The Memphis Police Department is changing its leadership structure in an effort to boost retention and provide more opportunities for its officers.

MPD has created 125 first-line supervisor positions, for which it is currently testing candidates. MPD Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis said nearly 400 officers have applied for the jobs.

“Most officers don’t want to stay on the job for 20 years before they get to go to a first-line supervisor position,” Davis said.

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Davis talked about the leadership changes — as well as guns, crime rates, hiring and recruitment, technology and more — at a Tuesday, Nov. 14, Memphis Rotary Club meeting.

Chief Davis has said previously that MPD and its now-defunct SCORPION Unit suffered from “supervisory gaps.” In the wake of Tyre Nichols’ January death after a beating from SCORPION officers, she told a Memphis TV news crew that MPD needed 150 more supervisors.

According to a Special Order the Institute for Public Service Reporting obtained in February, however, SCORPION’s supervision ranks appeared well-populated. The order lists four lieutenants for 30 patrol officers, or a ratio of about one to eight.

At the Rotary meeting, Davis said MPD had eliminated the lieutenant colonel position and that more, lower-level supervisors would provide a “shorter track” for officers to move up within the ranks. 

“We were top-heavy,” Davis said. “We had too many manager positions and didn’t need all of that stuff at the top and (didn’t have) enough career development and opportunities at the bottom layers.”

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She also said they would help “ensure that officers are where they’re supposed to be and accountable in places and responding to calls and the service delivery is what we expect it to be.”

MPD has established its own Memphis Police Department Leadership Academy in partnership with University of Tennessee Law Enforcement Innovation Center.

Its first cohort of 25 leaders just graduated from the academy, according to Davis. 

An Associated Press investigation into Nichols’ killing earlier this year noted the absence of supervisors during the beating. At the time, the AP also spoke to former MPD recruiters about the department raising incentives while lowering standards in an effort to fill open positions.

“They would allow just pretty much anybody to be a police officer because they just want these numbers,” said Alvin Davis, identified in the AP story as a former lieutenant in charge of recruiting who retired recently.

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C.J. Davis believes recruiting police officers toward a 2,500-officer goal will increase law enforcement visibility, which she told the Rotary Club meeting will, in turn, deter crime. Currently, the department employs 1,946 officers.

“We are still aggressively hiring,” she said. “We feel that if we have … a soft presence of officers in our business districts, walking the beats, instead of just running from one call to the next, we can get our arms wrapped around crime just as a natural deterrent.”

Davis on gun violence

Memphis has averaged more than one homicide per day so far this year. On Nov. 15, the 319th day of the year, there had been 334 homicides in the city. On the same day in 2022, there had been 270 homicides in Memphis; 299 in 2021; 286 in 2020; and 179 in 2019.

“Now everybody has a gun,” Davis said. “Especially our young people are influenced by the use of guns through social media, and so on. And it’s unfortunate that in this generation of young people, there seems to be a lack of value for lives — their lives and the lives of others as well.”

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Davis said relaxed gun laws in Tennessee have contributed to the rise in homicides.

“It has had an unintended effect on our city, more guns on the street,” Davis said. “And now just bar brawls or family fights are turning into gun violence.”

Car thefts and property crimes have outsized impact

Davis said the city has been “under siege” in the last several months to crimes such as smash and grabs, car thefts, break-ins and other property crimes.

“Sometimes, we focus on violent crime, but the debilitating effect that a stolen vehicle has to a family or a person that’s working every day is very serious,” Davis said. 

She said an average of 35 to 40 cars are stolen each day in the city. So far this year, around 13,000 vehicles have been stolen.

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Technology, crisis training among the tools MPD deploying

Davis looks to specialized units such as the Fugitive Unit, Auto Theft Task Force and Special Traffic Enforcement Unit to help with Memphis crime. 

All of these units were launched during her administration.

Davis also launched the SCORPION Unit in October 2021, in an effort to clamp down on violent crime by saturating hot spots throughout the city, and it was disbanded Jan. 28. 

All officers now receive Crisis Intervention Team training, allowing them to carry Tasers. Previously, only a portion of MPD officers were Crisis Intervention Team-certified and could carry the conducted energy weapons, Davis said at the Tuesday Rotary meeting.

MPD put more funding for Tasers in its budget ask of the Memphis City Council in June, with Assistant Chief Shawn Jones saying it could help drive down excessive force encounters.

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Now, all officers receive CIT training “so that when an incident occurs when there’s mental illness or whatever the case might be, that that officer can mitigate that situation in a way that is safe for both the individual and the officer,” Davis said.

Utilizing technology and innovation is also important to combating crime, Davis said.

“We need to work smarter with the resources that we do have,” Davis said. 

Business owners and residents can help MPD solve crimes through the Connect Memphis program, a camera registration and integration system that provides the police department access to exterior surveillance footage. She described the program as a “force multiplier.”

“If I don’t have an officer on every corner, I may have two officers in the Real-Time Crime Center that can watch at least 30 corners,” Davis said. 

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As of this writing, MPD has 3,863 cameras registered to its system and 525 cameras integrated. 

Registering the camera system enables investigators to know of a camera’s existence and easily request video evidence should an incident occur. Homeowners with Ring cameras are encouraged to choose this route.

Camera integration gives MPD — and investigators at the RTCC — direct access to camera feeds in case of a nearby emergency. Business owners with exterior cameras are encouraged to go with this option.

But cameras don’t always curb crime. 

A 2021 investigation by The Daily Memphian found that before MPD installed a majority of SkyCop cameras in 2010, the city reported more than 1,500 violent crimes per 100,000 people, a rate approaching four times the national average.

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In 2020, with thousands of SkyCop cameras monitoring streets, the violent-crime rate was 2,351 per 100,000 — an increase of about 57% over 2010 and nearly six times the national average.

“Sky Cops, I think, are more of a visible deterrent if anything,” Davis told The Daily Memphian last year. “The blue lights are a deterrent to some degree, but they are not magic.”