March 2023 Blues Vol 39 No. 3

STREET CRIMES UNITS

STREET CRIMES UNITS Not Even Close. experience. Not police related ‘work experience’ just work experience. Five years of flipping burgers at McDonalds, you’re in. Loosening the required qualifications also meant the department was ultimately getting “less desirable” job candidates, said Mike Alcazar, an adjunct professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice and a retired NYPD detective. “They were desperate, and they needed police officers,” Alcazar said. “They’re going through it, they check off some boxes, saying, ‘Ok, they’re good enough, get them on.” Even after Memphis began offering signing bonus of ,000 in 2021 and 2022, they still struggled finding new recruits. But despite the fact they were understaffed and by all accounts, not well trained, Memphis Mayor Jim Strickland, proclaimed a year ago, that SCORPION was a huge success. He said the city used crime data “to determine where the unit would focus its efforts within the city.” From October 2021 until January 2022, the unit made 566 arrests, seized over 0,000 in cash, 270 vehicles and 253 weapons. Strickland and Davis both sang their praises right up to the moment they killed Nichols. Even though just days before this incident, Cornell McKinney, a local black man, came forward and said he had a tense encounter with some of the SCORPION officers. He said they were traveling in packs of unmarked cars when they ran him off the road, pointed guns at his head and accused him of selling drugs. McKinney was found to have no drugs on him or in his vehicle, but the officers said they would ‘kick his ass if they ever saw him on the street again.’ McKinney filed a complaint, but Memphis never called him back. RUMORS & ALLEGATIONS FLY An article that appeared in the Tennessee Star on February 4, 2023, went a step farther on the background one of the fired officers, Demetris Haley. A long-time Memphis law enforcement source told The Tennessee Star that rumors about guards at the Shelby County Division of Corrections being involved in street gangs had been circulating for years, although he knows of no correction officer implicated in such a crime. “There have always been rumors about that, but they’ve never been substantiated that I know of,” the official with knowledge of the Shelby County criminal justice system told The Star. “The joke in Memphis criminal justice has long been the jailers are one step ahead of being in jail themselves.” Multiple unconfirmed reports suggest at least one of the five former Memphis Police officers charged in the death of Tyre Nichols was involved in the notorious Vice Lords street gang. Demetrius Haley, 30, who previously worked as a correction officer at the jail, was a defendant in a 2016 lawsuit alleging he and another guard beat up inmate Cordarlrius Sledge. As the New York Post reported, Sledge’s allegations were that Haley and another officer punched Sledge in the face during a search for a cellphone, according to court records. Sledge accused a third guard of slamming him face-first into a sink. “Haley was the most vicious,” the former inmate told the Post. Haley joined the Memphis police force in August 2020. 56 The BLUES The BLUES 57 56 The BLUES The BLUES 57 56 The BLUES The BLUES 57