Nashville's lower murder rate not alone; part of a national trend with uncertain causes

The local news media is playing up crime stats that show murder rates have dropped to historic lows in Nashville, and Metro government is taking credit. They are also interpreting the reasons:

For the second year in a row, murders hit a historic low in Nashville. There were just 41 criminal homicides in Nashville in 2014. That’s the smallest figure since the county and city governments consolidated in 1963, when police tracked 45 murders.

The highest year for murders in Nashville was 1997 when 112 people were killed.

Police chief Steve Anderson gives some credit to a recent focus on curtailing domestic violence. Just four of the murders from 2014 involved intimate partners. In 2013, there were nine.

Not so fast. Before revving up pats on backs, don't look at the Nashville numbers in a vacuum. Local stats should be placed in a national context, which lends a different perspective, namely one of uncertainty and caution:

Criminologists say the decrease is linked to several factors, some of which are the product of smart policing, others completely out of authorities’ control. But they also say the lack of a consensus on what’s gone right has them convinced that crime rates could spike once again.

“I don’t think anyone has a perfect handle on why violence has declined,” said Harold Pollack, the co-director of the University of Chicago Crime Lab. “So everyone is a bit nervous that things could turn around.”

Until we factor out the causes of trends nationally out of control of local authorities, we cannot assume that Metro government is doing something unique to prevent these murders. Likewise, if crime spikes it may not be because officials are doing something wrong (unless they choose to be consistent and accept the blame during spikes as well as the credit during lulls).

Metro Nashville Police and their military-style hardware

I have been closely following the fallout of police officer Darren Wilson's shooting of teenager Mike Brown and the resulting protests in Ferguson, MO for the past week or so. I have many impressions I could share, but for now I want to focus on the use of military-style armored vehicles in residential neighborhoods to control violent "agitators". Many of you, like me, have seen Metro Nashville Police display their armored vehicles at community events, and I have to say that I will never look at any of MNPD's military-style weaponry the same way again.

Why not? Because I have seen them deployed against peaceful protesters as well as the "agitators" in Ferguson. I've seen, via Vine videos, innocent kids tear-gassed. I've seen pictures of people gassed in their own yards away from the main sites of protests. I've read accounts of armored vehicles rolling through neighborhoods shooting rubber bullets, pepper-spray-filled paintballs and unleashing enough toxic particulates that--even in closed homes--can endanger the lives of asthmatic children. I've read of a teenager begging a reporter not to leave her neighborhood because she was certain that the only thing between her and a round from a police assault rifle was the watchful presence of journalists.

So, I cannot look at these death-dealing armored vehicles the same way anymore. Even when they are proudly displayed at community events. (And why did we never stop to question how much these rolling behemoths cost taxpayers? Why give the authorities the benefit of the doubt in the first place?) I fail to see any justification for using military-style weaponry in largely pacified residential neighborhoods. It seems like overkill when the biggest threat coming from the handful of "agitators" is something like a couple of handguns and a single Molotov cocktail.

This is what Nashville police used to consider armor:

This is what Nashville police now consider armor:

The changes reflect the political climate post-9/11, but they also reflect a futile "war on drugs," which has been conducted since the 1980s. They also reflect a military-industrial complex, a defense industry that has been allowed to market their wares unchecked by government regulations and encouraged by elected officials who strive to bring home more pork. What they do not reflect is any change in the racial climate since the civil rights protests of the 1950s and 1960s. Police are simply more efficient at dealing out pain and death disproportionately to people of color and to working-class people with military-style plating and and assault weapons (by the way, tear gas is banned from battlefields by international treaties).

Ferguson shows that the most modern armor is overkill outside the battlefield. Police are not just "taking out bad guys" (as they like to say), they are endangering innocent lives and unleashing unnecessary collateral damage. They are laying waste to neighborhoods and people's lives.

