MEMPHIS, Tenn. — For years, WREG Investigators have been telling you about the same policing concerns that the Justice Department is now pointing out in a newly released report.

The DOJ even cites some of the same police interactions we’ve covered in the report — issues that were brought up by former top officials that were ultimately ignored.

One of them was an incident caught on William Skelton’s body camera in 2019, as a Memphis police officer at the time was seen handcuffing a man accused of vandalism.

Skelton was then seen spraying him with pepper foam, placing him in his squad car and rolling the windows up for several minutes.

WREG Investigators showed you that video in 2020, as we found out Skelton was trained to handle those having a mental health crisis, and the man in handcuffs had a long history of court- ordered mental evaluations and psychiatric treatments.

The former Memphis Police Director told us then that there’s a need for more community policing and social workers to respond.

“Because there was a void of access to health care, especially mental health, law-enforcement took over the mission,” Mike Rallings said.

Those concerns went ignored, according to the Department of Justice. Its report called out the “limited ways for behavioral health professionals to respond to 911 calls,” and also used Skelton’s actions that night as an example of unreasonable force.

For several years, WREG investigators have been digging deeper into concerns of excessive force by officers to help find solutions.

In one incident, officers said a 91-year-old man aggressively waved his walking stick — so they pushed him against their squad car and handcuffed him.

And in another case, body camera footage showed an officer take a juvenile into custody, despite her saying his arm was around her neck. MPD says the officer’s actions were justified.

That was the fifth time he was cleared of similar complaints.

The DOJ pointed out stories just like that are the reason why they believe MPD has violated Constitutional rights, making clear a “pattern of excessive force undermines community trust” and a “lack of discipline for proven misconduct.”

In 2021, WREG Investigators uncovered hundreds of forms that officers fill out when they use force.

They indicate that MPD used force against African-American men seven times more than white men.

The DOJ says their findings showed that 83% of the time, the people involved in abuse of force complaints were Black.

Below are some findings from the DOJ report:

TRAFFIC STOPS:

From January 2018 through August 2023, the police department made 866,164 traffic stops and issued 296,685 traffic citations. They cited or arrested drivers in at least 296,685 cases, predominantly for minor infractions. MPD officers made about twice as many traffic stops and issued three times as many citations as their counterparts in Nashville over a similar period.

Many of these traffic stops involve documentation or equipment violations, like broken taillights and expired tags. MPD’s data show that from 2018 to 2023, more than half of MPD’s citations involved documentation or equipment violations.

MPD provides minimal supervision of officer stops. Supervisors rarely review stops unless the stop results in an arrest or complaint, and they rarely examine the basis for a citation.

P26: unconstitutional stops

SCORPION UNIT:

MPD’s failed to supervise and assess the legality of its saturation-style enforcement of traffic infractions and other nonviolent offenses. The SCORPION Unit illustrates how MPD’s lack of safeguards led to unlawful conduct

Prosecutors told us that some SCORPION Unit cases involved “outrageous” inconsistencies between body-worn camera video and arrest reports, and if the cases went to trial, they “would be laughed out of court.”

EXCESSIVE FORCE:

Neck restraints: In over 90 percent of the incidents we reviewed involving neck restraints, neither the officers nor supervisors reported the neck restraints

P 21: force used against people who are restrained: We found many incidents in which officers used unreasonable force against people who were restrained. In nearly all of them, supervisors approved the use of force

DISCRIMINATION:

This discrimination is compounded because MPD enforces traffic laws more intensely in predominantly Black neighborhoods than in majority non-Black neighborhoods with similar levels of vehicle crashes

We found that officers are 17 percent more likely to cite or arrest Black people for drug-related offenses, as compared to white people who were described by officers as engaging in the same conduct. They arrest black people for marijuana possession at more than 5 times the rate of white people.

For example, while 64 percent of the Memphis population is Black, we found that 81 percent of MPD’s traffic citations were of Black drivers. Population-based disparities are not, by themselves, conclusive evidence of discrimination, because the differences could be due to factors other than discriminatory policing.

Black drivers receive citations for improperly tinted windows at 9.8 times the rate of white drivers, and for defective lights at 6.1 times the rate of white drivers. Nearly 90 percent of MPD’s equipment violation citations were of Black drivers.

MPD cites Black drivers at 4.5 times the rate of white drivers for equipment violations, 6.1 times the rate of white drivers for defective lights and 9.8 times the rate of white drivers for improperly tinted windows

BEHAVIORAL HEALTH:

While other cities have developed programs to send an appropriate response to behavioral health calls, Memphis has left the responsibility to police

Memphis is widely known as the originator of the Crisis Intervention Team model, in which specially trained police officers respond to behavioral health calls. Yet while MPD officers handle some behavioral health calls properly, we identified many incidents in which officers—including officers on the Crisis Intervention Team— mistreated and used excessive force against people with behavioral health disabilities, including children

There are serious problems with the CIT program in Memphis. Contrary to the goals of the Memphis Model, CIT officers often escalate encounters and use combative tactics almost immediately after arriving to behavioral health calls

according to the CIT Coordinator, MPD has removed only one officer from the program due to excessive force, though some CIT officers report using force frequently.

One CIT officer reported using force in 19 incidents from 2018 to 2023—more than nearly any other MPD officer during this period. We saw no evidence that supervisors evaluated why this CIT officer used force so often—MPD approved every use of force as consistent with policy.

RECENT CHANGES MPD MADE/OUTCOME:

In December 2023, MPD started equipping all patrol officers with Tasers after they complete a brief training.

Chief Davis said she wanted annual reviews of practices, especially when it came to discriminatory profiling. We have sound with her saying this.

In 2021, MPD established a policy promising an “annual review of departmental practices with regard to discriminatory profiling,” but that review is limited to civilian complaints and does not assess how MPD officers enforce the law.

The first and only annual review, published in 2022, is one page long. In the one-page review, MPD reported that there were seven complaints of discriminatory profiling or “Impartial Attitude,” and “none were sustained.” Other parts of that same report showed stark racial disparities in MPD’s uses of force: 59 of the 71 force-related complaints (83 percent) involved Black people, and 247 of the 270 firearm displays (91 percent) involved Black people.

MPD does not collect important data on how officers enforce the law. For example, MPD does not collect data on traffic and pedestrian stops that do not lead to citations or arrests. Nor does MPD collect data on frisks or searches. MPD does not consistently connect its dispatch records (showing where officers are sent) to its enforcement records (showing when officers cite or arrest). Consequently, MPD cannot meaningfully evaluate what officers do when they patrol different neighborhoods, or whether their actions are effective or result in unnecessary disparities

Pg 67- Chief Davis has acknowledged problems with MPD’s disciplinary systems, including untimeliness—“that’s where we have problems.” Within the last year, ISB began attending disciplinary hearings, along with a member of MPD’s legal department. And MPD has established a disciplinary matrix to ensure more consistency across case

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