Crime is down. Can you feel it?

I'm Blake Farmer and this is Nashville. Well my six year old was in tears last night. She buried her head in my wife's side and we were like what is going on? This is not like her. I mean she does cry but usually for other effect. And we finally got it out of her that she was really worried about what would happen if our house burned down. Where would we live? Would we be homeless? She was kind of spiraling for a moment, very unlike her and I told her how we'd handle it. We got insurance and then tried to explain just how unlikely it is that our house burned just down. I mean I've never experienced a house fire and neither is my wife. Our house is 50 years old. I mentioned never burned down in that time. Not sure how helpful any of that was but she eventually settled down and I bring this up because the way we feel about our safety is not directly correlated. To data and logic. If it were we would feel safer than we have ever in our lives here in Nashville. The number of robberies in Nashville last year, fewest since 1969, recorded burglaries hit the lowest level on record for the city on record and that's back when the city was about half of the size it is now. And yet survey data tells us something very different. Public safety, sentiment research in Davidson County finds only a few of us feel like crime is going down, which it is. And even those who feel safe in town feel like crime is on their eyes and fewer people feel safe today than than just a year prior. It's our crime and safety contradiction. And on today's show, we're going to hear from a co-chair of Mayor Fredio Connell's Community Safety Task Force, a resident of North Nashville who used to sleep on the floor for fear of a stray gunshot coming through the house and a therapist who can talk to us a little bit about fear and anxiety and help explain us to us. And your voice is really important today because safety is as much about perception as it is reality. Help us explain why it may not feel like crime is going down. You can comment anytime on our video stream at the WPL and YouTube page, the phone number to join live on air 615-760-2000. Here is Mayor Fredio Connell himself from a recent address talking through some of these numbers. We're going to get back to that clip. But basically the mayor Fredio Connell has talked quite a bit about this and also talked about that even if crime is going down, it still is a problem if people don't feel safe. Our first guest was appointed by the mayor to chair this new Community Safety Task Force. Lawnale Matthews is Metro Nashville's juvenile court clerk, also a former Metro council member and a Nashville native. Welcome to this is Nashville. Thank you Blake, I appreciate the invitation to be here and look forward to the conversation. All right, well let's, we've got that clip ready to go here. Mayor Fredio Connell. Crime in Nashville is down in every category and a 12% overall reduction year over year. It's down in every police precinct across the county. We had robbery and burglarier levels drop as low as we've seen since the 1960s, which is remarkable. It's down thanks to the excellent work of the Metro Nashville Police Department and our first responders. But it's also down because of the work of many community partners and neighbors in every part of the city engaging on the topic of safety. Over the past few years we've strengthened and expanded co-response models distinguishing better between crisis and crime. And we want Nashvilleians leaning into the conversation and taking responsibility for one another to help drive these kinds of results. We all play a part in making Nashville safer. We need many voices, minds and efforts, expertise and experience pulling together to keep this momentum into 2026. Because if anyone feels unsafe in our community, it means we have work to do. It means we can and should do more. Well, doing more is kind of what we're talking about today. So a lot of Matthews, the community safety task force that you're going to co-chair, was it sort of created in response to this contradiction we're talking about where people, crimes going down, but people don't necessarily feel it? I feel like, and I don't want to put words in in Marlconnell's mouth of why he created the task force. But I do feel that was one of the things driving the need for creating this task force. I think the mayor also has goals to make Nashville one of the safest communities in the country regardless of how improved our crime statistics have become. There's always room to improve and be better. But I do think that the community, filling out the community sentiment that Nashville is still a somewhat unsafe community is one of the reasons the task force was convened. And one of the reasons the mayor wants to hear from community voices on what are some other solutions that we should be putting in place as a city. And we're going to hear from some community voices today. Nashville's already coming in the number 6157602000. Hold on there. We'll get to you shortly. But well, no, I wonder, do you feel like Nashville is a safer city than the Nashville that you and I grew up in about the same time? So personally, I feel like Nashville, honestly, I feel like Nashville is just as safe as it's always been. Nashville, I haven't really ever felt unsafe in Nashville. You know, I feel like there are parts of Nashville that people avoid because of