Isolated at the far eastern edge of Memphis, most Cordova residents can happily brag about how peaceful and quiet their neighborhoods are.
by Phil Campbell
Isolated at the far eastern edge of Memphis, most Cordova residents can happily brag about how peaceful and quiet their neighborhoods are.
What they may not realize is, if that peace and quiet were ever disturbed, they might have more problems than they realize. Most of the time, Cordova has only one police officer on patrol, and the Memphis Police Department isn’t necessarily prepared to handle a crisis there, says Central Precinct commander, Inspector Richard Sojourner. And, as one officer who safeguards the area can tell you, getting backup during emergencies from the distant Central Precinct might take 20 minutes — sometimes more than half an hour.
"We don’t get a lot of calls out here, but anything can happen anytime," says Officer Cleve Stewart, who patrols Cordova in the afternoons and evenings. False alarms and traffic concerns occupy much of his time, but no place is immune from violent crime. Recently, Stewart had to handle a domestic disturbance between a woman, a man who had been drinking, and an infant who kept trying to wander out onto Germantown Parkway. When a dispatcher then radioed him to send him somewhere else, Stewart had to ask for backup. The other officer took 40 minutes to arrive.
Sojourner knows he needs more than one officer on patrol in Cordova, but he says he can’t afford to take officers from other areas in his precinct with significantly more crime. At its present growth rate, however, Cordova is rapidly demanding more attention. By the end of June, as many as 777 homes were under construction there and 11,830 homes were already occupied — a number that changes every month. That’s only one or two officers for more than 33,000 people. The average new home in Cordova in 1995 cost $143,306, making it one of Memphis’ wealthiest areas.
The problem of policing the area is two-fold. The officers who work in Cordova have to report to the Central Precinct at 79 S. Flicker, near Union Avenue and Hollywood. This station is closer to Midtown than much of East Memphis, and it makes even a casual drive to the outer edge of Cordova a 25-minute trip.
Secondly, with Shelby Farms to the west and the county to the south, north and east, Cordova is effectively isolated from the rest of Memphis. The only direct route from the city is Walnut Grove, which slices through the county park. Traffic often jams that stretch of road, especially near Baptist Memorial Hospital East during rush hour. The problem worsens with every new house that’s built out in Cordova, Germantown, and the rest of the eastern side of the county.
While this situation does help keep Cordova relatively safe by keeping out idle criminals, it also prevents police from responding to emergencies quickly. A Cordova resident who finds an armed burglar in his home on a Wednesday at 4:15 p.m. could be in serious trouble if the responding officer is stuck in traffic at Walnut Grove and Humphreys Blvd.
"[The lack of more officers] is a concern," Sojourner says, who cites the need to back up his officers as his biggest issue. "My primary concern is protecting the officer." Police dispatchers downtown can call the Shelby County Sheriff’s Department to help an officer in trouble, but a police officer cannot call a deputy in a squad car directly because their radio frequencies are not compatible.
City council member and Cordova resident Brent Taylor says he’s been pushing for a small satellite precinct in the area. "We’d like more officers out there," he says. One of the sticking points has been that Police Director Wallace Winfrey wants a precinct in a high-visibility area such as a shopping center, Taylor says. It’s not likely, though, that a shopping-center owner in an affluent part of town would give the police department free floor space.
MPD spokesman Lt. Richard True says the department is reviewing the possibility of a Cordova precinct, but the idea hasn’t even reached the memo stage yet. "This is down the road, a Cordova precinct and what would probably be called a Southeast precinct," he says. "It hasn’t been determined which is going to be opened first or when."
Usually when they meet, they are on opposites sides of the streets, wary and distrustful. But for a few hours last week, individuals on both sides of the abortion debate got to do just that — debate.
The Committee for an Abortion-free Memphis, a fledgling group of pro-life advocates, held an open meeting last week at the main branch of the Memphis Public Library. According to fliers distributed throughout part of the Evergreen Historic District, the event was apparently meant as an informational gathering about the Memphis Center for Reproductive Health, a facility located in the neighborhood. CFAM members have been protesting in front of the clinic since the group’s inception last February.
Not surprisingly, however, the meeting attracted only a handful of people, who were already polarized on the issue. After a brief program by CFAM member Jim Wright, during which he asked attendees to sign a petition and outlined the group’s plans to investigate possible zoning violations by the center, the meeting was opened up to the floor. The debate quickly became a spirited and wide-ranging discussion of beliefs and opinion.
The CFAM members, led by Wright and Mike Lenahan, expressed their belief that life begins at conception and that abortion is a sin, all the while stressing that they don’t hate abortion providers, but rather worry for their souls.
The pro-choice advocates, including officials with MCRH, Planned Parenthood, and at least one minister, lamented the lack of support services for pregnant women and stressed that CFAM members shouldn’t force their religious beliefs on others.
By the time every one of the 14 people in attendance had voiced their opinions, it became clear that the CFAM meeting was actually dominated by pro-choice supporters, by about eight to six.
Except for occasional outbursts from one CFAM member named Ralph — who after getting increasingly frustrated with pro-choice arguments finally stormed out of the room, shouting "Y’all suck!" as he closed the door behind him — the meeting was marked by civility and a respectful tone.
