The Department of Justice collaborative review of the Memphis Department of Police Services is dead in the water almost a year after it was announced with much fanfare.
MPD has entered a downsized deal with the office of Community Oriented Policing Services as the Trump administration has neutered the DOJ's efforts to improve community policing in Memphis and 14 other U.S. cities.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month declared that the COPS office would pull back its Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance (CRI-TA) program which works with law enforcement agencies to recommend ways the agencies could improve policing practices and police-community relations.
MPD has entered a downsized deal with the office of Community Oriented Policing Services as the Trump administration has neutered the DOJ's efforts to improve community policing in Memphis and 14 other U.S. cities.
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| AG Sessions: "Course Correction" New York Daily News Photo |
Attorney General Jeff Sessions last month declared that the COPS office would pull back its Collaborative Reform Initiative for Technical Assistance (CRI-TA) program which works with law enforcement agencies to recommend ways the agencies could improve policing practices and police-community relations.
What's left of the COPS office work with MPD is an offer of "technical assistance" -- basically a menu of training that MPD may request -- such as police response to mass demonstrations, officer safety and wellness and problem-solving techniques.
What's gone are the findings and recommendations that COPS was to present to MPD, then to follow through with monitoring and assistance during a two-year project. To prepare that report, the COPS team had invested hundreds of hours, including trips to Memphis. Time also was devoted to the project by MPD and community organizations that had met with COPS.
No such reports will be released to the public now, confirmed Valerie Jordan of the COPS communications division. "We're not going to give out that information," Jordan said.
What's gone are the findings and recommendations that COPS was to present to MPD, then to follow through with monitoring and assistance during a two-year project. To prepare that report, the COPS team had invested hundreds of hours, including trips to Memphis. Time also was devoted to the project by MPD and community organizations that had met with COPS.
No such reports will be released to the public now, confirmed Valerie Jordan of the COPS communications division. "We're not going to give out that information," Jordan said.
SHIFTING INTO
REVERSE, SEMANTICS AND ALL
Director of Police Services Michael Rallings on Oct. 12
signed a whittled-down "Memorandum of Understanding" between the COPS office and the
Memphis Police Department for the “Collaborative Reform Initiative for
Technical Assistance.” This document “supersedes
and replaces” the "Memorandum of Agreement" executed by Mayor Jim Strickland on March 3, 2017.
Notably, the city of Memphis itself is not a party to this deal as the new
MOU is not signed by Strickland.
Both documents are linked here:
Comparing the two documents simplistically -- beyond one being an "agreement" and the other an "understanding" -- the March deal has a list of 17 commitments on the part of the city, and the October "understanding" has five.