reputation or what they perceive about certain parts of Nashville. There are certain activities that people, certain distance themselves or they avoid becoming engaged with. But safety really is defined differently by everyone's lived experience. And I think that is really driving some of Nashville's feeling unsafe is how they actually define safety. It's safe to me may not be safe for a Latino mother who is raising her kids in the political climate that we're in nationally, right? And because of our lived experiences being different. And so I think you have to take into account all of that when you think about safety for a city. It can become a really broad topic and have a broad definition. But I think the mayor wants to be responsive to all of those lived experiences. Yeah. You know, we invited folks from Metro Police to join the show today and the scheduling didn't work out quite right for Chief John Drake to join because he's out of town. However, one of my questions and I hope you might be able to answer or illuminate some of this. Like, could any of this be that police are just not making as many arrests because they're a little less aggressive in some ways than they used to be? Some some of that may be true. And again, I don't want to speak for the police. But I think also us putting things in place like the co-response model having mental health co-oper professionals go out with first responders on calls to decipher whether there's an actual crime taking place or a mental health crisis makes a difference in other words that might have been an arrest previously because that's all the only action they had to take. And now it's like, hey, can you go with me? We're going to go to mental health co-op. Certainly. So, you know, destigmatizing, decriminalizing some of the things that historically were looked at as criminal, but may have been mental health issues may have been substance abuse issues, may have been other issues that are social determinants that we have just put in this box of criminal activity in the past. To listeners, have you reported crimes that, you know, you never saw a result in an investigation or an arrest? Tell us about your experience. The number 615-760-2000. We're going to go ahead and take our first call, Jeremy in Antioch. You're on this as Nashville. Go ahead. Hey, how you doing? So, my comment is that in the last 10 years we've lived in the same house in Antioch, and it's felt really safe for the first five years, but again in the last 10 years we've had two neighbors get shot, one of them died. Oh, my. We are not that far from the waffle house that had a mass shooting at it, nor the church that's down here in Antioch that had a mass shooting at it. In Antioch, high school just had another school shooting or at least one. So like the crime may be going down and it's great that burglary has gone down, but the shooting feels like it's going up. At least that's how it feels to me because that's what I've experienced. Well, and you make a good point, Jeremy, that like listen, the experience in your neck of the woods could feel very different than somebody, you know, in North Nashville. And even in this public safety sentiment research that came out, I guess the interviews were done in September, it showed that South Nashville really did have, there was more concern about safety. What are you, what are you seeing when it comes to like the data that comes across your desk in the juvenile court clerk's office? So there, there have been a lot of, I guess, reaction or responses to displacement of nationalities. We've grown tremendously as a city. And with population growth comes issues like gentrification, displacement and when you have displacement, you tend to see crime either shift or you see crime numbers fluctuate in different parts of the city. city and we're experiencing some of that. You also have root causes, social determinants like economy. So poverty is driving some of the crime that that happens. It could be mental health issues, again, substance abuse issues. All of these things are feeding into the symptom that is seen as crime at the end of the day. Well, and statewide, according to Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health from 2014 to 2023. So basically a decade. The overall gun death rate did increase in the state of Tennessee anyway. So statewide by 46%. So Jeremy's got his finger on something there. I'm Blake Farmer. This is Nashville. Today we're talking about the contradiction between how safe we feel and how safe perhaps we are in middle Tennessee. Our next guest has lived in Nashville for, you know, better part of two decades. And when she moved to the north side, gun shots were so frequent that she and her daughter would sleep on the floor. But a lot has changed in the last decade. Businesswoman Stephanie Nezbid, thank you for joining us. Thank you for having me. Tell us about your neighborhood. It's drastically changed. But about 10, 11 years ago when we moved and we chose to move in North Nashville, we had every opportunity to move anywhere else in the city. Brentwood, LeVern, Smurna, all those places in Yock. But we chose to live in the city and invest the roots in North Nashville knowing the history that was behind it. But we figure we could do this, right? We could grow, move into a neighborhood, have young children, thrive in that neighborhood and make this a community for us. And the history, meaning