Meet the Violent Crimes Unit, MPD's answer to homicide wave

Just after midnight on Jan. 21, three men in a Nissan Maxima pulled up to another car on Cherry Road and opened fire, killing a 15-year-old boy and wounding two others.

By the next day, all three of those suspects — Demarcus Johnson, 21, Frederick Wilson, 19, and Otha Ray, 20 — were behind bars, each charged with one count of first-degree murder and three counts of attempted first-degree murder.

Memphis Police Department officials point to the formation of the new Violent Crimes Unit for not only solving that homicide but also for swiftly catching the suspects. Started just that day, the new VCU was directly involved in that case, not only in providing manpower but also offering specialized gang knowledge that helped lead to the shooters, officials said this week.

"When the homicide bureau made the call out, they realized very quickly that they needed additional resources. Several officers from the VCU made the scene. They started canvassing the neighborhood, looking for video. They also realized there could be a gang component, so they contacted the Multi-Agency Gang Unit. When they got involved, they saw some names and were able to fill in some of the blanks as far as the gangs," said MPD Maj. Darren Goods, who has been appointed to lead the new unit. "We brought all of those resources to bear, and they were quickly able to identify the shooters. That made it successful to make those arrests."

The VCU is the latest attempt by police officials to stem the tide of violent crime in Memphis, a city that set a new homicide record with 228 killings in 2016. The unit is made up of five distinct MPD bureaus: homicide, the gang unit, the Safe Streets Task Force, Project Safe Neighborhoods and the Investigative Support Unit. The Organized Crime Unit is not included, however. Police were also reluctant to divulge exactly how many people will be a part of the VCU, saying it might provide an advantage to criminals.

While those units aren't being merged into one single unit or relocated to work under the same roof, they are being linked together to better share resources, police officials said.

Memphis Homicide Tracker - The Commercial Appeal

"The goal of the Violent Crimes Unit is to bring all these units together so they’re sharing resources, sharing information and making a more concentrated effort on their investigation," MPD Lt. Col. Don Crowe said. "It’s the linking them together, getting them to work together instead of independently."

Added Goods: "When you bring additional resources to bear, and when you can laser focus on any investigation in particular, I think you have a better chance to solve it."

While Goods said the unit will target any pattern of violent crime, such as carjackings, sexual assaults and the like, the impetus for the unit's creation was clearly last year's record-setting homicide number.

"Anytime you have 228 homicides as we did last year, of course the thing that grabs the most attention will be the homicides. But this group is going to be very fluid. It will use the same resources toward any patterns in crimes of violence," Goods said. "If there’s a series of aggravated assaults or shootings where there seems to be a pattern, this unit is fluid enough so that it can respond to all those violent crime issues."

Mayor Jim Strickland said MPD Director Michael Rallings first approached him with the idea earlier this year, and he gave his approval.

"I was all for it because frankly he said he thought it was needed. He and I talk almost daily about our violent crime rate. We have a much too violent society that’s reflected in Memphis. We set that awful homicide record last year. We’ve really focused on how we reduce the level of violent crime," Strickland said. "I appreciated Director Rallings working with his team and coming up with this innovation to try to address our violent crime rate."