Whether you believe that you will ever see one of these military-style monsters roll down your street or cut through the clouds above, unleashing a firestorm of injustice, there are honest poor people, honest people of color who do believe it to be a distinct possibility. If it can happen to them those of us who question the possibility are merely the next in line.

From the Inbox

CM Harrison

Bordeaux property owner Mike Peden has noticed the attention the area is getting with Mayor Karl Dean's plan to sell off the nursing home and he calls my attention to the neglect he feels public safety in Bordeaux is getting from Council Member Frank Harrison (who to my knowledge has not spoken publicly on the plan to privatize the Bordeaux long-term care facility).

Mike owns three properties across the street from Cumberland Pointe Apartments, which are owned by Lawlerwood Housing LLC. He says that company purchased the complex last December, "utilizing the Low Income Housing Tax Credit program as a source of investment capital." According to Mike, crime is a real problem at Cumberland Pointe: there were 995 "calls for service" to police last year. He emailed an attachment that list calls including reports of "person with weapon," "domestic disturbance," "911 hang-up," "disorderly person," "suspicious person," "criminal vice activity," "shots fired," "shooting," "theft," "burglary," "fight/assault." Each of these were listed multiple times throughout the part of the list I read. I stopped reading the long list when I got to the June entries. 20 residents were evicted from Cumberland Pointe for "criminal activity".

Mike said that CM Harrison seemed "unfriendly" toward him and told him he should contact Rep. Jim Cooper since all of the rents at the complex are subsidized by HUD. He declined Mike's request to hold a meeting with Lawlerwood to problem-solve. When Mike got in touch with the owners himself, they told him (in Mike's words) that these calls for service are not good indicators of criminal activity.

What do crime stats really tell us about crime in Nashville?

Recently, a local law firm got my permission to use one of my photos on their website. This happens periodically with the volume of photos I take along with my general willingness to share. A couple of years ago a Starbucks art designer asked for permission to use another photo.

I visited the law firm's website to get a feel for how they used the photo, but once I got there I was more interested in a recent post to their blog regarding crime in Nashville.

The gist is that we are told that crime is down in Nashville, but we should not let appearances fool us. Crimes stats, as with any stats, can be manipulated to express messages that we would not necessarily take away if we viewed them raw or packaged in other ways:

Some of you may already be familiar with COMPSTAT, a statistics based approach to crime fighting employed famously in the fictional Baltimore Police of HBO’s The Wire ....

I found out that the Metro Nashville Police Department had engaged the COMPSTAT program in its war on crime, which left me wondering where the similarities ended. If you believe the Nashville Police Chief, and his press release repeated in the Tennessean, Nashville crime is low. However, this recent New York Times article, in which retired police officers admitted that police officers, and even detectives, manipulated statistics under enormous departmental pressure, makes me question: is crime really down? Doesn't feel like it to me.

Importantly, I think the post is also suggesting that we rely on our own experience and anecdotal knowledge of the impact on the lives of those connected to us. While packaged as more objective and reliable, stats can be juiced and interpreted to pull talking points benefiting Metro officials who present them to us.

Do you believe crime in Nashville is really down? Or are the stats glossing over real problems that go ignored in your community?

Rehabilitating Brady Banks: a question I would definitely ask Vice Mayor Diane Neighbors if she ever decided to run for Mayor

Could you explain how it shows responsible leadership on your part to appoint to the position of Chair of the Metro Council Human Relations Committee a man who was arrested for and who admitted soliciting prostitution near my neighborhood and even closer to 3 Metro public schools in the same year?

CRIME ALERT: Salemtown & Germantown cars broken into

I am receiving messages from social media that say anywhere from 6 to 15 cars were broken into overnight in the North End. Damage includes broken windows. I have not been stat counting, but it seems to me that crime has recently spiked in our neighborhoods.


UPDATE: according to a crime alert that went out from Metro Police a week ago, perps of "a majority" of the car break-ins and thefts (which had been increasing in the area to that point) are a gang from outside Salemtown called "Rolling 40 Crips". That report stated that the suspected leader of the gang had been arrested for stealing an iPad and a shot gun from a car on Hume Street, but that he bonded out of jail. No confirmation from MNPD yet on whether the Rolling 40 Crips are suspected of last night's rash of car break-ins.

