by Peter D’Abrosca | Tennessee Star
A Tennessee state senator joined “Fox & Friends First” Friday morning to discuss violent crime in Memphis, which has been the subject of national news and viral videos in recent weeks.
“It’s really bad here, Todd,” State Senator Brent Taylor (R-Memphis) told Fox News’ Todd Piro. “The crime is really out of control here in Memphis. Matter of fact, just last week I sent a letter to the governor asking him to send in additional state troopers to Shelby County. Just in a weekend, Todd, we had 21 shootings, five murders, four smash-and-grabs, we had a FedEx truck stopped in traffic by a group of people that then opened up the back of the truck and looted the back of the FedEx truck.”
“Crime is really so bed here in Memphis that I’m really expecting at any moment that we’ll see Alex Hogan reassigned to Memphis with her flak jacket on to report from Memphis about the crime,” said Taylor (pictured above).
Alex Hogan is a Fox News reporter who has been reporting on the war between Israel and Palestine.
Piro then played a clip of Shelby County General Sessions Court Judge Bill Anderson, responsible for allowing 18-year-old Edio White out of jail without posting bond after White allegedly took part in the murder of a 15-year-old on Thanksgiving, saying that he “detests” the bail system, a story which The Tennessee Star covered earlier this week.
“I said the other day … that I was pissed off about this, and the community is,” Taylor told Piro in reference to Anderson’s comments. “What is particularly harmful about that judge, Judge Anderson, is that he is the managing judge that manages our judicial commissioning program. Judicial commissioners are magistrates in Tennessee and they set initial bail for defendants, and he oversees that program. And his animus toward the bail system – which you just saw in that clip that you played – his animus towards the bail system is not only influencing his decisions and letting people charged with first degree murder out of jail, but it’s also influencing the decisions of those judicial commissioners.”
“One of the things that I hope to do in January when we reconvene in the legislature, is to amend that judicial commissioner law so that judge who is overseeing the judicial commissioners will be reassigned to just the courtroom, and hopefully we will be able to get that done in January,” Taylor said.
Taylor’s recent letter to Governor Bill Lee (R) pleaded for state-level support to help reduce violent crime levels in Memphis.
It said in part:
My city is under siege. Just this past weekend, Dr. Alexander Bulakhov, a post-doctoral staffer at St. Jude Children’s Hospital, was murdered during a botched robbery while his family watched in horror. Between Friday and Sunday, there were six additional shootings, four smash-and-grab incidents of convenient stores, a FedEx tractor-trailer truck was forced to a complete stop in traffic while a group of thieves looted the trailer, and a marauding band of young people blocked the interstate to use their vehicles to “spin-out.” During this last spectacle, passengers of these “spin-out” vehicles hung from open car windows brandishing firearms in front of terrorized motorists. Multiple videos made viral on social media evidence this type of activity being done in front of police cruisers to taunt law enforcement. The examples listed are just a few of the brazen criminal activities occurring in Memphis leaving law-abiding citizens in terror.
Shortly after the letter was written, Lee assigned 40 more Tennessee Highway Patrol officers to Shelby County.
“At the same time, local officials must carry out their responsibility to uphold the law and hold criminals accountable, without resorting to soft on crime plea deals that have serious consequences and too-often result in more crime and more victims,” Lee said when announcing the reinforcements.
