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What It Means: Fears of elevated crime override requires police reform.
Republicans had rallied across the measure as a way of decreasing crime within the state, itemizing cases the place a minor site visitors infraction had led officers to uncovering drug trafficking and violent crimes.
“It’s time to take handcuffs off police and put them on criminals the place they belong,” stated State Senator Brent Taylor, a Memphis Republican.
But Democrats warned that the Republican supermajority was undoing a key reform. “It’s a slap within the face,” stated State Senator London Lamar, a Memphis Democrat, including that the ordinance didn’t impede efforts to cease reckless driving or violence within the metropolis.
Republicans, nonetheless, denied that the invoice would trigger further hurt.
Behind the Tensions: A working battle between the legislature and Tennessee’s largest cities.
The Republicans in command of state authorities have repeatedly taken goal on the autonomy of Tennessee’s largest, and largely Democratic-led, cities.
In the final couple years, the legislature has sought to exert its authority over Nashville and Memphis, whose leaders are more and more at odds with the Republican proposals within the legislature. Nashville, specifically, has battled laws that may shrink the dimensions of its council and overtake the board of its airport authority.
“We should do every thing in our energy to guard native management with regards to issues of life and demise of our neighborhood,” State Representative Justin J. Pearson, a Memphis Democrat, instructed reporters on Thursday.
Tyre Nichols’s household: ‘We labored too exhausting to get this handed.’
Mr. Nichols’s mom, RowVaughn Wells, and his stepfather, Rodney Wells, drove from Memphis to the State Capitol in Nashville repeatedly this month, pleading with lawmakers to permit the regulation to stay in place.
“Coming again to Nashville is the straightforward half as a result of we need to see justice executed,” Mr. Wells stated on Thursday. “We labored too exhausting to get this handed.”
But the pair, after talking with Mr. Taylor, the lead Senate sponsor, left earlier than it was debated. Mr. Taylor confirmed that he declined their request to delay debate and passage, including afterward that he “thought it finest to go forward and have closure for the household and in addition the neighborhood again house.”