I want to add to the update that we learned a long time ago, when we lived in the Historic Edgefield neighborhood in East Nashville, to remove all valuables from our cars and not to leave our cars locked. We agree with the police that removing valuables is important. We disagree with them about locking our cars. Locks and car alarms are not going to stop anyone on the street who wants to rifle through our cars. We would rather not have to pay a lot of money to repair busted windows on top of the indignity of the rifling. Removing valuables is sufficient for us.


UPDATE: curious cruising behavior from Metro Police Saturday night, as they drove up and down my street slowly with blue lights flashing 4-5 times over a 45 min span after 10:00p. I have never seen that before, and I do not know what the purpose of it was. They were not doing it hours later. How effective can it be as a deterrent if they do not do so continuously? And do they assume that criminals cannot see their blue lights coming up the street from blocks away? Was it intended to give residents a temporary sense of security? Or did it occur because some residents have reached out to the news media about the crime problem?

CRIME ALERT: North Nashville shooting suspect arrested in East Nashville

From WSMV:

Eric L. Goodner, 17, was apprehended Wednesday afternoon at the Village Place Apartments, located in the 100 block of Oak Valley Drive.

Goodner is accused of shooting 17-year-old Johnathan Johnson the morning of April 11 as Johnson left home to catch a school bus on 10th Avenue North.

The U.S. Marshals Fugitive Task Force assisted Metro police in locating and arresting Goodner, who is now is charged with criminal homicide in Juvenile Court.

Investigators said they suspect additional charges, and a motive is unknown in the shooting.

Police have not released details on the apartment where Goodner was found and whether anyone was assisting him in hiding from law enforcement since the shooting....

Investigators credit a community effort to apprehend Goodner, including an anonymous citizen's $500 reward for information leading to the suspect's arrest.

"That's what this is all about: community. When we have things like that we need people to come forward and help us out. We need that support," said North Precinct Police Cmdr. Terrence Graves.

Police said Goodner was uncooperative with their questions after his arrest.

CRIME ALERT: teenager shot this morning at a bus stop near North Nashville schools

Suspect Eric Goodner

Schools in North Nashville went on lock down this morning as news spread that a 17-year-old Pearl Cohn Magnet student was shot at 6:45 by another student at a bus stop a matter of blocks away from three elementary schools. From NewsChannel5:

The Juvenile Court arrest order charging criminal homicide has been issued against 17-year-old Eric L. Goodner for the shooting of Johnathan Johnson on 10th Avenue North.

Johnson left his home on 10th Avenue North to catch the bus just minutes before he was shot around 6:45 a.m. Thursday. Witnesses told police the shooter, later identified as Goodner, was sitting on steps leading to a vacant lot. When he saw Johnson, police said he walked up to him, shot him more than once, and fled the area on foot.

Police said assistance from the community aided detectives in identifying Goodner as the suspected shooter. He is last known to have lived on 26th Avenue North, and last attended Pearl-Cohn High School on February 13.

Police said he should be considered armed and dangerous. A motive for the shooting was under investigation.

Anyone seeing Goodner or knowing his whereabouts is urged to immediately contact the Emergency Communications Center at 862-8600 or Crime Stoppers at 74-CRIME.

UPDATE: Tennessean reporter Adam Tamburin (who a couple of years ago broke sensational news that a council member cussed in public) has an update that the suspect is still at large and might be receiving aid:

Police are still looking for Eric. L. Goodner, the 17-year-old suspected of shooting another teenager to death as he walked to his school bus stop.

Community members could play a vital role in capturing Goodner, according to North Precinct Commander Terrence Graves.

