WKNO TRANSCRIPT
CHRISTOPHER BLANK (Host): The big political story of the week in Memphis was, of course, President Donald Trump's visit to declare victory over crime. With us to talk about that and other issues is political analyst Otis Sanford. Welcome back.
OTIS SANFORD: Thank you, Chris. Good to be with you.
BLANK: First of all: state and local officials have tried to paint the Memphis Safe Task Force as a very collaborative effort; that everyone is working together to fix the crime problem. But as Bill Dries pointed out in the Daily Memphian this week, this was not Trump's message on Monday. For the president, this effort is purely political. Did this visit put local leaders like Memphis Mayor Paul Young in an even tougher spot than he's already in?
SANFORD: Oh, absolutely it did. And first let me say: you mentioned Bill Dries' analysis. He was spot on with how he described what was going on on Monday. But yes, the fact that that Donald Trump only talked about the politics of it and how horrible Democrats have been, it did put the mayor -- even though he was already in a tough spot -- it put him in a even worse spot. You know, he's having to defend things that were discussed there, while also trying to put on a collaborative face because he knows that's what the state people want to have happen.
BLANK: When Gov. Lee took his turn to praise Donald Trump, he said something that stuck out to me. Never before, he said, has so much funding or resources been provided to help a city fight crime. And when Republicans say they now own this success, it raises some older questions, I think. For example, why has it taken eight years for the governor to put more state troopers in Memphis? Why did Republicans cut the number of criminal court judges in Shelby County? Why was the TBI's crime lab taken out of Memphis, then understaffed in Jackson, so that local rape victims had to wait nearly a year for DNA test results? In other words, Otis, why were there no resources, at least state resources, until Donald Trump came along?
SANFORD: Those are outstandingly valid questions, Christopher. Because the fact is, the state has pretty much ignored Memphis and this crime situation until it became a political opportunity for them to score some points. This governor has not shown, despite his rhetoric, that he cares that much about Memphis and its public safety issues. And so now that Donald Trump decided to put federal resources here for his own political gain, that is when you have state leaders like the governor, like speaker Cameron Sexton jumping in the parade to say that they are working to make Memphis the best place it can be, when they have never put the resources here. Obviously, the state removed some judges. Hopefully, some of them are coming back. But yes, this is just talking out of one side of your mouth and you're not your actions do not show that you are sincere about it.
BLANK: You know, there is a perception locally that things are much better. I know you feel it, I feel it. And then suddenly over the past weekend there were multiple shootings Downtown. And our local leaders, kind of, had to acknowledge that we do still have these same problems: kids running around with guns. So let's for a minute take Trump seriously when he said that in a couple of months the city will be "virtually crime free" because of the task force. Why does this sound unrealistic, maybe, to local liberals?
SANFORD: Because it's a ridiculous statement. We know there are a lot of factors that give rise to crime in this community. And unfortunately, we do have far too many young people who probably don't even know anything about the task force because they don't pay any attention to the news. And even if they did know, they have their own agenda, which is to get even because of some argument that they're involved in. And they don't care about a task force. And those are the issues that I think the mayor and the police chief are trying to deal with. And we as a community will continue to deal with, task force or no task force. So no, it was a ridiculous statement for him to say, but that's just the the platitudes that this president always drags out to make himself look good.
BLANK: Well, one question that keeps getting asked is: what's next? How do we not backslide as a community when the task force wraps up? Is anyone proposing any long-term solutions?
SANFORD: I haven't heard any real, tangible and specific long-term solutions. Obviously, I've heard, you know, conversations either from local, state lawmakers or the mayor himself talking about putting resources into our communities. The money that was used for for the National Guard, for example, could have been used in other ways to help strengthen neighborhoods, to give young people a better leg up. There are some ways to try to deal with this long term, but it's going to take money and unfortunately, the money that the state and the federal people are talking about putting in Memphis is strictly for crime fighting and not to build up the community, and that's what we need.
