Paul Young says MPD Chief Davis will stay
Memphis Mayor-elect Paul Young said he would keep Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis as Memphis Police Department chief. (Gerald Herbert/AP file)
Memphis Police Department Chief Cerelyn “C.J.” Davis will remain as head of the department in the new mayoral administration, Mayor-elect Paul Young said Thursday, Dec. 14.
“We’ve had a number of dialogues over the past couple of months, and I feel confident that she can and will be able to lead us into a better space with regards to public safety,” Young said in an interview Thursday. ABC24 Memphis (WATN-TV) first reported the news Thursday.
Young said there wasn’t one specific thing in his conversations with Davis that convinced him to keep her.
“Some of her ideas around addressing repeat offenders, using data to target those that are most likely to commit violent crimes and putting additional effort on bringing those folks to justice and just the host of things that she’s doing to try to enhance MPD using a data-centric approach,” Young said of the conversations they had about her approach to the job.
Davis staying, like many mayoral appointees, is subject to Memphis City Council approval.
Young said Thursday he would bring his full slate of nominees to the council in the first City Council meeting in January. He has nominated Tannera Gibson to be city attorney and Penelope Huston to be chief communications officer.
He said he would announce his full slate of nominees in the coming days.
Davis could serve two mayoral administrations
Davis was appointed Memphis police director in April 2021 by Mayor Jim Strickland. In the process, Strickland changed the title to Memphis police chief.
She is the first woman to hold the position since it was created in the early 1970s, and she is the first leader of the MPD to come from outside the ranks of the department in 40 years.
Davis came to the helm from being chief of police in Durham, North Carolina, and before that, she was part of the police brass in Atlanta.
Davis’s future with the MPD was part of the discussion in the recent race for Memphis mayor with several contenders in the race saying they would not keep her if elected.
Young and several other candidates declined to say what their decision would be prior to the election.
Davis faced heavy criticism in the aftermath of the death of Tyre Nichols in January 2023. He was beaten twice by Memphis police officers after he was stopped by a street crime unit created by Davis early in her tenure.
MPD has since disbanded the unit.
Davis has faced criticism for the city’s response to ongoing problems with violent crime.
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Paul Young Chief Cerelyn "CJ" Davis Memphis Police DepartmentBill Dries on demand
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Bill Dries
Bill Dries covers city and county government and politics. He is a native Memphian and has been a reporter for almost 50 years covering a wide variety of stories from the 1977 death of Elvis Presley and the 1978 police and fire strikes to numerous political campaigns, every county mayor and every Memphis Mayor starting with Wyeth Chandler.
Samuel Hardiman
Samuel Hardiman is an enterprise and investigative reporter who focuses on local government and politics. He began his journalism career at the Tulsa World in Tulsa, Oklahoma, where he covered business and, later, K-12 education. Hardiman came to Memphis in 2018 to join the Memphis Business Journal, covering government and economic development. He then served as the Memphis Commercial Appeal’s city hall reporter and later joined The Daily Memphian in 2023. His current work focuses on Elon Musk’s xAI, regional energy needs and how Memphis and Shelby County government spend taxpayer dollars.
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