Police departments across the country deploy plainclothes squads of officers in unmarked cars to tackle increasing crime rates. But these groups billed by departments as teams of “elite” officers often employ aggressive tactics.
A car with dark tinted windows circles the block a few times before swerving onto the sidewalk. A handful of armed plainclothes police officers jump out and order everyone out of a double-parked car so they can search it, striking terror in the seconds before red and blue lights flash or an officer yells “police.
“Obviously it's a complicated issue, and they are responding to a tangible problem being whatever crime of the day they are formed to address — guns, gang violence, narcotics. But Memphis is not an outlier here,” said Hans Menos, vice president of the Triage Response Team at the Center for Policing Equity. “I don't see any other option we have as a country but to say this is not working. This is leading to pain, injury and death.
Department leaders have said the officers turned on their flashing lights before 12-year-old Thomas T.J. Siderio, allegedly fired a shot at the car. One of the officers chased down Siderio, fatally shooting him in the back as he fled. Prosecutors who charged that officer with murder said the boy was unarmed when he was shot.
In Memphis, police Director Cerelyn “CJ” Davis started the Street Crimes Operations to Restore Peace In Our Neighborhoods unit when she took over the department in 2021. The team of about 40 officers was designed to focus on repeat violent offenders after three years of rising violence in the city, including a record number of homicides in 2021.
“The narrative that if this team was a problem, it was unique. Well, it’s not. ... It’s not bad apples,” he said. “The reliance of departments on these young specialized units is one of the biggest structural problems in policing that could exist. They are operating with impunity in largely Black communities that are historically overpoliced. And we are compounding that problem by putting these overly aggressive, results-only oriented officers in those neighborhoods.
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