Weekly Update

Friends,

The next time you see one of our police service technicians — they’re the women and men in the khaki uniforms, in the white cars with the yellow lights — I want you to do two things:

1. Thank them for their service to Memphis.
   
2. Understand just how important they are in our fight against violent crime.

PSTs primarily work traffic control and minor traffic accidents, which means that our commissioned officers have more time and freedom to increase patrols and combat violent crime. As much as it’s important that we rebuild the Memphis Police Department with new officers — and we have, with 450 new officers and counting since I took office — it’s just as important that we enable the officers we have to make the best use of their time.

It’s called force multiplying. Now that we have PSTs on the streets taking on more fundamental tasks, we have more officers in your neighborhood.

I bring this up because today, in just a few hours, we’ll welcome our latest graduating class of police service technicians to the department. Once that’s official, we’ll be fully staffed in our PST program with 125 PSTs — the culmination of three and a half years of hard work since we launched the initiative.

Even better, many of our PSTs are there because of our trailbazing Blue Path program, which enables future officers to start their training as a PST, all while getting a free education at Southwest Tennessee Community College.

Thanks to Police Director Michael Rallings and his team, and to Chief Human Resources Officer Alex Smith and her team for making this happen. And thanks, first and foremost, to our PSTs, who are a critical part of the Best in Blue.

Speaking of Director Rallings: I hope you saw by now where Director Rallings was named the police chief of the year in Tennessee by the state association at its annual meeting last weekend. It’s a deserved honor for our great director, and I’m proud of his leadership.

Not to be outdone: Gina Sweat, our Fire chief, was profiled in the Memphis Flyer this week. I am so proud to have appointed Chief Sweat, our first female fire chief in Memphis history. And I’m even more proud of the innovative work she and her team are doing at MFD.

Jobs in July: Part of our role in government is to help create an environment in which people who need jobs can connect with companies offering them. That’s exactly what we did last month. Thousands of people turned out for our Jobs In July event — and more than 100 walked away with a job that day.

It was a great success, and we’re looking forward to doing another event in the fall.

Yours,