"For months, fingers have been pointed at me," Pinkston said. "They were pointed in the wrong direction. City leaders need to put the focus on their own obligations in fulfilling the initiative Chattanooga taxpayers are funding."
Days after City Council members voted to subpoena him, District Attorney General Neal Pinkston announced that he will not appear before them next week.
"My staff and I have received a steady influx of community feedback since Tuesday night's council meeting, with the overwhelming majority encouraging me not to respond to the council's demand," Pinkston wrote in a press release today.
"The community's sentiment confirms my own inclination and I will not appear before Chattanooga's council next Tuesday."
His statement comes on the heels of a political battle that erupted this week over the city's Violence Reduction Initiative, or VRI, which calls on police, courts and social services to combine their firepower to convince gang members to stop shooting each other or else spend a long time behind bars.
Frustrated with the apparent lack of results, City Council asked all key law enforcement participants to show up Tuesday to discuss what could be done.
When Pinkston failed to show, and instead released a statement saying he was forming his own anti-gang task force, council members voted overwhelmingly on a motion to subpoena him.
Pinkston accepted the subpoena on Thursday afternoon, according to the release, but said Wednesday that council members had no way to enforce the order.
Pinkston said that during a VRI work session Wednesday afternoon representatives from the John Jay College of Criminal Justice admitted they misunderstood Tennessee sentencing law. The college consults with Chattanooga law enforcement agencies to carry out VRI. But the misunderstanding, Pinkston said, "resulted in unrealistic, even impossible, expectations from my office."
That's not true, according to other law enforcement partners who attended.
Chattanooga Police Department spokesman Kyle Miller said Wednesday's meeting was a bi-weekly sit-down among the district attorney's office and multiple officers to discuss recent shootings.
"This meeting is not held for the purpose of discussing sentencing," Miller said. "Nor was sentencing discussed during this meeting."
David Kennedy, the creator of the strategy, confirmed his team attended the meeting.
"My understanding," he said, "is that the issue of the role of the prosecutor in Tennessee did not come up."
Though Pinkston is not attending Tuesday's City Council meeting, he said defense attorney Gerald Webb agreed to appear since he represents numerous gang members in state court.
Pinkston said he is also meeting Mayor Andy Berke next week to discuss future steps "and ways to make sure the Violence Reduction Initiative is as effective as it can possibly be."
This is a breaking story. Check back later for more updates.
For Pinkston's full statement check below.