In the weeks after the death of Tyre Nichols, a lot of people have been saying, shouting, and writing that something must be done about policing and crime in Memphis. There have been a lot of “solutions” suggested and just as many alternate and opposing “solutions.” 

Suddenly everybody knows how to fix Memphis. Here is a sampling from local print and broadcast media, national media (The New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Washington Post all led with the Nichols story), experts, trolls, crackpots, haters, boosters, politicians, and law enforcement: 

Ban guns (but there are millions of them out there already). 

Defund the police. (Seriously?) 

Better training for police. (Memphis has been hard-pressed to fill its quota of qualified men and women enrolling in the police academy despite the advocacy of the mayor and law enforcement. It’s hard enough to get cops and teachers at all, much less better ones.) 

Demonstrate for Black Lives Matter. (And close the I-55 bridge for a few hours.) 

Fire the police chief. (And find another one.) 

Hire a Black chief. (Check.) 

Hire a Woman chief (Check.) 

Target hot spots with special units like SCORPION in Memphis and Atlanta and, after the 1967 riots, STRESS in Detroit. (Check.) 

Hire better cops. (The former cops charged with second-degree murder were police academy graduates and, presumably, good enough on paper to be chosen for a special unit.) 

White cops are tougher on black suspects. (The Fired Five are Black.) 

End targeted saturation of hot spots by special units. (Check.) 

End traffic stops. (While drivers speed by at 90 miles an hour.) 

Pay cops more. (Like teachers, good ones don’t quit because of the money but because of the job. How much would you take to teach in an inner-city school where you have five classes a day of 35 kids or to work the night shift on a beat in a crime hot spot in Memphis?) 

More transparency. (Car and body cameras are standard, as they were in the Nichols case.) 

More attention. (Do you think all this recent news makes visitors and businesses and convention planners more or less inclined to come to Memphis?) 

More statistics. (Homicides are down from 2021! Read all about it, says the mayor. Hurrah! The problem is that most of us don’t react as much to numbers as we do to anecdotal evidence that supports our biases and involves people we know and places we frequent.) 

Change the way information is released to the public. (Social media trumps everything else and rumor spreads faster than truth.) 

Pass a City Council ordinance. (Easy. And maybe a state law too?) 

Vote the rascals out of office. (Voting is so yesterday and has never been lower in Memphis.) 

Harsh penalties for bad cops. (Second-degree murder – if it sticks – is pretty harsh. Too late, anyway. Nichols is dead and the cops are already out on bond.) 

There are no quick fixes. (Except moving or not coming here. Neighborhood choice is as easy as school choice.)

Remember Rodney King’s famous words after being beaten by LA cops in 1991: “Can’t we all get along?” (No.)

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John Branston covered Memphis as a reporter and columnist for 35 years.