MEMPHIS, Tenn. — As City Council debated the reappointment of Memphis Police Chief C.J. Davis on Tuesday, one council member asked a question about a startling statistic.
Jerri Green, a former public defender who was in her first meeting as a City Council member, asked Davis about MPD’s solve rate on homicides, which she said was below 50%. Green said she recently spoke with MPD about the findings.
“We talked specifically about the solve rate and about the homicides. Because when you talk about solving 50% of 400 homicides that’s, you know 200 families that don’t know what happened to their relatives, their loved ones, and that’s pretty awful in my opinion,” Green said.
Green is one of at least seven city council members who voted no in committee on whether Davis should be reappointed chief.
“I knocked on a lot of doors, probably over 1,000 doors myself, my team probably knocked on over 10,000 doors,” Green said. “And on all of them, from Cordova to East Memphis to Hickory Hill, what we heard is, ‘We gotta do something about this crime. We gotta change things.'”
Green told us she also has concerns about other crimes not being solved, like property theft.
“Because people in Memphis are scared, people in Memphis are hurting and we’ve got to take this city in a different direction and I think on the public safety front it starts and stops with our police chief,” she said.
The solve rate was also mentioned yesterday by District Attorney Steve Mulroy as he made a push for the county to get its own crime lab.
“The solve rate is unacceptably low right now in Memphis and in my view, is the key metric we need to focus on to bend crime in Memphis,” Mulroy said.
According to FBI statistics cited by The Hill, the solve rate for homicides nationwide has plunged in recent years to just above 50%
Tuesday Chief Davis defended her job to a divided room, telling council members, “I’m trying to work to make sure our police department rises to another level.”
The next vote on Davis’ position is set to take place in two weeks.
We reached out to Memphis Police for a breakdown of the homicide solve rate to check Green’s number.
We were told we needed to file an open records request, which can take weeks to receive. We will let you know when we hear back from police.
