It would seem reality TV has come to Chattanooga by way of our leaders’ new spit fight over VRI – the Violence Reduction Initiative designed to target and reduce gang violence.
The shorthand version of the recent week’s drama is that the City Council asked all of the drivers of VRI to a hearing at City Hall on Tuesday. The program has held gang violence flat, but not reduced it, as had been hoped and pledged. The council wanted an accounting.
Everyone complied and met with council members Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. – all except Hamilton County District Attorney Neil Pinkston, who declined, saying he was “too busy.”
Pinkston was not too busy, however, to write a detailed two-page letter to the council and Chattanoogans. Nor was he too busy on Tuesday around noon to call a news conference to share that letter with the media and then spend time being interviewed about it.
In short, he said his office “is not the problem, and I will not allow my staff to bear responsibility for the city’s failure.” Then he announced a plan to form his own “multi-agency gang unit.”