that it's been historically the black part of even when it was in a kind of officially Jim Crow segregated south, it was the historically black part of that. Absolutely. And we heard all the grumlings of gentrification and so that also made us want to submit this. Oh, almost like fight back against the gentrification. Yes, absolutely. And lots of conversations, you know, I can't believe you're going to move over there. I'm like, we're going to be really. Yeah. We're almost saying like, are you sure you want to be? Absolutely. Absolutely. Because 37208 specifically has been from my understanding, you correct me from wrong line now, the highest incarceration rate in the nation. Yeah, famously. Famously, right? There's documentaries out about that. And so knowing that moving in, it's like, what am I doing? But, you know, the contract was already signed. We were already set to go. And once we signed the contract, we learned about there was a group home that was across the street from us. And that really caused some pause about what does this mean and not anything against the people that live there. I understand those residents are important. When you say group home, you're talking about maybe kind of like folks transitioning. Transition of housing. They might have been in jail prison. Yeah. Yeah. Addicts or whatever the case is in their starting life, right? Yeah. But what I also learned about that is when North Nashville was selling for pennies on a dollar. And people will go in and buy 20 properties and transition them into these transitional homes or group homes. It was a more affordable place to do that kind of work. Absolutely. But there wasn't the the the flight of people moving there at that time. But going back to your point as far as my daughter and I, yeah, with the first few three or four years that we live there, it was a constant thing that I would have the emergency number on speed down. And they would always ask like, you know, do you want the police to stop by your house? And I'm like, no, I don't want to be the person they call the police. And they're stopping by my house. So absolutely not. You're saying, so what kinds of things were happening that got you to call the, I guess, eight six six to eighty six hundred eight six hundred absolutely. Well, it would be the multiple gunshots and they sound very close and I could say it's probably coming from cockerel. It's probably coming from Willis or it's probably coming from, you know, somewhere that was very close in proximity to my home. And so knowing that I kind of got on the, you know, I'm thinking they know me list because I feel like I got the same person every time I call. But in to your point, one thing for safety for me is to get low, right? So I grew up in Memphis, you know, inner city kid and all those things. And so I understand when these things happen, what to do to be sure that you're safe. And I had a small daughter at the time and we would go high, you know, to the up level and we would lay low on the floor to make me feel comfortable. That doesn't mean that someone was targeting me or my home with their news. You could sleep better. I could sleep better. Absolutely. Wow. So when was the last time you slept on the floor? It's been a while. It's been a multiple years. So that first, like I said, that three to four years were pretty tough. All of these thighs may be four to five years. I've been better. Not to say that they're have not been gunshots. They're not as frequent. They don't feel as close. And I have a better sense of community. There's community policing. I know all of my neighbors now. At the time, I just had the group home. There was no one else I knew over there. Now there's people that I've known that to been there since '98. They're right across from us. There's a family that moved in shortly after us. There's a couple that's moved in. They moved in migrated from New Jersey. They heard about North Nashville. And that's where they wanted to be. And so they're their renters or homeowners. They are all the things. But they're my community first and foremost. Before we asked you to do this, would you have thought much about that? Like if you feel safer today than you did five years ago? Absolutely. It is. It is. It is. It is. It's prevalent. But safety to me is not only the guns and the shooting. It's also the traffic of the vehicle traffic, the transportation traffic that comes around. Where we specifically live, I've had three or four cars over the past few years, literally running our yard. Right? So the point, do I want my kids to ride their bikes on the sidewalk because it doesn't feel safe? Do I want to park my car in a driveway or have my visitors park on the street? Because the traffic in the neighborhood, the comment of the traffic has not increased and I feel that people are going faster than they have before. You know, we actually got a call about this ahead of the show that it once when I heard it, I thought, that's I guess that's somewhat related to what we're talking about. But you're kind of bringing it home here, teeing it up. So let's listen to it. We got this message before the show from Sarah. I've lived here for 14 years and the one thing that I feel is just getting more and more unsafe and I don't know a way to change it is traffic and how people are behaving on the roads nowadays. I myself use electric longboards to get around the city as much as I can. So I rely