Best Practice Number Twelve: Nationally Recognized Law Enforcement Recruitment Methodologies for the Memphis Police Department—This 18 month effort, the first of its kind in the United States, will examine at five year intervals a total of 25 years of police academy graduates in order to identify the predictors of success and failure; transforming this data into information and then into a model recruiting template, the Police Department will ultimately be able to strategically target the best candidates with the greatest likelihood of success, hopefully creating a sea change in terms of the defensibility and credibility of the Police Department’s recruitment efforts

Best Practice Number Thirteen: Establishment of a Centralized Point-Of-Service Domestic Violence Agency in Memphis and Shelby County—At the request of Shelby County Mayor AC Wharton, the Crime Commission was exclusively selected to assess the current state of the community’s response to domestic violence, create a strategic plan to modify prosecutorial, judicial, offender/victim assessment and law enforcement protocols; unanimously adopted by Mayor Wharton, the recommendations are now being executed; beyond that, the research design for a Family Justice Center modeled after a benchmark initiative in San Diego is underway under our stewardship

Best Practice Number Fourteen: The Efficacy of Juvenile Drug Courts Nationally—Requested by District Attorney General William Gibbons, this best practice (which is underway) will examine the relative success or failure of dedicated juvenile drug courts nationally, particularly given the dramatic success of the Crime Commission-led creation of the dedicated adult drug court in Shelby County; should the evidence reflect that a juvenile drug court is a best practice to be pursued, we will proceed accordingly; to be completed in late 2004

Best Practice Number Fifteen: Sexually Oriented Businesses (SOB) and Their Relationship to Crime, Public Safety and Public Disorder—Requested by members of the Crime Commission board of directors as another dimension of the revitalization efforts so crucial to Hickory Hill and Brooks Road corridor, this best practice will examine the relative impact of sexually oriented businesses locally as it relates to crime, measure the local experience against the national experience, investigate the need and potential for legislative regulation beyond what currently exists, and finally, provide the community a fair and accurate depiction of how urgent is the need to address sexually oriented businesses in Memphis and Shelby County; scheduled for completion in early 2005; the language of court orders regulating local SOB has already been altered by the District Attorney General for greater impact based exclusively on the work of the Crime Commission

Support to the New School Superintendent—With Dr. Johnson’s arrival, the Memphis Shelby Crime Commission gains a new board member and the community a new educational leader; working quickly with Dr. Johnson to elevate the chronic issue of truancy locally to the list of critical concerns facing our children, we convened a Truancy Summit on 3/24; in support of this initiative we prepared concept papers and recommendations for Dr. Johnson on "Electronic Identification Cards for Students as a Mechanism for Reducing Truancy" and "Closed Campuses as a Strategy for Reducing Truancy;" both concepts enjoy Dr. Johnson’s interest and potential support

Adoption of the Louisville (KY) Anti-Truancy Model—Several months of inquiry and research led the Crime Commission to a judicial leadership model of truancy prevention led by Judge Joan Byer of the Jefferson County Family Court; relying on dedicated intervention by a sitting judge, weekly face-to-face meetings with truants and their parents, robust use of social services and targeting middle school-aged youth, this model has now been adopted in Kansas City, St. Louis and Charlotte; five local fresh-start schools have been selected this school year to implement this model

An Examination of Current Practices Within the Reserve Division of the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office—At the request of Sheriff Luttrell we assessed the operations of his Reserve and Emergency Services Divisions, compared those against similar sheriff’s agencies throughout the United States and provided a number of policy and program recommendations designed to: create greater efficiencies, create greater capacity, enhance morale, increase organizational responsiveness, and provide greater support to the full time work force; these recommendations were adopted unanimously by Sheriff Luttrell and have been implemented; it is estimated that this program returns at no cost to the taxpayer the equivalent of 30 full time deputy sheriffs and their work, saving more than $1 million

An Examination of Nationally Recognized Police Intervention Programs in the Emerging Hispanic/Latino Community—On the heels of concerns voiced by the community about the criminal justice system’s treatment of/response to the growing Hispanic and Latino populations locally, District Attorney General William Gibbons, Police Director James Bolden and Sheriff Mark Luttrell turned to the Crime Commission to contrast the local issues and protocols with the national experience; from that research and inquiry came a series of tactical recommendations to enhance local law enforcement’s outreach to new populations in the community which have been implemented

An Examination of Crime, Safety and Fear in the Neighborhoods Contiguous to the University of Memphis Campus—This initiative, undertaken at the request of University of Memphis Board of Visitors (BOV), was designed to provide a public safety dimension to the BOV’s effort to ensure economic redevelopment in the neighborhoods bordering the university campus; very positively received by the BOV and adopted without change into their larger revitalization strategy; this initiative also catalyzed a new partnership between the Memphis Police Department and the University Police Department through the implementation of our recommendation for overlapping/shared jurisdictional responsibilities

Central Biomedical Corridor Public Safety Assessment—The Crime Commission has been engaged by the Memphis Biotech Foundation and Memphis Tomorrow to examine the central biomedical corridor and using the model so successfully employed by the Crime Commission in the Downtown Entertainment District, build a similar Strategic Plan for Public Safety for the Biotech Foundation to employ; scheduled for completion in early 2005; will employ the powerful science of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED) or the creation of defensible space

Bio-Terrorism Defense Training Center of Excellence—The Crime Commission has been approached by the Washington DC-based Police Executive Research Forum and the Memphis Biotech Foundation to conceptualize, as part of the emerging Biotech Foundation campus, a national training center for first responders and public safety executives; in the conceptual stage

Memphis Children Locked Out Project—The culmination of our two year effort on behalf of the children of incarcerated parents, the Crime Commission is now positioned to institutionalize an umbrella system of support for this special population as part of the Commission-created Memphis Children Locked Out Project; based on the indisputable premise that the children of prisoners are disproportionately likely to become offenders themselves, estimated by some experts at a rate as high as 70%

Significant developments in crime that are, in part, the consequence of the work that we do:

--the success of the Shelby County Drug Court has been evaluated and the recidivism rate has been reduced from 80% when traditional sanctions were employed to 20% when the Drug Court program has been completed; the court was created through a Crime Commission best practice

--between 1998-2001 the local sexual assault rate dropped almost 50%, due at least in part to the Crime Commission’s leadership of the Strategic Approaches to Community Safety Initiatives (SACSI) targeting the sexual assault of African American women under the age of 17

--in 2003 the downtown enjoyed its lowest crime rate ever; this on the heels of our successful public safety planning for the entertainment district

--in 2003 the homicide rate for Memphis MSA was the lowest in a decade and was decreasing at a rate greater than the national average; the single biggest contributor to this decrease is Project Safety Neighborhoods, a collaboration between the US Attorney, local law enforcement, the District Attorney General and the Crime Commission targeting armed career criminals

--likewise, the categories of rape and motor vehicle theft are also decreasing at rates greater than the national average; again, the impact of SACSI is a definite factor

--aggravated assault, robbery and violent crime in general reflect a downward movement as well; only burglary reflects a statistically significant increase in major crimes

 

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