Sanford: City’s violent crime problem needs solutions — not sound bites
FBI Director Kash Patel testifies before a U.S. Senate committee. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)
Otis Sanford
Otis Sanford is a political columnist, author and professor emeritus in Journalism and Strategic Media at the University of Memphis.
The comment seemed to come out of nowhere and was apropos of nothing that was asked or answered seconds earlier.
But it created headlines, sound bites, news stories and analyses as if it were the biggest revelation since the Ten Commandments.
Memphis has a deadly serious crime problem. Everybody, except for one guy, knew that. We’ve had it ever since the first bunch of gamblers, riffraff, scoundrels and cutthroats hopped off steamboats around the turn of the 20th century looking for a good time at bars, brothels, dance halls and gambling joints in what was then the rowdiest town along the Mississippi River.
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