One of the community leaders who met privately with the eight finalists to be the next Memphis Police director says there are arguments both for a police director from the ranks and a director from outside the ranks.

The argument for an outsider is a fresh perspective, Rev. Bill Adkins said.

“They can come in with a whole new picture – a whole new ideal, and just maybe the current police culture needs to be shaken up a little bit,” Adkins said on The Daily Memphian Politics Podcast.

Of the dozen Memphis Police directors since the position was created in 1972, only the first two directors — Jay Hubbard and Buddy Chapman — were from outside the ranks of MPD. Every director since Chapman’s departure in 1983 has been from within the department.

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“Maybe the friendships, the attachments and loyalties that exist — maybe they need to be challenged,” the founder and pastor of Greater Imani Church and Christian Center said.

At the same time, the argument for someone from inside MPD ranks is familiarity with the community at a critical time.

“I don’t know if we have enough time for someone to sit and learn Memphis,” he said. “The problem here again is how long would it take them, and we don’t have that much time.”

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The urgency in the decision is the city’s ongoing violent crime problem in the wake of a record year for homicides in the city last year and a record pace almost four months into 2021.

Independent of the police director selection process, Adkins complained earlier this month that Memphians are not expressing enough outrage and talking enough about the prevalence of violent crime.

“In some of our communities, crime is such a normal thing and death and murder and shootings are such a normal thing that people have learned to adapt to it. That’s tragic,” he said. “People are adapting tragically and that’s why we don’t have the public discourse. That’s why there’s not anger — not enough anger — when children are struck down by stray bullets and gangland murders are rampant every single night in this town.”

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The public responses have been similar through the years. There are prayer vigils, marches, balloon releases, stuffed animals taped to utility poles, handmade crosses with dates and sometimes names.

“I think we’ve tried everything. But this is a new day and a new time. This is a different climate,” Adkins said. “And because of that, they don’t seem to know how to respond to various issues. What troubles me the most is the things we saw then we still see now. But we are still trying to solve the problem by the methods we utilized and tried 30 years ago. And it doesn’t work.”

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Adkins said his call for new solutions to enduring violence isn’t meant to say that is more important or a more urgent priority than the ongoing discussions about police violence toward Black citizens or the pursuit of police reform.

“It’s both. Crime is most often perpetrated against the Black community. We’re the victims,” he said. “But we are the complainers also because we don’t like the way the police do their job – rightfully so.”

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Across that dichotomy, Adkins says he sees a lack of hope or expectation of hope.

“Poverty is no excuse to shoot and kill one another. Absolutely not,” he said. “But poverty is part of the issue — the fact that we have so many people living under the scale of poverty in this community and across this nation.”

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When the result is crime, Adkins says police too often rely on fear and racial stereotypes in their responses.

“African Americans are still treated differently and viewed and perceived differently than white people are,” he said. “If a policeman is frightened by the sight of Black people, he or she needs to quit right now.”

That and the city’s historic problem with violent crime were topics in the private discussions with the eight finalists for police director.

One of the three finalists from within the ranks of MPD, Deputy Chief Sam Hines, responded to protesters outside a police precinct during the first of the local George Floyd protests in 2020 by asking protesters why they weren’t as concerned with or outraged about violent crime in the city.

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Adkins said two to three finalists stood out from the others but added he wasn’t at liberty to name them.

The panels advised Mayor Jim Strickland, who will take his nominee to the City Council at some point before the retirement in June of interim police Director Mike Ryall.

“Whomever becomes the next police director of the city, he can’t just be a good cop – or she can’t just be a good cop,” Adkins said. “They’ve got to be sensitive to what’s going on in our community. They’ve got to be part sociologist, part psychologist, part minister, part social worker. … What we don’t need is a person who is just a good cop.”