“This guy’s 17 years old," he said. “Someone is helping him. Someone knows where he slept last night. ... If folks know something they need to give us something"

Brady Banks names his "best part of the county"

The most galling dimension of Brady Banks' continued presence on the Metro Council is that he never bothered to speak a word of remorse directly to the North Nashville community for soliciting prostitutes a year ago in MetroCenter, which is alarmingly close to where we live and send our 3rd grader to school. I'm sure that CM Banks would prefer that we all just forget about his little North Nashville peccadillo and go on acting like there was nothing exploitative to see in February 2012.

In his latest email to his constituents, CM Banks gushes that he lives in the "best part of the county", which could imply, given his interest in the local sex trade, that the seedier parts of Davidson are those like ours:

Date: Tue, Feb 26, 2013
Subject: UPDATE: Villages at Holt Road proposal and Southeast Community Plan Amendment ....

Dear neighbors,

....Councilman [Fabian] Bedne and I have had a number of conversations with the Planning Dept. staff and the applicant/developer about the proposed site development. Following the three community meetings where the applicant, Planning staff, and Councilman Bedne and I were able to hear your feedback and thoughts on the proposal, the applicant for this proposal has withdrawn both their request to amend the Southeast Community Plan and their proposed development for the site.

This means that, at the March 14th Planning Commission meeting, the applicant will formally withdraw their proposal for Villages at Holt Rd. and the proposed amendment to the Community Plan. Practically speaking, this means neither item will be considered at this time .... The applicant would have to refile and go through the process of developing a proposal, applying to the Planning Dept. for any future changes, and schedule more community meetings, if they wanted to try this proposal again ....

On a personal note, I want to thank all of you for participating in this process. The planning/zoning process can be a messy one for many council members and communities. I'm proud to say that my constituents and Councilmen Bedne's went through this process and participated in an open and honest way. I couldn't be happier with the way you shared your thoughts, concerns, and with the way you communicated them fairly on this matter. We truly live in the best part of the county, with the best people ....

Sincerely,
Brady Banks
Metro Councilman, District 4

We're obviously not "the best people" here in North Nashville, else CM Banks would have been drawn to objectify women and set a bad example for progressives elsewhere in Davidson. I just wish he would have treated our part of the county the way he would like his own part of the county treated. Surely he grasps The Golden Rule. He is married to a minister.

CRIME ALERT: Woman stabbed last week near Bicentennial Mall

From NewsChannel5 (no updates from Metro Police on their website in almost a week):

A homeless woman was stabbed near Bicentennial Capitol Mall State Park on Wednesday morning.

Police were called to the scene off James Robertson Parkway around 8 a.m.

Laura Wilson was the one who called 911.

"I work here at the Farmers' Market and I was driving to work and I was driving the roundabout at Bicentennial Mall, she flagged me down and covered in blood and obviously upset," said Wilson.

The woman got into her car, and the witness drove to the Farmers' Market where police were called. The victim was believed to have just left the nearby Rescue Mission.

Police said the woman had been approached by a man she had seen previously in the area and he demanded sex at knifepoint. When she refused, he stabbed her and fled on foot toward 3rd Avenue.

The victim was taken to Vanderbilt University Medical Center by ambulance where she was treated and released. Her identity was not released.

Officials described the man wanted in this crime as a black man between 30 and 40 years old, with no facial hair, 5' 8" with a stocky build, and solid black hair. At the time of the crime he was wearing dark parts and a white coat.

I used to get alerts on crime from the Salemtown association. They do not seem to be communicating these much any more.

Mayor Dean insists that we look on the bright side of personal tragedy

Homicides in Davidson County this year have surpassed the total number of 2011 homicides. Karl Dean, who has showcased two election campaigns with the promise of lowering crime, attempts to draw our attention to his silver lining:

[In a prepared statement Karl Dean told the Tennessean, "]Last year's homicide total was the city's lowest in 45 years, and the number of homicides this year remains below the city's trend for the past 10 years[."]

Hizzoner is adept at side stepping accountability for lack of follow through. If he wants credit when the crime rate is down, he should be willing to accept the responsibility when the crime rate goes up instead of shaking the stats until his own talking points drop out.

