MEMPHIS, Tenn. — On Thursday, the United States Department of Justice announced it’s opened an investigation into the Memphis Police Department and the City of Memphis to see if there’s a possible pattern of constitutional or civil rights violations.

They’ll be looking at traffic stops, excessive force, and discriminatory practices. The DOJ says it’s not based on a single incident or police unit but comes after multiple reports of MPD officers allegedly escalating incidents.

These are reports WREG Investigators have been telling you about for quite some time, like this incident in 2017, when officers encountered a 91-year-old. The elderly man asked why the officers were in his neighborhood.

“Sir, I don’t like you walking around with this stick with everybody,” you hear the officer say on the body camera video.

Officers say the elderly man aggressively used his walking stick, so they pressed him against their squad car and handcuffed him. Their actions came under review and resulted in a one to two-day suspension.

MPD reviews those complaints and officers’ reports every year. We uncovered new data from 2022 showing that officers used some kind of force more than 1,200 times.

MPD says there were more than 760,000 calls for service last year, and less than one percent of those calls led to officers using some kind of force.

In most cases, officers say non-compliance was the leading reason why they used force, and mostly, the force they used was physical.

Every time an officer uses some kind of force, department policy requires them to fill out a response to resistance form. MPD then reviews those forms and analyzes trends and patterns to determine if change and improvement can be made. The data collected is then put into an annual report.

In 2020, protests erupted across the country after police in Minneapolis killed George Floyd.

The City of Memphis responded by vowing to “reimagine policing,” which included a new website listing MPD’s policies and ways to file complaints against an officer, and it published more internal data surrounding excessive and unnecessary force like the annual reports.

“I think we have to operate in transparency in all that we do, especially when we put ourselves out there as public servants, and public servants aren’t limited to those who are elected,” said Memphis Councilman JB Smiley.

Smiley has been pushing to publish more internal police records for quite some time.

“So we can build some kind of public trust. I think ultimately, that’s all that we want. We want to know the people who serve us operate with integrity,” Smiley said.

The City told us the police data is updated quarterly, but as of early July, 2022’s annual report had yet to be posted.

We asked the mayor’s office about it on July 13th. On July 18th, his team said it was “just updated.”

We asked when the report was completed and why it took until July to publish it. We’re still waiting to hear back.

The City also vowed to post the summaries of internal hearings when an officer is found to have used excessive or unnecessary force. The last one published was in 2021.

The City says it only publishes “excessive force cases that are closed, were found to be sustained, and where the officer didn’t resign.” They added there hasn’t been “any completed cases yet for 2022 or 2023. All the cases were still open, and investigations are ongoing.”

“We need these things, so we can have accurate information to interpret. But when it’s hard for the administration to provide the information, then what should we do with the reality than heighten our level of skepticism and concern and suspicion about why,” activist and pastor Earle Fisher said.

In 2022’s annual report recently published, MPD doesn’t give details about how each incident started, but it does list data based on the officers’ reports.

The most common response for using force was because the person was non-compliant, they resisted arrest, used verbal resistance, or tried to fight.

Half the incidents resulted in injuries and in some cases the officer was injured.

MPD listed the demographics of the people officers used some kind of force against.
1,097 were Black men. 128 were white men.

“What you find is in the poorer communities, there’s much more police saturation, which means there is much more racial profiling and more direct contact with law enforcement and civilians,” Fisher said.

Fisher says the more accurate and adequate data published, there more genuine conversation and real change.

“If the numbers are saying there are far too much inequity and impropriety when it comes to policing black people in our community, then something has to be done at the root ground level,” he said.

MPD stated in their report there was “no significant response to resistance trends or patterns were observed based on reports submitted in 2022.” They added management must review the forms officers are submitting to “ensure accuracy, accountability, and timely submissions.”

It went on to state there was only one complaint of discriminatory or biased policing related to a traffic stop last year, but an internal investigation found it unsubstantiated. They stated they found “no significant discriminatory trends or patterns” based on the complaints submitted.

In March, the council passed an ordinance requiring MPD to begin collecting and publishing even more data after the fatal beating of Tyre Nichols during a traffic stop in January.

MPD will now be required to collect data surrounding traffic stops and publish it so the public can know who they’re pulling over, where, and why.

We will let you know when that data is published, and when the next round of use of force data is published on the city’s website.