@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 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.
On Tuesday, Metro Council passed CM Courtney Johnston’s convoluted opus, BL2021-961, on third and final reading. The legislation sets up a policy framework for the implementation of license plate readers (LPRs) in Nashville, a controversial technology that’s all the rage in police circles these days.
The Administration Enters the Chat
After a year of radio silence on the issue, Mayor John Cooper's administration suddenly ramped up a full-court press to seal the deal on Johnston’s bill. Cooper’s right-hand man Mike Jameson spent the weekend making personalized phone calls to CMs viewed as swing votes, and on Monday, the Council received a bizarre letter signed by MNPD Chief John Drake and NDOT Director Diana Alarcon expressing their support for Johnston’s bill. It was a strange move for a mayor who, when he was an at-large CM, supported a bill that prohibited Metro from installing fixed LPRs in public rights-of-way.
This about-face is perhaps the clearest signal yet that Cooper intends to run for re-election in 2023. In a field likely to be crowded with left-leaning candidates, Cooper appears to be positioning himself to the right of the pack. He knows he can’t run on his progressive bona fides — he doesn’t have any — so why waste time trying to protect civil liberties?
Enter, Stage Left: Bob Mendes
On Sunday evening, CM At-Large Bob Mendes released a blog post containing an annotated version of BL2021-961 detailing what Mendes viewed as fatal deficiencies in the bill’s form and substance. Not long after, CM Zach Young, a vocal supporter of LPRs and former sponsor of the bill in question, tweeted that he would no longer be supporting the bill. By Tuesday morning, though, Young had changed his tune, declaring himself “undecided."
Exit, Stage Left: Kyonztѐ Toombs
And on Tuesday morning, CM Kyonztѐ Toombs inconspicuously removed herself from the list of sponsors on the bill. In a newsletter, Toombs signaled dismay that the LPR debate was “pitting Black people against Black people” and expressed a desire to help individual neighborhoods purchase their own cameras on a case-by-case basis.
If you’ve got whiplash at this point, you’re not alone. But unfortunately, it’s not over yet.
The Main Event
That brings us to Tuesday night. The situation was fluid. And with At-Large CM Steve Glover — a human rubber stamp for all things MNPD — absent from the festivities, I was even hearing whispers that CM Johnston might try to defer her bill for fear that she didn’t have the votes.
But somewhere along the way, the balance shifted in her favor. Mike Jameson was reportedly texting furiously from the sidelines throughout the meeting, no doubt engaging in some last-minute horse trading. Step right up, folks, get a brand-new sidewalk in your district for the low, low price of a police state!
The floor debate was a roller-coaster — the kind where you’re holding on for dear life and trying not to vomit over the railing. Speaking in favor of the bill, At-Large CM Burkley Allen made the incredible (and I mean that in the literal sense) argument that giving the police LPRs will allow us to ... divest from policing?
CM Bob Nash claimed that LPRs are just like DNA and fingerprints, describing them as “a technology whose time has come.” I don’t know about y’all, but I don’t have a cop outside my door taking a cheek swab every morning before I go to work, just in case they need the data later. What’s worse: LPRs are wrong about a third of the time. One CM told me he’d actually be fine with this error rate for DNA — which, as I reminded him, is used as evidence in trials resulting in people being sentenced to death — because “it shows it’s more accurate than not.” So that’s the bar, I guess.
The Most Progressive Council Never
This Council body entered office in 2019 hailed as the most progressive Council Nashville has ever seen. The Nashville Justice League, a progressive PAC, won big that year, getting 13 of their 15 endorsed candidates elected to office. Since then, though, we’ve seen this Council repeatedly fail to live up to their progressive mantle when it comes to policing. Sure, they ask questions. They do a cursory check under the hood. But in the end, they always say “yes” to the police. And I’m not sure how we can expect to see any meaningful change in the way this city conceptualizes public safety with these 40 CMs holding the purse strings.
I asked Advice King Chris Crofton to write me a poem about license plate readers. It was a good reminder: We are all timeless carbon miracles, and nobody can take that away from us.
