This story was updated on May 27, 2025, with the correct spelling of Tyré Nichols name.
After promising to make its meetings open to the public, Memphis’ police reform task force — dubbed the “Integrity Policing Initiative” — is having its third consecutive closed gathering on Wednesday.
A city spokesperson told MLK50: Justice Through Journalism the meeting is closed to the public because the task force will be joined by representatives from the Department of Justice. Memphis Mayor Paul Young created the group to review the DOJ’s 2024 report, which exposed how Memphis Police Department officers target and harm Black residents, children and people with disabilities.
Earlier this month, retired federal judge and task force leader Bernice Donald removed Amber Sherman from the group. Of its nine voting members, Sherman was the only community organizer. She was arrested on April 9 while filming Memphis police officers, who were surrounding a home in her neighborhood. Donald said the incident would make Sherman unable to “appear objective.”
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“The developing and ongoing nature of your own matter creates a serious conflict of interest,” Donald wrote in a letter to Sherman, who is MLK50’s creator-in-residence, producing content to help Memphians understand local policy.
Months of closed-door meetings and Sherman’s removal highlight a core tension between the city’s police reform plan and the approach the community says is needed — one where the voices of residents who are directly impacted by MPD are centered.
Rather than waiting on the task force to sort itself out and complete its work, Memphis residents want the city to act now: to divest from the police-led mental health response model, to publicize police operations, to rely on community conflict response teams, to remove armed officers from public schools, to maintain the traffic stops and citations dashboards and more.
“I think that people who are most impacted not only need a seat at the table, but they need to make up a majority of the table,” said Ala’a Alattiyat, a coordinator for the Youth Justice Action Council, a local group of impacted teenagers focused on juvenile justice reform in Memphis. “YJAC’s whole theme is ‘nothing about us without us.’”
Residents also question whether the task force is an effective use of time and resources, since the group can only make recommendations that MPD isn’t obligated to implement.
“It holds no power…It’s not a real measure,” said Keedran Franklin, an entrepreneur and community organizer from South Memphis. “What’s the point (of a task force) when you know what the hell we want? Just do it. It seems almost like time-wasting.”
Rebuilding trust in the public safety process
For Franklin and other community members, the fight for local police reform has been several years in the making. It came to a head after MPD beat and killed Tyré Nichols at the start of 2023. That same year, the community effectively lobbied the Memphis City Council to pass several reform measures, including a ban on pretextual traffic stops and a data transparency ordinance.
Instead of immediately putting these reforms in place, city leaders slow-walked implementation. In mid-2024, state lawmakers — led by Sen. Brent Taylor and Rep. John Gillespie — passed a bill preventing Memphis and other cities from enforcing specific police reform measures, including limits on pretextual stops.
The city’s delayed action — under former Mayor Jim Strickland and now with Young — has sown deeper seeds of distrust between government officials and community members. “I think (MPD) needs to be overhauled, but that’s scary to people,” Franklin said. “Who’s going to police the police? So that’s where these alternatives come in.”
Just last week, MPD finally published the traffic stops and citations dashboards, as required by the 2023 data transparency ordinance. Some residents believe that publicly reporting certain police operations will create more openness and begin to rebuild trust.
Industry experts agree. According to the International Association of Chiefs of Police, publishing information when officers are involved in shootings and use-of-force situations conveys honesty and builds confidence with the public.
At the national level, the FBI models this trend of data transparency by maintaining its own National Use-of-Force Data Collection Dashboard – a process where state and local police departments voluntarily report those incidents to the FBI on a monthly and yearly basis. Although data about specific incidents cannot be gleaned from the dashboard, MPD is listed as one of Tennessee’s participating law enforcement agencies.
In Memphis, community members now want MPD to make other information public, including use-of-force incidents, subsequent disciplinary action – if any was taken, and more insight into how new police officers are hired, Franklin said.
The community also has an important role to play in ensuring its own safety, he said. Grassroots rapid response and patrol teams are one way to resolve conflicts without involving cops who might escalate a situation rather than diffuse it, says Franklin, who helped establish community patrol in South Memphis in the 2000s.
“It’s not just always about asking (police) to protect us or looking for a savior,” Franklin said. “We’ve figured out ways that we could protect ourselves and keep ourselves safe.”
Alattiyat sees the solution to police violence through a similar lens. To her, it starts with divesting from MPD’s Crisis Intervention Team – hailed as a national model but cited in the DOJ report for failing to de-escalate mental health calls – and rerouting those funds into community-based alternatives, like the Shelby County Youth and Family Resource Center.
Growing demands for a new approach to policing – and supporting – youth
Increasing police presence has been part of the city’s strategy to lower crime, but for Black, working-class residents like Jacqué Ford, more cops haven’t led to a greater sense of safety.
The DOJ report singled out MPD’s “saturation” policing tactics, especially how officers aggressively target Black drivers in certain neighborhoods. The local grassroots coalition Decarcerate Memphis first documented this trend in 2022 in its “Driving While BIPOC” report.
“I don’t really see a lot of police patrolling the area to prevent crime,” said Ford, a pre-K teacher who lives in Westwood. “It’s more of the aftermath.”
She began organizing with Mothers Over Murder, a community non-violence and grief support group, after her son, Keithon Ford, was killed during a domestic violence incident in June 2024. The trauma of losing a child changed her perspective on policing, Ford said.
Rather than just patrolling certain areas, she would like to see the department lead more youth mentorship programs, especially with children who have lost parents and loved ones to violence. This, Ford believes, will help stop the root causes of community violence.
She is among a growing community calling for changes to how MPD polices children. The DOJ report spotlighted the department’s pattern of escalating interactions with children, citing instances of officers insulting, cursing, assaulting, belittling and manipulating youth during encounters, arrests and interrogations.
“You don’t have to prove you’re in charge by slamming somebody to the ground,” Ford said. “Sometimes all it takes is asking someone their name. We need someone who chooses love over violence.”
These residents are asking for youth to be included in the reform process. The city should create a subcommittee for young people to voice their concerns about policing in Memphis, said Lakethen Mason, a local filmmaker and a survivor of police violence himself. MPD should prioritize empathy and de-escalation, especially when interacting with children in crisis or recovering from trauma, he said.
“How do we work together to make sure that we feel safe, that we feel heard, and that we all, on both sides, have the best interest at heart for our community?” Mason said.
Having a seat at the table would be an empowering experience for children who have been overpoliced most of their lives, Alattiyat said. “The way (policing) affects youth is different than the way it affects adults because it’s a different mindset,” she said. “Young people bring a new perspective and creative solutions.”
A look inside the closed meeting
An agenda posted on social media on April 18 by liaison Robert Brown shows the “Integrity Policing Initiative” task force will gather Wednesday afternoon at First Baptist Church on Broad Avenue.
The meeting will start with opening updates from the task force’s monitor, retired federal judge Bernice Donald. A city spokesperson told MLK50 the task force will be joined by a representative from the Department of Justice. The group will discuss police use of force, officer training and discipline, community relations and the task force’s mandate – among other topics. Finally, the group will talk about its media policy, rules of conduct and filling the vacant task force member and liaison seats.
“Funny enough, we were told in our very first meeting that these would be open and public. But now, it seems they’re picking and choosing what the community gets to know,” Brown wrote in his post critiquing the task force’s process.
Brittany Brown is the public safety reporter for MLK50: Justice Through Journalism. Email her at brittany.brown@mlk50.com
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