Any moment now, an unknown number of Tennessee National Guard troops are expected to arrive in Memphis to fight so-called “crime.” How they’ll do that is not exactly clear.
President Donald Trump signed a memorandum in mid-September to send the National Guard into the city as part of the new “Memphis Safe Task Force.” Governor Bill Lee (R) then authorized the deployment.
“The effort of this task force is crime,” Lee said at a September 26 press conference, according to Commercial Appeal. “It’s to fight violent criminals, drug traffickers, smugglers.”
Lee said that he is not declaring a state of emergency, but that the troops are necessary to provide support to local law enforcement.
“The crime crisis in Memphis has been driven by gang violence,” Senator Marsha Blackburn (R) told legislators September 17. The National Guard, she continued, would “help maintain order so that the Memphis police officers can … get these career criminals, these gang leaders off the streets.”
This is interesting to many of us incarcerated in Tennessee prisons, particularly the CoreCivic prisons where gang-related violence is rampant. It may sound like getting gang leaders off the streets is a good thing, but their power doesn’t vanish inside prison—it becomes more concentrated. Why is there not a similar push to send the National Guard to supplement the overwhelmed corrections officers? Lee’s office did not respond to Filter’s inquiry.
“Everyone in my organization realizes their work will more than likely involve prison time,” said P*, a gang leader currently incarcerated at South Central Correctional Facility, one of the four Tennessee prisons run by CoreCivic. “That means the clients are different, the work’s the same.”
Trump, Blackburn, Lee and others at the signing of the memorandum to establish the “Memphis Safe Task Force.”
Many prisons around the country, including in Tennessee, are gang-run. The balance of power shifted when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, and corrections officers quit or stopped showing up to work.
For example, it used to be that when prisoners went out to the yard there’d be four officers supervising, plus another four or five during “movement” when the gates open for prisoners to go from one part of the compound to another; you’d get at least one pat-down just going from point A to point B. Now, no one supervises yard time, if we get it at all. If we do, there’ll be a single officer to open the gates, and that’s it. People go out in their pajamas.
Pre-COVID, if an officer needed help they could push a button or make a call over the radio, and within 30 seconds five more officers would arrive as backup. Now, at most maybe one shows up. Maybe no one does. The officers know that, and the gang members know that. So when the lone officer posted in a pod of 128 prisoners is told to leave a gate open, they’re not going to refuse or call for help. They’re just going to leave the gate open.
“What am I supposed to do when I open the gate to release inmates out of the unit, and they push me out of the way and rush past me?” one officer who’s worked at South Central for about three years told Filter. “If I try to resist, I’m shown shanks. And, once, knocked out.” The officer was comfortable sharing this even though they requested anonymity—so many officers here have been knocked out at one point or another that this is not an identifying detail.
There aren’t enough officers to maintain control now. But there are more and more gang members. They continue to run their business from inside prison, and they also have free rein to rob their neighbors, collect drug debts or defy corrections officer authority.
In Tennessee prisons, gang members are mixed in with the general population prisoners who are not affiliated. Supposedly this dilutes their power, but what it actually does is establish each living unit as a substation of whichever gang emerges there as the strongest. They rule the roost.
“Moving my associates from the street to prison doesn’t change nothing,” said J*, a leader in a different gang at South Central. “We’ve got the power right now in the joints, and we’re banking while we can.”
J and P are both from Memphis. Both said that on the streets, leadership of their respective organizations were relocating, to avoid being caught up in the government’s impending show of force.
*Names have been changed to protect sources
Top image (cropped) and inset image via the White House