Thread by @wendi_c_thomas

When you ask @3onyourside @memphisnews and @LocalMemphis to answer obvious questions but they don’t, so you report/write story and THEN they try to call your sources for comment - y’all better say who broke this. Put some respect on @MLK50Memphis’ name.

@3onyourside story is virtually identical to the DA’s press release.

At least @LocalMemphis had the decency to say yeah, we’re just running what the DA wrote.

At least @LocalMemphis had the decency to say: Yeah, we’re just running what the DA sent us. No original reporting here.

I get it. All outlets are short staffed. But I just think it’s telling what we journalists choose to allocate reporting resources to and what we don’t.

I don’t have the time to write this story, but my reporting raises questions of how Collierville Police handles teen drivers.

Three times, Collierville police had interactions with Parker Jackson AFTER HE KILLED TWO PEOPLE and two of those times, there was alcohol in the car. There’s no indication that cops gave him a breathalyzer nor was Jackson cited for a clear violation of open container laws.

This is Gerry and John Longworth. Parker Jackson killed them when he ran a red light in Collierville. He was doing 72 in a 40 mph in what Judge Bobby Carter told the jury was a $70K truck.

This is what the Longworth sedan looked like after Parker Jackson ran into them on Poplar at Bray Station.

This is the speeding ticket Parker Jackson got in 2016 for doing 107 IN A 65 MPH zone.

This is a photo of 2015 BMW I8, the same make/model/year of the car 17-year-old Parker Jackson was driving when he got caught doing 107 in a 65 in Texas.

The BMW Parker Jackson was driving when he was 17 in Texas has a MSRP of $137,500.

Collierville Police created this memo five months after they caught Parker Jackson, who had killed two people in a traffic collision, in a car with an open whiskey bottle.

The underage driver was only cited for “caution to be exercised.” Not a open container violation.

This is @ShelbyJuvenile Judge Dan Michael. Listen to his suburban-inner City rationale of why the court detains (discriminates if you believe the DOJ which Michael does not).

I don’t know if Parker Jackson had contact with Collierville police or any police as a minor. But if you recall, the previous @ShelbyJuvenile judge had to send a memo to suburban police departments directing them to follow the law and bring teens they were stopping to court.

Suburban police departments were taking kids home or too their parents for infractions that had those same teens lives in Memphis, they’d be processed at juvenile court. Judge Curtis Person told the suburban departments to follow the law.

But because MPD follows the law (and also likely overpolices some n’hoods but that’s another thread) @ShelbyJuvenile Judge Michael can accurately say: Most of the kids we see are black (live in the city) so those are the kids we detain.

But no one stops to ask: So why aren’t you seeing more white kids if the county is like 46 percent white? Are we to believe that NO white kids are doing stupid and illegal stuff teens do? What systems could be allowing white kids to bypass juvenile court?

We KNOW that suburban police departments were giving suburban kids passes - that’s why Judge Person sent them the memo - and since the suburbs are predominantly white then it follows that the kids who do get ensnared at Juvenile Court are disproportionately black.

So for all the news outlets that uncritically ran the DA’s press release and are now scrambling to reproduce the reporting/story that took me five hours max to report and write, feel free to use this thread to inform your reporting. We’re all in this together.

@ShelbyJuvenile Judge Dan Michael loves to trot out the trope of a single black mom with kids and the babies’ daddies ain’t around so the court HAS to get involved.

You know who else wasn’t around? Parker Jackson’s dad. Jackson had a drug/alcohol problem and killed two people.

2006 @WMCActionNews5: “Judge Person recently asked Germantown and Bartlett courts to stop processing first-time juvenile offenders by passing Juvenile Court in Downtown Memphis.”

I’ve written about @ShelbyJuvenile lots, including this: mlk50.com/federal-monito…

And here: mlk50.com/shelby-county-…

And here: mlk50.com/juvy-courts-di…

At the breakfast where the DA and county sheriff and county mayor asked the DOJ to release them from federal oversight, @MayorMemphis was there.

He did not intervene, although he is aware or should be aware that the court continues to discriminate against black children.

Anywho, if I seem frustrated that this case hasn’t gotten the scrutiny it deserves, it’s because I am. This is what happens when local news outlets have too few reporters/resources to hold powerful systems accountable.

And the outlets that ARE well-resourced (@ericbarnes2 and @dailymemphian I’m looking at you) short-sightedly announced from the start they weren’t covering crime until the chamber president got killed downtown and then that changed quickly.

When there’s nobody to keep tabs on powerful systems that exploit the poor/marginalized, those systems grow stronger. They might even get a county mayor who’s already broken his campaign promise to end the status quo to invest millions to prop up those systems. 🤷🏽‍♀️

In conclusion, support nonprofit newsrooms that are committed to meeting the public’s info needs with content that’s not behind a paywall and is available to anyone, such as @MLK50Memphis and @ChalkbeatTN.

donatenow.networkforgood.org/mlk50/mobile