The wrong message to send on dealing with neighborhood crime

This year the Salemtown neighborhood association has made a troublesome shift on dealing with suspicious behavior that appears to me more about image-control of the brand than about effective community policing and crimewatching.

In previous years association officers encouraged neighbors to call the police directly at their urgent, but non-emergent phone number (862-8600) if any suspicious behavior was observed in Salemtown. The reason members were encouraged to call police on their own was that it usually got faster response and all calls were logged, which helped MNPD determine where future patrols were needed most. Notifying the association was encouraged as a second step, and I do not recall officers attempting to manage how witnesses reported back to SNNA.

In September of this year a message with the title "keeping it local" went out to the association from the SNNA board encouraging association members to contact board members instead of the police directly. The message prescribed "discretion" without "overreacting", and it advised that the "close contact" that the president had to the MNPD liaison for Salemtown could bring more police patrols.

In my opinion Salemtown residents are better advised to call the police directly at their "urgency without emergency" phone number to make sure that witness reports are recorded at the precinct. I do not believe that the association's officers should be filtering witness reports, soft-pedaling, or otherwise judging the validity of people's perspectives for MNPD.

In 8 years here I have watched crime cycles and police response. With two recent murders in or near Salemtown and suspicious activity on the rise, I would encourage my neighbors to bypass the association whenever they witness troubling activity and go straight to the police. Only afterwards should they report the activity to SNNA. And by no means should they abide insinuations that they are overreacting, unless they actually believe that they are or can be reasonably persuaded otherwise.

CRIME ALERT: Cabbie shot dead in Buena Vista

From WSMV:

A longtime Nashville cab driver was shot and killed early Friday inside his vehicle near the Germantown area.

Henry Moore, 69, was inside his Yellow Cab van just before 3 a.m. near the intersection of 10th Avenue North and Garfield Street.


Police said Moore had just been dispatched to pick up a fare at the intersection, and neighbors then reported hearing gunshots.

After he was shot, Moore's van crashed into a retaining wall nearby.

Investigators have not released any details on possible suspects or a motive in the shooting.

Crime Alert Update: arrest made in the murder and dumping of homeless woman in Salemtown

From the Nashville City Paper:

Police have charged 56-year-old Napoleon Harvey with criminal homicide in the death of Stephanie Alexander.

According to police, Harvey admitted during a jail interview with detectives to killing Alexander after an argument in his car. He has been in jail on a parole violation warrant since Sept. 6, the same day Alexander's body was found in a vacant lot in Salemtown.

CRIME ALERT: body found near 5th and Buchanan

From NewsChannel5:

NASHVILLE, Tenn. – A man mowing a lawn discovered the body of a woman in North Nashville.

The discovery came around 11 a.m. Wednesday at 5th Avenue North and Buchanan Street.

Police responded to the scene to investigate. Officials did not disclose if the woman's death could be ruled as suspicious.

Crime scene investigators were working to determine how the woman died and how long she had been dead.

It was unclear if police knew the woman's identity.

UPDATE: further media reports indicate that the woman had been murdered by means of blunt force trauma elsewhere, and then the body was dumped here.


UPDATE: Victim identified. Again, NewsChannel5 with the details:

Metro Police have identified the body of a woman that was discovered in North Nashville Wednesday.

Police said the woman was identified as 39-year-old homeless woman Stephanie K. Alexander. She appeared to have been killed by blunt force trauma.

The discovery of Alexander's body came around 11 a.m. Wednesday at 5th Avenue North and Buchanan Street. Terrence Parrish was cutting the grass and he smelled something, but said he thought it was perhaps a dead rodent or a dead snake.

When he finished mowing, Terrence found Alexander in an alley filled with weeds.

Police continue to investigate. No arrests have been made.
 

UPDATE: Jump to news of arrest.

