@startleseasily is a fervent observer of the Metro government's comings and goings. In this column, "On First Reading," she'll recap the bimonthly Metro Council meetings and provide her opinions and analysis. You can find her in the pew in the corner by the mic, ready to give public comment on whichever items stir her passions. Follow her on Twitter here.

In December 2022, I attended a community meeting in Hermitage to provide public comment on the Tennessee Titans stadium proposal. Chief Stadium Deal Detractor Bob Mendes — then an at-large councilmember — was hosting a series of these meetings throughout the county. The meeting in Hermitage was the final opportunity to provide public input before the bill made its way to the council for consideration. Normally I would’ve chosen one of the meetings closer to my home, but I hadn’t been able to attend any of them. So I made my way to Hermitage and approached the mic to offer three minutes of criticism of the deal and then-Mayor John Cooper’s approach to the negotiations.

At the end of the meeting, an older Black man came over to me to shake my hand. He thanked me for my participation and told me I did a great job. 

I didn’t know it until later that evening, but the man was Vencen Horsley, a lifelong Nashvillian and honest-to-God civil rights legend who passed away last month. Countless Nashvillians have their own Vencen stories. 

“Even though he was a legend in his own right, he was very intentional about taking time to encourage those that were coming behind him,” Councilmember At-Large Delishia Porterfield said during the council’s discussion of a memorializing resolution in Horsley’s honor. “He didn’t just take the praise; he also gave it to other people.”

Horsley spent much of his youth getting into “good trouble.” He was arrested seven times for nonviolent protests against segregation. He spent his life working to make Nashville better, and from what I know of him, I think he’d want us to do the same.

'We have an African American Police Chief'

After the typical deluge of noncontroversial zoning bills on public hearing, the bulk of the council’s time was spent debating the merits of traffic enforcement. Councilmember Jeff Eslick has spent months complaining about the lack of traffic enforcement in his district, which includes Old Hickory and portions of Hermitage. On Tuesday, he brought a previously deferred resolution asking the MNPD and NDOT to collaborate on better engineering and enforcement mechanisms to slow people down.

Pedestrian deaths and other traffic fatalities have remained stubbornly high in Nashville despite the city’s adoption of a “Vision Zero” program that looks to eliminate fatalities and serious injuries on Nashville’s roads. Eslick’s goal is a noble one, but the language of the resolution — which includes a statistic about the sharp decrease in traffic stops since 2018 — left members of the council’s Minority Caucus concerned that its passage could prompt a return to the discriminatory policing highlighted in the 2016 "Driving While Black" report.

In response to those concerns, Minority Caucus Chair Kyonztè Toombs introduced a successful substitute resolution that narrowed the request, asking the MNPD to focus its efforts on particularly dangerous behaviors like reckless driving and drunk driving. “The original resolution, as worded, implied massive traffic stops,” said Toombs. “We did not want to go back to the times where MNPD was stopping 7.7 times the national average for traffic stops; when MNPD was stopping more Black drivers than there were actually Black residents of Nashville.”

Eslick opposed the substitute. “I do understand the possibility of it being used wrongly,” he conceded. “At the same time, we have dash cams, we have body cams, we have a Community Review Board, we have a traffic captain, as well as an African American police chief, that can all be used as checks and balances to make sure that this is not used inappropriately.”

+4

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I had to rewind the tape to be sure, but yes, Eslick did in fact suggest that having a Black police chief provides an inherent check on systemic racism in policing. It’s one of the most delusional takes on the importance of minority representation I’ve ever heard.

I don’t recall anyone who was distrustful of the MNPD rejoicing when John Drake was promoted. I do recall some white folks touting it as a huge step forward for our city. But I don’t recall celebrations in the streets, because that’s simply not how it works. Changing who’s in charge of the police doesn’t wipe the slate clean. It doesn’t undo the trauma for people who’ve been harmed by aggressive and discriminatory policing. It doesn’t rewire a system designed to oppress and punish marginalized groups.

And let’s not forget, this is the very same Black police chief who presided over a license plate reader pilot program that saw surveillance concentrated in minority and low-income neighborhoods. 

So no, I don’t think having a Black police chief should make our Black and brown neighbors feel safer. And I don’t think a Community Review Board that has been functionally defanged by the state legislature serves as much of a deterrent against discriminatory policing.

Trust the System

Never fear, though. Councilmember Bob Nash has a perfectly reasonable explanation. Quoting extensively from the 2018 Policing Project report on traffic stops in Nashville, Nash argued that disparities were not an indication of discriminatory policing practices. 

“MNPD explains these racial disparities in traffic stops on the ground that officers go where the crime is, and that, in Nashville, high-crime neighborhoods tend to have larger minority populations,” Nash recited.

“The analysis bears this out,” he said, pausing for dramatic effect before disclaiming that the disparities remained even after controlling for crime. 

If I have to listen to one more person excuse racist policing with the whole “low-income neighborhoods just happen to have more crime” line, I’m going to lose it. Yes, they happen to have more crime, because we happen to have systematically disinvested in those neighborhoods and their residents, and we happen to have erected systems to ensure they remain in a cycle of poverty and desperation. But I guess that was also all a coincidence.

Nash failed to mention that the Policing Project report concluded that — and here I myself will pause for dramatic effect — “traffic stops are not an effective strategy for reducing crime.” So there’s that.

Nash, a former MNPD precinct commander, also defended the rank-and-file police officers’ actions as a response to a clear directive from leadership to “make as many traffic stops as you can.”

“A lot of pressure was put on them to do that kind of policing,” Nash said. Once the directive changed, Nash says the officers’ behavior changed.

Isn’t that the entire point though? That’s literally how systemic racism works. A system is set up to disproportionately target and disadvantage minority populations, and the players operate within that system. And if all it took was a change in directives from the top to decrease the number of futile and discriminatory stops, then it would just take another change in directives to get us right back where we started. 

This isn’t a defense of policing. It’s a condemnation. 

At Last

Metro Arts Commission Interim Director Resigns After Brief Tenure

Paulette Coleman steps aside as grants process continues facing challenges

 

 

Metro Arts finally has a fully approved set of funding criteria for fiscal year 2025, a mere seven months into the fiscal year. Applications for operational grants and project-based awards have languished in limbo for a full year. 

By the time artists get their funding, they’ll have four months or less to spend down the award amount before the fiscal year ends on June 30. Organizations receiving operational grants may be able to do this more quickly, since there are fewer strings attached. For organizations and individuals getting those project-based Thrive awards, it’s possible the projects they proposed simply cannot be completed by then. 

The fiscal year 2026 grant cycle is right around the corner. Here’s hoping they can get it right for the next round.