State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) warned that Memphis will be ‘hollowed out’ if its crime problem is not addressed.
Taylor, who sponsored several crime-related bills in the recently-adjourned legislative session of the General Assembly, said the response he has received from the community in Memphis for his work to crackdown on crime has been positive.
“[The people in Memphis] are very grateful, very thankful. As a matter of fact, many of the people that come up to me and tell me that they appreciate our efforts in the General Assembly are African Americans. It’s people who you don’t normally think of as typical Republican voters,” Taylor said on Thursday’s episode of The Michael Patrick Leahy Show.
“What has happened is that, look, in East Shelby County, where most of the white folks live, they are fearful of crime. They’re afraid of the fear of crime. The black community is afraid of the effects of crime, so they’re the ones that have really reached out to me in great numbers saying ‘Thank you, no one else seems to take the crime problem seriously.’ So it’s a way that we can try to prevent the hollowing out of Memphis because if we don’t do something, what’s going to happen is we’re going to witness the hollowing out of Memphis and the only people who will remain will be poor people who couldn’t afford to leave or extremely rich people who could afford the private security to stay. The middle class will be gone,” Taylor (pictured above) added.
Earlier this month, Tennessee Governor Bill Lee signed several bills sponsored by Taylor related to crime, two of which specifically focused on the bail system—SB 2562 and SB 2565.
The first bill, SB 2562, elevates the Safety of the Community as the first consideration when a judge sets bail for a defendant so that a defendant deemed a threat to the public would be denied bail. The other bill, SB 2565, bans judges in the state from using “ability to pay” bail systems.
“We had a group of restorative justice schemers that threatened to sue Shelby County and the county with an acquiescent and compliant [District Attorney] fold like a house of cards and agreed to the standing bail order, which basically says that they will allow defendants to be released with however much money they happen to have in their pocket,” Taylor explained.
“It took legislation that we passed this past session that the governor just signed and went into effect just within the last few days that will basically undo that standing bail order where we can take violent criminals who have been arrested and we do a couple of things. One, we’re going to elevate the threat of the community as the number one consideration for bail. They have to pass that hurdle before they get to anything else and if they pass that hurdle, then we have basically said that you cannot use the ability to pay when setting bail. You set the bail and if they can’t make it then they can sit their ass in jail,” Taylor added.
“Ability to pay” bail systems are bail calculators that determine a defendant’s bail based on the amount of money immediately available to them. The system was recently implemented in Memphis; however, Taylor confirmed that the system has since been discarded per a conversation he had with the Shelby County lead judicial commissioner.
“I have talked to both [the district attorney and lead judicial commissioner]. The district attorney has indicated that although he disagrees with the law, he will abide by it. I’ve also had communications with the lead judicial commissioner and it’s my understanding they eliminated the ability to pay calculator just within the last few days. So hopefully we’ll be able to see some of this related to bail come back to some semblance of common sense,” Taylor said.
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Kaitlin Housler is a reporter at The Tennessee Star and The Star News Network. Follow Kaitlin on X / Twitter.
Photo “Brent Taylor” by Brent Taylor.