Nashville Scene judges Belle Meade a better place than Centennial Park for kids, dogs, and families

Nashville Scene writers tend to mount the high horse when the subject of excluding certain groups of people in Belle Meade pops on to their radar. Yet, since May 17, they've said nothing about the fact that their parent company's Movies in the Park event has been removed from the gritty hydrangeas and the streetwise ducks of Centennial Park to the nerve-settling pastoral milieu of suburban Belle Meade's Percy Warner Park.

The "alternative" newsweekly's professional flack told local public radio that the rationale for the Belle Meade move is to keep "this a place where people feel comfortable bringing their kids and their dogs and their families". Reportedly, there was some gang activity at one of last year's events that included gun play (no injuries), and the intrepid newspaper blinked and it is fleeing to the exurbs with its films. Even so, the marketing director did not seem to grasp the sobering and breathtaking implications of what she was saying: predominantly white West Nashville is no longer as safe for kids, dogs, and families as 99% white Belle Meade.

Capt. Dobie woulda cleaned up Centennial Park's mean streets
because white flight was not an option

This should prick all kinds of historic issues for those of us in North Nashville. West Nashville is flooded with events and services at a level that we do not enjoy. Resources flow west and east in this city, and rarely north and south. So, if the Nashville Scene judges West Nashville unfit to hold events for kids, dogs, and families, how much more will they feel led to neglect the families in our diverse communities because of their own fears?

I don't necessarily blame Scene bloggers for promoting and not criticizing the move, because they have to think about their jobs in an uncertain journalism world. However, they've dropped a couple of perches from their moral high ground on the problems of prejudice in lordly Belle Meade. After all, country clubs in places like Belle Meade are by definition exclusionary. And where country club aristocracy was not built on institutionalized segregation, then it exists with the aid of economic inequities and hoarded resources that never even trickle down to working class and under-class folk. Criticizing the Belle Meade country club for leaving other wealthy people behind is inconsistent with stifling a critical voice against your own company retreating from every other strata of Nashvillian for Belle Meade without the aid of double standards. And starting off the new Belle Meade run with "The Help", a movie about white housewives and their black domestic workers seems at once a further twist and startlingly poetic.

Metro Parks did not respond when journos asked them about the move, which does not look good for them either. They do not seem exactly out in front of this story. What is worse, however, is the perception that they have no control over functions at their more urban public parks even in predominantly white West Nashville.

The move from white West End to the even whiter exurbs smacks of white flight. It also betrays a false sense of security that gangs are only an urban problem easily solved by a more suburbanized setting. As if youth gangs do not have cars. As if youth gangs have not been expanding in suburbia for the past 40 years. So, maybe Metro Parks hopes that the Belle Meade PD can be more effective at walling out gang activity than their own rangers and Metro Police have been securing parks. We also should not ignore the cynical possibility that this may be a strategy for the parks department to save money on security in a lean budget year.

Whatever the reason, it does not look good, and I wholeheartedly agree with those have observed on Twitter today that it may indicate tacit racism and classicism on the part of the newspaper and Metro government.

Allegations that assaults started at YMCA program and continued at North Nashville public school

Privatized neighborhood a factor in the murder of Trayvon Martin

Ariella Cohen insists that the shooting of Trayvon Martin by George Zimmerman blows apart the myth that gated communities are safe. On the contrary, the gated community may have been a cause of Martin's murder:

Though the setting of this tragedy may not have much bearing on the criminal investigation, the issue of place is something that should not evade public scrutiny. Martin was deemed “suspicious” while walking in a gated community.

While the logic Zimmerman used to arrive at this conclusion cannot be rationalized or even understood, I would argue that the privatized nature of his neighborhood partially enabled his skewed sense of authority. As anthropologist Setha Low wrote in a 2007 essay published in Next American City, gated residential communities “intensify social segregation, racism, and exclusionary land use practices, and raise a number of conflicting values” ....