By meeting’s end, most of those in attendance seemed pleased to have been able to say courteously what before they had had to shout across a busy street. One MCRH official blamed the ugly tone of the abortion debate in part on the media’s tendency to sensationalize the debate by pitting the two sides against each other.
"This is a perplexing issue that, for a variety of reasons, people have made up their minds on," said Mary Frank, a pro-choice advocate in attendance. "That’s okay. We just all need to be more civil."
But others, veterans of the long, heated debate, said that the only good that could come out of such a meeting would be that people respect each other’s right to disagree.
"I’ve been doing this for 10 years, and I’ve never seen it do any good," said Leslie Hester, a volunteer at MCRH. "I think if people want to respect my opinion, they need to stay the hell off my property."
A University of Memphis official says the school will announce the results of its investigation into a brawl between football players and fraternity members by the end of this week, before the last football game of the season.
The university has launched an investigation independent from the Memphis Police Department on the November 11th fight at Club Headliner at 806 E. Brooks Road. The fight took place after the upset win over the University of Tennessee, and it is still shrouded in mystery because everyone claims ignorance. An altercation allegedly involved members of the football team and members of the fraternity Kappa Alpha Psi. According to a police report, bottles and chairs were thrown in the melee, and three people were injured.
U of M dean of students Joseph Pettigrew says the university’s investigation has been taking place for the past four or five days. Numerous students have been questioned.
"We typically don’t try to get involved in anything the students do [off-campus], but this is high-profile," Pettigrew says. "You have the different sororities and fraternities. There were so many students there."
The university sent a press release to the media Friday disputing a WMC-TV Channel 5 report that all Tiger football members had been cleared in the investigation. Channel 5 news director Ken Jobe says the station aired a correction shortly after it realized its mistake.
MPD spokesman Lt. Richard True said Monday that no one had yet to come forward as a witness to the incident. "We’re just kind of waiting to see what happens," he said.
As the Orpheum’s fortunes go, apparently, so go the fortunes of Pat Halloran.
According to recently obtained IRS records, Halloran, president of the Memphis Development Foundation, the nonprofit group which manages The Orpheum, enjoyed a record-high income in 1995, the historic theatre’s most successful year to date.
In the MDF’s 1995 IRS Form 990, filed in May and covering the whole calendar year, Halloran’s total compensation package last year is reported as being worth $277,245, including $73,072 in contributions to benefits plans and deferred compensation. This figure represents a 96 percent increase over the 1994 figure — $140,000 — reported by the Flyer last year in its survey of local nonprofits.
One reason for the seemingly steep pay hike, Halloran says, was that the figure reported in ’94 did not include contributions to his various benefit plans, including his retirement fund, medical insurance, and automobile allowance. In addition, a $5,000 pay raise in ’95 pushed his base salary up to $145,000.
But the biggest windfall to Halloran’s income last year came from an incentive clause in his contract. According to Halloran, he receives bonuses based on how well he and the theatre perform during the year, and, by all accounts, 1995 was the city-owned theatre’s most successful year in 13 seasons. Led by Broadway mega-hits Les Miserables and Cats, The Orpheum took in almost $4.5 million in ticket sales. Halloran’s reward for producing a hit season: a $55,000 bonus.
This summer The Orpheum began an $8 million expansion that will allow it to host bigger productions like Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Phantom of the Opera, which is scheduled for an unprecedented four-week run next winter. The first phase of the expansion, covering the theatre’s exterior, was recently completed at a cost of $6.5 million, $3.5 million of which came in the form of a city-backed loan. Halloran raised the remainder from the private sector. The MDF still needs to raise another $1.5 million to complete work to the theatre’s interior.
The MDF was one of 40 groups targeted by the Flyer this year for its annual survey of local nonprofits. It was the only organization that failed to allow us access to their IRS Form 990 when it was requested. IRS regulations state that a nonprofit’s three most recent 990 returns must be on file and available for public inspection in its main office during normal business hours.
For those who still think "online" is a place to hang the laundry and wouldn’t know a URL from Morse code, Steve Cox is here to help.
"It’s about time that Memphis has a show to introduce the Internet to those that have been dragged into it kicking and screaming," says Cox, an independent Web-page designer who hosts WMC’s Internet Talk. "I want to help people get acquainted with this technology. It’s an evangelistic experience to bring people access to more information than they could get from the Library of Congress."
Internet Talk airs Saturdays at 1 p.m on AM 790. The hour-long show discusses the Internet from a local perspective, with an emphasis on business on the Web and answering the questions of Net novices.
"The show has four types of listeners," Cox says. "There’s the curious beginner, the people who are forced to use the Internet by their bosses, businesses trying to decide if it’s a tool or a toy, and parents who wonder what in the world their kids are talking about."
Cox prepared for his new role as a talk-show host by working for many years as a computer engineer and explaining the complicated world of technology in simple terms to companies like Boeing and Alcoa, "who live and die by computers but don’t necessarily understand them."
After completing his first two shows, Cox was confident that the program was attracting a growing audience. If the program succeeds locally, he hopes it might be syndicated to other cities.
More information and excerpts from past episodes are available on the Web at http://www.internettalk.com.