Greeson: Chattanooga police chief deserves extra help to fight violent crime

Police chief Fred Fletcher speaks during a news conference presenting a new multi-layered strategy to fight gun violence while at the Chattanooga Police Services Center on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017.
Police chief Fred Fletcher speaks during a news conference presenting a new multi-layered strategy to fight gun violence while at the Chattanooga Police Services Center on Monday, Jan. 23, 2017.

Fred Fletcher has had a full week. And yesterday was only Monday.

Seriously, in the last seven days, the Chattanooga police chief has been neck deep in budget issues, participated in the police details of the women's march on Saturday and walked the beat Saturday night.

photo Jay Greeson

Monday, he stood behind the podium and announced that he would ask for funding to put 14 more officers on the payroll.

Every leader everywhere would love to have more. More people, more options, more resources. Whether it's a football coach or police chief, there truly is strength in numbers.

Other numbers - more guns, more crime, more shootings, more gang activity - are clear, and they are backed by the crystal-clear need for Fletcher and his staff to bring more than a squirt gun to a knife fight.

Numbers are often funny things; they can be manipulated, even slanted. The numbers may say that crime is down in Chattanooga, and that may be statistically proven.

But those numbers do none of us any favors. Depending on who is citing the numbers, those figures may say we have far fewer shoplifters but not the fact we have more shooters. (Chattanooga, according to Times Free Press records, had 80 shootings and 33 homicides in 2016.)

In a lot of ways, those numbers work against Fletcher and his crew. Sure, overall crime may be down in our fair city.

But the only number that matters on this day is 14 - the number of new officers Fletcher believes he needs to fight a wave of gang activity and violent crime.

"We will have twice as many people attacking gang violence than we did before," Fletcher said Monday to the assembled media, including this paper's Shelly Bradbury.

And we need that many, if not more.

Before anyone balks about the added cost, I wonder how we can afford not to give the chief what he wants.

We could afford the seven figures for the minuscule results of the mayor's Violence Reduction Initiative. We can afford to send almost a quarter of a million dollars to Nashville for forensic technology that the chief's request would save us per year in the long run.

But we can't afford the violence that regularly plays out on some of our streets. In the last 72 hours, we have well-known gang kingpins being killed in the streets. And friends, if you don't believe that will do anything but escalate this problem, well, know that most gang members are not real fond of turning the other cheek in matters of the heart or the handgun.

If you think this was a reactionary or calculated power play considering the shooting spree that happened last weekend, well, I don't believe that. I was told last week the chief was crunching budget numbers, so the timing of Monday's announcement makes perfect sense.

The timing - the first business day after the weekend of gang violence - may appear calculated, and here's hoping that it helps secure support.

But irony and random timing should not deter or distort the chief's message or his request.

"This community has said we want you to focus on the people driving the violence," Fletcher told Bradbury. "We want you to use limited resources, finite taxpayer dollars and a discreet amount of goodwill and focus on the small number of people who commit crimes."

Amen, chief.

Contact Jay Greeson at jgreeson@timesfreepress.com and 423-757-6343.

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