The Hamilton County district attorney who hasn’t had the time to meet with the Chattanooga City Council or mayor has certainly found plenty of time lately to issue news releases and give press interviews.
Friday brought yet another volley of missives, including one to acknowledge service of the City Council’s subpoena, to inform us about his continuing beef with the city’s anti-gang program called the Violence Reduction Initiative, and to reiterate that he’ll ignore the council’s subpoena.
He credited you taxpayers and local residents with his reasoning: “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. The community’s sentiment confirms my own inclination and I will not appear before Chattanooga’s council next Tuesday.”
Pinkston did acknowledge that next week he and Mayor Berke will be “meeting to discuss next steps and ways to make sure the Violence Reduction Initiative is as effective as it can possibly be. I remain committed to the city’s initiative, as I always have been.”
Finally! We all may witness a step in the right direction at long last. If these two power brokers – the mayor and his people vs. the DA and his people – can finally put behind them this
game of who dissed whomand who can make the next disrespectful dismissal against whom, then perhaps local streets can once again become a bit a safer.
Although VRI was adopted going on two years ago, the number of gang-related shootings has stayed level, not dropped as had been pledged. The city has faulted Pinkston and his office for not prioritizing VRI cases. Pinkston has said “the law doesn’t work that way” and faulted police work.
The reality is closer to what the architect of the program said at VRI’s inception. David Kennedy director of the National Network for Safe Communities, a project of John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said that when initiatives like Chattanooga’s VRI fail, the most common reason is “political infighting.”
That’s where we are and where we’ve been. Political infighting – mainly the grandstanding of Pinkston, who seemingly prefers to tell his side of this circus through news releases and in front of hastily gathered TV cameras rather than in front of council members and residents in a public forum with actual dialogue.
Oh, but wait: That’s what he said all of you in the community have been advising him to do, right? Your “steady influx of community feedback” apparently has said: Don’t talk to the folks we elected to represent us. Write news releases instead.