MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Shelby County Commissioners are moving forward with new reform options for the Shelby County Sheriff’s Office.
The potential changes come after several people lost their lives due to law enforcement following a traffic stop over the past year in Shelby County. In June, Jarveon Hudspeth lost his life due to a Shelby County Sheriff’s Deputy, and in January, Tyre Nichols lost his life at the hands of the former Memphis Police Department SCORPION UNIT.
Since then, calls to disband all specialized units were heard across the Mid-South, it was even on the table at the Shelby County Commissioners' Committee meeting Sept. 6.
A lengthy discussion took place between commissioners and experts from the VERA Institute and Brooklyn College about potentially limiting specialized units and pretextual traffic stops. In the end, commissioners voted to substitute the plan with something else.
The commission is now attempting to develop a better oversight of specialized units at the Sheriff’s Office by collecting data on how they operate including traffic stop and arrests.
According to Alex Vitale, a professor at Brooklyn College, specialized units have had issues across the United States, subject to rule-breaking, rule-bending and creating a distance between an agency and the surrounding community.
Activists with the law enforcement watchdog group Decarcerate Memphis claim specialized units and law enforcement have disproportionately targeted black and brown communities.
Commissioners such as Erika Sugarmon want to see this changed.
“People will be following, watching you, you can’t shop comfortably. When you’re driving while black, you expect to be pulled over….I worry what’s going to happen to them,” said Sugarmon, “I worry that the way they look or how they react because they’re afraid, what could happen to them.”
Commissioners also reworked their approach towards eliminating certain pretextual traffic stops, like what led to the death of Nichols and Hudspeth.
The Shelby County Sheriff’s Office did not speak at the Committee Meeting Wednesday, leading commissioners asking the office to engage in the conversation at the Commission Meeting Monday Sept. 11.