Armstrong Squares Off with City Council

Memphis, Tn - It seemed the perfect setting for the city's top cop to be on the scene, to calm the fears of two City Council members in obvious distress.

But, for stoic Memphis Police Director Toney Armstrong, Tuesday's successive meetings of the Memphis City Council Audit and Public Safety Committees found him staring down twin-barrels of criticism from Councilwoman Wanda Halbert and colleague Jim Strickland.

Halbert's consternation centered on the aftermath of the disturbing results of a city audit of MPD's Organized Crime Unit released earlier this year. She joined fellow councilwoman Janis Fullilove in calling for a federal forensic audit to determine if the more than 200-thousand dollars in overtime pay and expenses allegedly doled out to MPD cops from the city's drug fund should dictate criminal action.

Despite being repeatedly told the audit results had been turned over to both the TBI and the FBI for their perusals, Halbert remained dissatisfied with what she felt was a lack of aggressiveness by the Wharton administration in addressing the problems the audit revealed. Armstrong's response basically amounted to "Don't worry. We've got it covered."

"We've forwarded the copies of the audit to what we feel like are the appropriate investigative bodies and it's in their hands and they'll make the determination as to whether or not they feel a further investigation is unwarranted," said Armstrong.

The second half of Armstrong's twin-bill appearance was a semi-dress down lecture on protocol from Councilman Strickland. Strickland took issue with the way the administration had created an "image problem" for the city in openly talking about the discovery of 79,000 memos on crimes before a full analysis of how they impacted actual crime reduction figures had been completed. So, when did "honesty become the worst policy?"

"Some portion of the public now things the figures were wrong. And now what we've learned today is that it's 20 percent of one out of 15 which is an extraordinary small number and it's no violent crimes," lectured Strickland.

"As you know, the Mayor has made several statements about transparency in government. We owned it. We basically stepped forward and said yes, it's true and this is what we're doing to correct the problem," retorted Armstrong.