Both Chattanooga Mayor Andy Berke and Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal Pinkston believe the city's Violence Reduction Initiative can succeed, but that's where the agreement between the two ends.
Berke maintains the program has kept the city's gang violence relatively flat over the last two years, compared to increases in other cities in the Southeast, while Pinkston says his office is taking blame it doesn't deserve because individuals charged in the cases brought to his office haven't been given the heavy penalties the program says targeted offenders should receive.
The merits of the VRI erupted into public display earlier this week with the City Council's discussion of the program with several of its principals.
However, Pinkston, who said he would not be able to attend the meeting, sent the council members six reasons why he believes the program isn't working. Unsatisfied, council members took the unusual move to subpoena him to appear before the body, an act Pinkston later said is unenforceable.
This page strongly believes a meeting between the mayor and the district attorney general could go a long way in clearing up misunderstandings about the continued implementation of the VRI and could in time lead to the type of outcomes first envisioned for the program.
Now, though, both sides are only pointing fingers, yet both sides seem to welcome more interaction.
Pinkston said he and his office need "to engage law enforcement of all angles more effectively" to give the program a better shot at that success.
Berke said he would "welcome anything that gets us back to vigorous prosecution of those involved in gang violence."
The city might try changing some of the six reasons the program isn't working, Pinkston seemed to suggest in the letter he sent to the City Council earlier this week.
Among other things, he said, the city has not been working collaboratively with his office, is not using all the tactics Dr. David Kennedy, who developed the program on which the VRI is modeled, recommended (such as shutting off stolen cable and electricity, shuttering houses with code violations, and making arrests for lack of back child support payment), and is not bringing his office cases that could be proven to be part of gang activity (helping ensure enhancement factors).
"I don't gather they're being implemented as much as they could be," he said, referring to the tactics the program suggests can be used.
Berke said while the VRI program is almost exclusively in the hands of Police Chief Fred Fletcher and his staff, "we're trying to make sure we work as well as possible together" with the district attorney's office and are "always happy to have more coordination."
"We're pulling every lever we can," he said. "If there is another one to pull, we are happy to do that. We want a good partnership."
Both Pinkston and Berke claim they've done their due diligence in offering or seeking help.
"Behind the scenes," Pinkston said, "we as an office have been clear [with other VRI partners] about what we do, what we're available to do, about the reality of the system." He said his staff also has attempted to be instructive about about how to build more federal cases, the lack of which is another of the reasons he said gang violence across the city hasn't decreased.
"To intimate I have not been at the table to discuss ways to reduce gang violence is not only offensive," he wrote Berke and Fletcher earlier this week, "but doesn't reflect the course of events through the inception of the VRI."
Meanwhile, the mayor said he and his staff have reached out without success to the district attorney in letters, emails and phone calls for him "to tell me if there were issues" or "to hear if he had concerns about the initiative."
While his role is one of "support for the chief and the office and the department, to make sure they're headed in right direction and to give them resources," Berke said, we want to know "why we're not seeing the prosecutions we thought we would."
It seems, at this point, like a standoff, one that could be remedied if the two principals sat down together and shared their individual concerns. Both have valid points to make and probably points of contention to work out. Yet, both want the same end - a reduction in gang violence in Chattanooga.
A meeting between the two could be just the action that brings that about.