels.

When I was the elected district attorney in the 25th, we did an instituted drug court program there.

So yeah, I think it that can be effective.

- Okay.

Aarron, with few minutes.

- Do you think that the, I've asked this a bunch and I imagine the answer's the same, but has there been any discussion about an end date for the task force?

And then also, and I asked this because I think a number of people, specifically thinking of Sheriff's Office candidates that I've talked to, it seems like some people are starting to prepare for the end of it and say, hey, what comes after this and what can we do to continue its work?

And then also, if it does end at some point, whenever that is, do you think this has changed, that the partnerships that have been created in the way that you guys are working with the ATF and the FBI, has that changed those relationships?

Is it changing the way that we're prosecuting crime going forward even after this comes to an end?

- So that's a lot in that question, but yes.

I'll try to answer it.

So, the first part of the question was about an end date.

The president has made it clear and he made it clear when he came here to Memphis a month ago, that there is no announced end date.

He has said to us, we will continue this task force operation, this hypervigilant policing this aggressive prosecution until Memphis is safe.

Now Memphis is certainly much safer than it was before October 1, forty-two percent down in all major crime categories.

And so we're gonna continue the mission full steam ahead as the president has ordered as it's constituted.

Now, we also though have, you're right, the model has worked so well that this model is being looked at for other cities around the country, replicating it to make sure that we're handling it and doing it correctly.

We are starting to consider about what a sustainability plan looks like.

As I speak with Chief Davis and Sheriff Bonner and other law enforcement agency heads.

The real value of this task force has been in co-location, that is being together in one spot, sharing intelligence and information and coordination.

And so we believe that we can look at a sustainability plan that will last into the future.

The last thing I'll say is that I think what this model has shown the citizens of Memphis, the voters and taxpayers of Memphis, is that they no longer have to live the way that they were living.

And perhaps they will demand from their policymakers, additional enforcement activity and resources to sustain this over time.

- What does a safe Memphis look like?

'cause we saw, I think President Trump, maybe, sort of flippantly said when he was here, you know, in two or three months you're gonna have like no crime.

We had shootings downtown before he came and then several after.

And so, and some of that, you know, a lot of people, we talk about the perception of crime versus the reality of it versus, you know, and what the numbers say.

And so, what does a safe Memphis look like?

- Well, again, I think anytime you can reduce homicide by 37%, that's safer.

People are less likely to be shot or killed in this city now than they were before October 1.

We're gonna continue to go until we drive those numbers even farther and farther down.

That'll be up to the President to decide when we've reached that goal.

- We could have so many more questions, but we really appreciate you being here, appreciate all the information.

But that is all the time we bhave this week.

Thank you.

We'll have you back, we hope.

Thank you, Aarron.

We appreciate it.

And thank you all for joining us.

If you missed any of the show today, you can get the full episode online at wkno.org, YouTube, the Daily Memphian.

You can also download the show as a podcast wherever you get your podcast.

Thanks very much and we'll see you next week.

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