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Gideons Us To ACTION by Elder James G. Davis, J.D., M.Div. Overseer, Mt. Zion Political Social Action Leadership Ministry (PSALM) Gideon blew his trumpet and called Israel to battle and defeat the Midianites (Judges 6:34). His trumpet is now calling us to work for justice.Gideon’s Army, a community activist group, works to dismantle the school-toprison pipeline and to encourage juvenile justice reform in Nashville. It released a report in October 2016 entitled “Driving While Black.” This report states that between 2011 and 2015, black drivers, despite comprising 27.6 percent of Nashville’s driving–age population, were 39.3 percent of all traffic stops––11.7 percent more than the black driving-age population. White drivers, comprising 63.8 percent of the driving-age population, were only 55.5 percent of all traffic stops––8.3 percent less than Nashville’s white driving-age population. In 2015–2016, blacks were 2 to 5 times more likely than whites to be stopped multiple times in a year. The Metro Police Department uses “Flex teams” to flood high crime areas of the city with patrols and to reduce criminal behavior. Misdemeanor traffic violations are used as probable cause to stop vehicles and to determine if further police action is required with the vehicle’s occupants above and beyond the moving violations. Such stops, primarily in areas of concentrated minority populations, are reflected in the report’s numbers. On Friday, February 10, 2017, Jocques Clemmons, a 31-year-old African American male and a former convicted felon, ran a Trumpet Is Calling stop sign in the Cayce Homes area. He was then approached for the moving violation by Metro Flex officer Joshua Lippert. During the encounter, Clemmons was shot and killed by Officer Lippert, who has a history of disciplinary actions for use of excessive force. On August 21, 2014, Metro Police Chief Steve Anderson and several top police commanders attended a packed public town hall meeting led by Bishop Joseph W. Walker, III at Mt. Zion Jefferson Street. The meeting was organized to discuss police tactics in dealing with minorities following the Mike Brown shooting in Ferguson, Missouri. Chief Anderson committed to releasing information in such incidents as soon as possible. With the Clemmons shooting, Metro Police have honored that commitment. Nashville mayor Megan Barry, Chief Anderson, and other officials should be commended for their efforts in addressing such issues by being in constant dialogue with community organizations, putting things in place to mitigate the possibility of officer-involved shootings and subsequent destructive civil unrest from occurring, and providing accountability when those situations occur. District attorney Glenn Funk recently announced that the Tennessee Bureau of Investigations (TBI) will investigate the Clemmons shooting and any future Metro officer-involved shootings. But regardless of the outcome of the Clemmons investigation, with police disproportionately stopping more minority drivers, the stage remains set for what happened that fateful Friday afternoon to happen again. Black Lives Matter, NOAH, Nashville Unites, and the NAACP must also be commended for their efforts to initiate dialogue and to trumpet the need for accountability and equitable treatment of minority citizens in encounters with police. Gideon’s trumpet calls for us to continue the dialogue and to develop resolutions for this issue. We must work to achieve balance between the need to address Nashville’s crime and the civil rights of all its citizens to life, liberty, and justice.


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