Memphis Is The Most Dangerous City In America. Blame Amy Weirich.

Memphis, Tennessee is the most dangerous city in America. But don’t take our word for it. That’s based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. 

342 people in Memphis were murdered last year. That’s a record for the city – but not one the Chamber of Commerce is likely to promote. No, the Chamber of Commerce doesn’t like to talk about Kelby Shorty, the 7-year-old boy gunned down outside of his home on the 4th of July. The murder of a 26-year-old woman and her unborn son just weeks before Christmas isn’t going to help bring tourists to the city.

The Shelby County Crime Commission polled city residents recently, and with almost a murder a day in Memphis, it’s no wonder that voters said that crime is a top issue in the city. Crime is so bad that public safety concerns are second only to the globally unprecedented COVID-19 pandemic. That means that fear of crime is more pressing for residents than concerns about the economy and even their own jobs, which only makes sense in a city as dangerous as Memphis. What good is a job if you’re just going to catch a bullet.

As the city falls apart, residents are asking–and understandably so–what is going on? Who is to blame? Can our leaders even be bothered to fix this crisis? 

We wouldn’t bet on it. And neither should you, not with leaders like Amy Weirich, the Shelby County District Attorney General, in office. She’s the elected prosecutor in Memphis and like all prosecutors, she’s supposed to be the city’s top law enforcement official. Unlike Amy Weirich, real prosecutors fight crime, not fuel it. Murders have skyrocketed under Weirich’s leadership, rising every single year since she took office over a decade ago. In 2010, the year before Weirich took over, murders in Memphis were at record lows. Killings spiked during Weirich’s first year in office and have kept climbing since, steadily rising each year and ultimately reaching the all-time highs the city is enduring now.

Weirich’s failure to keep the city safe is so striking that she’s drawn a challenge from a retired former prosecutor, and current University of Memphis law professor, Steve Mulroy. Imagine being so worried for the safety of your community that you're willing to trade tenure and the bougie academic lifestyle to campaign for a job that will pay less and require far more work, but that’s the kind of reaction Amy Weirich inspires. “Every year in Shelby County since [Amy Weirich] has taken office, violent crime in Shelby County has risen, and has risen, and has risen,” Mulroy said when announcing his candidacy. 

Experts told Memphis Watch that the problem boils down to Weirich’s inability to lead. In cities across the country where violent crime has decreased, prosecutors prioritize their limited resources on the most serious offenses – crimes like rapes, armed robberies, shootings, and murders. And those prosecutors deprioritize low level offenses like marijuana possession or stealing diapers from a Walmart. In fact, a recent study from economists at the Public Safety Lab found that an approach like Weirich’s, which wastes scarce resources on low-level offenses, can actually increase crime. 

Weirich’s failure to prioritize violent offenses creates crushing work loads and encourages hard-working prosecutors to cut corners, forcing courts to reverse murder convictions due to misconduct and other unforced prosecutorial errors. That happens so often in Amy Weirich’s office that a Harvard Law School study found that the Shelby County prosecutor’s office “ranked highest in Tennessee for misconduct.” Weirich herself has committed misconduct in murder cases so atrocious that the state supreme court had to reverse multiple convictions that she obtained, and the state legal ethics board ultimately was forced to reprimand her. 

When misconduct forces a court to reverse a murder conviction, a person who committed a murder could walk free. Worse still, when that misconduct caused an innocent person to be convicted and sent to prison, not only is that person’s life destroyed but the actual murderer is still walking the streets–perhaps shooting more people. 

Weirich’s irresponsible leadership is causing the community to lose faith in the ability of their elected leaders to keep them safe. "There is pent up anger in Memphis. There is pent up desperation. There is an inability to survive,”Dr. Elena Delavega, a professor of social work at the University of Memphis, told Memphis Watch.

"You would imagine that a good District Attorney would be a deterrent to crime,” Delavega said, “but not only is Amy Weirich not deterring crime, she’s increasing it."