The video released today of the officer-involved fatal shooting of Mr. Hambrick is troubling. The video appears to show Mr. Hambrick being fatally shot in the back while running away from the officer. I will reserve final judgment until the investigation is complete and all of the evidence is released. But, this video suggests that MNPD’s active interdiction policies led to a traffic stop for “erratic driving” which in turn led to a fatal shooting in the back.

Nashville prides itself on coming together as a community to solve difficult problems. I call on Mayor Briley and Chief Anderson to not just conduct a policy review, but to immediately, openly, and transparently examine whether MNPD's interdiction policies are having a racially discriminatory impact in Nashville. I call on Mayor Briley and Chief Anderson to immediately support the creation of a community board to participate lawfully in police policy-making and in reviewing officer discipline matters.America is an experiment in democracy. America strives to be a more perfect union. Nashville has been and remains an active part of the experiment. Just as America wrote slavery into her Constitution, Nashville from the beginning was built on the backs of enslaved people. In the 1800s, the institutions of Nashville’s government allowed enslaved people to be sold on its public grounds and to be hung from its bridges. From the Hermitage to Belle Meade to Ft. Negley to the State Capitol, forced labor, bondage, and slavery literally built Nashville.

When the Civil War ended slavery, prejudice held fast. We know it took another 100 years before Congress passed the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act. Did legal desegregation end all systemic government discrimination? We know intuitively that it did not.

Beyond intuition, we know that the 2016 Gideon’s Army report documented that African Americans in Nashville are pulled over for traffic stops more frequently than white drivers. The claim by some is that this difference is entirely due to policing strategies that focus on high crime areas. But talk to black Nashvillians. I won’t recount their stories here, but know that they get pulled over more often and in more places than I do.

This is a difficult topic. For black citizens, it is husbands and sons, and wives and daughters, being pulled over. For officers, the perceived implication that there might be intentional bias is insulting. For all, it is intensely personal and further evidence of a need to unite everyone by creating just policies and review.

Everyone agrees that active discrimination must be rooted out and eliminated. The real challenge is how to talk about implicit, unconscious bias. And unfortunately, while MNPD trains its officers about implicit bias, its highest leadership previously has denied that officers or policies ever exhibit any implicit bias. This approach is confusing. MNPD leadership acknowledges that unconscious racially discriminatory bias exists generally in our society, but has denied it exists in MNPD.

There are strong historical and current reasons to want to ask whether there is a racial bias either in setting policing strategies in Nashville, or in the impact those policies have. As a city, Nashville must insist on asking where and how bias and prejudice may be baked into our institutions. Does the policy choice to create flex units or task forces that intentionally seek confrontation as a strategy to interdict crime have a racially discriminatory and deadly impact? Asking and answering these questions is required if we want a more perfect union.

This is not an academic question. Twice in 18 months in Nashville, these interdiction policies led to traffic stops where white officers shot and killed black men. At the highest levels, the city must examine whether policy choices are a contributing cause of these shootings, and the city must examine whether the impact is racially discriminatory. Confronting these issues head on will lead to a more just Nashville for all of us.