WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): With today's anticipated arrival of the Tennessee National Guard, the next phase of the Memphis Safe Task Force begins. With us to talk about that and other developments this week is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you.
BLANK: Well, let's start with a letter sent by the Department of Defense to Gov. Bill Lee that gives a little more clarity on how this operation is supposed to go. The letter says it will federally fund the use of 1,000 troops for up to a year. It says troops will be available "with a focus on supplementing law enforcement presence in high crime neighborhoods in Memphis, assisting with narcotics interdiction efforts and providing logistical and communication support to local agencies." Is this more or less what was expected?
SANFORD: Well, I really can't answer that, Chris, because I never knew what was expected. And I'm not sure many people did either, including the governor. And certainly not the mayor and the police chief. It was the governor who said he didn't anticipate any more than 150 National Guard personnel to be here. And now we have this letter authorizing a thousand troops for a whole year, which is awfully expensive.
BLANK: Another thing this letter brings up is just the overall legal controversy. And as all things Memphis, civil rights history plays into this. During Reconstruction era, Congress worried that white supremacists in the South might use federal troops to enforce Jim Crow laws. So, Congress passed the Posse Comitatus Act. It's been talked about a bunch in the news lately, and this prevents a local sheriff from using soldiers for law enforcement. Of course, there is a loophole. Under Title 32, which is the case here, the national guard is placed under the governor's jurisdiction, thus it effectively becomes local law enforcement. But Otis, as we've talked about before, Gov. Lee and Mayor Young and the MPD are using very different language than the Trump Administration to describe the National Guard objectives here. Why should this matter to us?
SANFORD: We still don't know what authority the National Guard would have here. That's about as clear as mud here. You brought up the Posse Comitatus Act. The loophole here for getting around it is if there is an invasion or a natural disaster. Nobody has suggested, except maybe people in the Trump Administration, that there was any kind of major emergency that required this. The governor is not saying that we're being invaded by anybody. We're not even being invaded by any criminal element here in town. I just think that this is, what I've said before, Chris, politics at the federal level to make this president look good.
BLANK: Well, we've also learned this week the kinds of arrests already being made. Many appear to be from serving warrants, but we're also seeing many more arrests for things like marijuana possession. And while there's probably not much sympathy for anyone caught with drugs in their car, especially now with police swarming all around the city, the biggest problem with this kind of full-court press on crime at the moment is the ability of the courts and local jails to handle all these more minor infractions. DA Steve Mulroy has even called for a new night court to deal with some of this. Republican lawmakers like Brent Taylor and John Gillespie have spoken a lot about this front end of the crackdown, but without more state support for the back end-- things like judges, prosecutors, and forensic testing -- this could become the recipe for failure. Are any of these lawmakers talking about that and maybe what the legislature might do when they're back in session?
SANFORD: Certainly not enough. All of these lawmakers that you mentioned, Chris, they're all pointing the finger here. And they're making Steve Mulroy, the Boogie Man here. I mean, why are we putting people in jail for low-level marijuana offenses? But don't just wrap up everybody else on minor charges and clog up the system and we already don't have enough judges, we don't have enough prosecutors. This is, as you say, a recipe for disaster and the disaster is coming from the federal level here.
BLANK: Well, finally, Otis some big news in local politics. Long-time US congressman Steve Cohen, the only congressional Democrat in Tennessee, will be challenged in the primary by state representative Justin Pearson. Now, Cohen's faced some strong opposition in the past, but Pearson, he's a different matter. Could this be a heated campaign?
SANFORD: Oh, I think it will be a heated campaign, and we'll be watching it just to see If this is finally the campaign where old-guard politicians are retired in favor of a new wave of younger, more aggressive, more in-your-face political figures like Justin J. Pearson. If he's able to unseat Steve Cohen, Justin J. Pearson will be the most formidable politician in Shelby County without a question.
