WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): The Shelby County jail is in trouble. Also known as 201 Poplar, it's the place most criminals who don't get bonded out spend their days awaiting trial. But the jail is not only overcrowded, a dozen deaths so far this year have some people calling the jail a humanitarian crisis. With us to talk about that and some other issues is political analyst Otis Sanford.
OTIS SANFORD: Welcome back. Thank you, Chris. Thank you for having me.
BLANK: Otis, Shelby County mayor Lee Harris said on WKNO's Behind the Headlines this week that maybe the sheriff's office should not be running the jail. Why is he saying this, and what might an alternative be?
SANFORD: My speculation is that it's strategic and it's political to try to gather some interest in making sure that we follow through on getting that new criminal justice complex, because really, if the Sheriff's Department is not running the jail, what is the Sheriff's Department going to do? That's their primary option. And the only other option would be privatizing the jail, which I don't think we have an appetite for.
BLANK: But maybe state lawmakers do have an appetite for that. Is that kind of the idea here?
SANFORD: It could very well be. And that may be one of the reasons why Cameron Sexton, the speaker of the state house, said the other day that financing a jail is a local issue, not a state issue. Well, if he sticks with that, then don't come in and try to manage or suggest privatizing the county jail.
BLANK: Well, moving on to another legal matter. As you know, Otis, State Sen. Brent Taylor, and to a lesser extent, Rep. John Gillespie, couldn't believe that crime was actually going down in Memphis before Donald Trump brought his task force here. So, they asked the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation to research whether Memphis Police Department was fudging its crime statistics. Well, Otis, what was the result?
SANFORD: Well, the result from the TBI was there is no fudging of crime statistics, and that Brent Taylor and John Gillespie were just either gaslighting or blowing smoke or whatever they're doing. And it really was, Chris, an insult to allege that in the first place. But now we have a report from the state saying nothing like that was going on.
BLANK: It also validates local officials who have been saying all along, hey, we've been dealing with crime and crime is legitimately going down. Our policies are working. What does this do for this argument that has been made by -- in particular Sen. Taylor -- that local officials, including the police department and the District Attorney General Steve Mulroy (who we should add Sen. Taylor has filed numerous ethics complaints against, all which also came back as dismissed) -- what does it say about Sen.Taylor's argument here that we're not getting things done?
SANFORD: Well, I mean I think it just exposes the gaslighting. He did not believe the police department numbers, but he does believe Attorney General Pam Bondi's diatribes and and numbers about the children found and all of that, without any evidence of that. And now even with the TBI report that's saying there was nothing amiss, he's now trying to change his stance by saying, "See, we can believe the numbers now, and it's all because of Operation Viper and Memphis Safe Task Force." It's just another example of the political smoke-blowing by the senator and to a lesser extent John Gillespie, the representative.
BLANK: Well, finally, Otis, I know you like a good, spirited city council meeting. And this week's featured some coarse language that ended up becoming the story. Since then, it's cooled off a little, but the impetus of this story was that the city firefighters union is asking for a raise and certain city council members are saying we can't keep giving raises without raising taxes. We get that. Are raises controversial here? What is this story?
SANFORD: Well, raises are always controversial, Chris, but this one should not be as controversial as it turned out to be. The city had agreed to this 5% raise years ago. They did 3% of it and they were agreeing to do the other 2%. And I just think -- and let's just be specific here, Chris --it was totally improper for a council woman Yolanda Cooper-Sutton to use the language that she did on Tuesday, accusing the fire department of "raping" the city. She has not sufficiently apologized for it, and it's just part and parcel of how some elected officials have resorted to ridiculous language to try to make their point in public meetings.
BLANK: It makes for a good headline though.
SANFORD: Well, it does and it gets people talking. But what they are talking about is just how ridiculous some of our elected officials are. Just like Edmund Ford, Jr. did a week or so ago with the concubine comment. And so, we just need to get a grip, and I'm talking about all the way from the White House all the way down and stop this ridiculous language that has just permeated our government and politics.