Low, author of Behind the Gates: Life, Security, and the Pursuit of Happiness in Fortress America, argues that there is no evidence that gated communities are any safer than any other neighborhood. Furthermore, she points out that while a security gate “can provide a refuge from people who are deviant or unusual… the vigilance necessary to patrol these borders actually heightens residents’ anxiety and sense of isolation, rather than making them feel safer.”

Reading these words in light of the Trayvon’s killing, I can’t help but wonder if his walk to 7-Eleven would have ended differently if he had been on an open street instead of in a gated community.

I agree that privatized neighborhoods do foster an atmosphere of fear, but there are also larger factors in ungated communities like the ones the editorial voice of the Christian Science Monitor lists:

Many cities have learned that the best way to fight crime is to bring people together, starting with things as simple as block parties, more sports and summer jobs for teens, or a healthy voter turnout for local elections. Mutual respect and even affection in the public sphere can reduce fear.

Examples of this approach are growing. Boston pioneered a technique in the 1990s by bringing church ministers and police together to persuade young people to avoid gun violence. Chicago helps ex-offenders meet up with neighborhood residents to restore their community bonds. Britain has begun to adopt some of these American methods after recent urban gang riots.

Yet tough economic times make it difficult for working people to be neighborly, go to community meetings, or engage with police and other officials. More residents are renters and thus not putting down roots. A neighborhood’s shift in ethnic or racial makeup can reduce trust and a sense of shared civic values.

Shared civic values are beset on one side by pressures to privatize and on the other by diminishing government commitments to infrastructure and programs and willingness to bow to the fickle vagaries of the housing market. These larger structural obstacles to community aggravate ethnic/racial tensions that make violence probable.

Evangelical media source: more accusers coming forward against Bishop Walker

The Christian Post (a self-described "pan-denominational" Christian news source) has more ill news of Mt. Zion Baptist Church's Bishop Joseph Walker III:

Connie Allison, Batson's attorney, suggested Monday to The Christian Post that "more and more [women] are emerging" with similar accusations.

While refusing to reveal any information about the identities of the women listed as "Jane Does," Allison emphasized that the women are scared of possible retaliation should their identities become known. Allison referred to Batson as "the bravest human I've ever met." Allison, who is herself Catholic, said her client has unbelievable "spiritual inner strength" that is "breathtaking." The three women who provided supporting testimonies for Bates' lawsuit are Episcopalian Christians, Allison revealed.

One of the women is a single mother in her 30s, a court employee in Davidson County told CP last week. Another one is a married woman, also in her 30s.

In his first media interview CM Brady Banks should have apologized to North Nashville for bringing crime here

CM Brady Banks finally speaks to reporter Joey Garrison. He is mostly apologetic toward his wife, family, friends, and constituents. He indicates that he has no intention of resigning from Metro Council. But he has no apologies for North Nashville neighborhoods:

I have been dealing with what is most important — my wife and my family — and trying to get all the help I need to start rebuilding trust and healing my relationships. I plan to work as hard as I can to regain the respect and trust of the people I was elected to serve ....

I want to continue to work hard, do a good job and continue to listen to my neighbors and try to do what they elected me to do on the council. I have always wanted to serve people, and I want to continue to serve ....

[Responding to why he came late and left early from the last council meeting] I was elected to do a job for the people of District 4. Part of that job is to represent them at council meetings. I take that very seriously. With regard to leaving before the end of the meeting, I didn’t think it was appropriate for me to participate in the end of the agenda given my situation.

Brady Banks's actions affect more people than just his family or his constituents. They also touch on the lives of people in North Nashville. If he ever runs for a position larger than District 4's he should have to answer for his failure to acknowledge the effects of his attempted sex trafficking on those outside his district.

I didn't see CM Banks represent District 4 at all during the council meeting he attended. He came late. He sat quietly watching everyone else. He left early. His explanation in the interview does not clarify anything. And it has been his supporters who insisted he needed to be away from public scrutiny to spend time on his family. In that light, attending the council meeting was nothing more than empty symbolism. That vacuous image will stick with me whenever his name comes up again in future.