heavily on those greenways and the bike lanes and everything so that I'm not in a vehicle being stuck in traffic. I can kind of pop off onto a greenway and go from my area to next to TSU all the way over to Shelby Bottoms in about a 45-minute ride. But people are not respecting pedestrian crosswalks, bike lanes, anything like that. It almost feels like it's become a game for people to try and drive you off the road if you're there or try to hit you off your pedestrian. And PDS spreads so thin and they're so understaffed and that they have bigger issues to deal with and bigger for sure than traffic stops and everything. But I think it is teaching people and vehicles that they're not getting caught for this behavior. So they can continue to do this behavior and it is severely becoming a very dangerous issue. So Stephanie Nezboe, can you kind of put a finer point on this that there's something about these things that don't feel exactly like crimes but people not being aware of pedestrians or street traffic being dangerous that goes into your overall sense of safety? Yeah, I'll give an example. About three or four years ago there was a school bus stop directly in front of our home and there were these two black boys I'll call them out specifically. I don't know their names, but I would see them walking down the street to catch the bus in front of our home. But they would be there faster, sooner than the bus would arrive. And so I would stay at home. I would not leave for work until those kids got on the bus. Because one, I wanted to make sure that I knew the exact time that they were going to be there that they actually showed up on the corner, right? I didn't know where they lived and I wanted to make sure they got on the bus. And I also wanted to make sure that no car came down the road to run them over or harassed them or anything like that. And so with the traffic, I've talked through to all the traffic people that I could talk to, especially when I first moved there to get speed bumps or we had some signs put up. We got a flashing light. I got some things put up. But there was this one thing they do about once or twice a year of asking home owners to have partition signed and you get these people to sign partition. You have to have so many to do it before they actually implement. Or to get like a speed hump or something like that. But to me, that's a biased stance. That's the anticipation or the thought process that everyone knows a neighbor, that everyone feels comfortable asking someone to sign a piece of paper and going to their home and saying, Hey, will you sign this? Because they may not want to speed home. They may not want that in the neighborhood. So I've advocated it for a few years. And now I think I'm at the point with most of my neighbors that we are all on board to get something going. And I think the next year this comes around, I think we'll be in a better place. But that is an assumption that people have that camaraderie with a neighbor. Well, we're talking safety and how safe we feel in Nashville. We need to take our first break. When we come back, we're going to bring in a therapist to the party, talk about how anxiety and fear work a bit with this. We're taking your calls as we look at this contradiction about how safe we are and how safe we feel. Do you feel safer than you did in Nashville five years ago, 10 years ago? Join us on air with your experience 6157602000 or you can comment on the WPL and YouTube page. We're streaming videos. Stay with us. This is Nashville. You know, when I was growing up in East Nashville, it was seen as a risky place to raise a child and to be sure there were a lot of thefts. Cars broken into somewhat regularly. I don't even know how many times our cars are broken into when I was in third grade. I was kicked off my bike while riding it through the alley behind Edgefield, Badridge Church. And someone stole my new, Huffy right there. One time recycling Christmas tree and he's parked a kid pulled a gun out on me and asked for my money, which I didn't have any. These are the kind of things that could happen anytime, anywhere. And the numbers show us that they're happening less according to the latest crime stats, res for robberies, burglaries are about as low as they've ever been. And yet we feel like crime is getting worse. Are we being irrational? What's going on here? We welcome to the conversation, Emily DeSalvatore, a therapist who specializes in anxiety. Hi. Thanks for having me. We also have juvenile court clerk, Lotto Matthews and North National resident Stephanie Nez, but sticking with us as we take your calls, we know that roughly half of us regularly opt out of activities based on our perceived safety. That's from this public safety, sentiment research we've been talking about. How have you changed plans based on how safe you feel? The number 6157602000. Emily, what goes into making us feel safe? Ooh, good question. Well, first thing I really liked what Lotto said about how our sense of safety is developed through our lived experience. You know, some of us are more prone to feeling more intense emotions or fear or anxiety. We all know what anxiety feels like. We all know what fear is and what that feels like for us. We all feel it at different intensities and whatnot. But based on that, you know, out of our lived experience, you know, what's happening around us, our context clues, and our own biological makeup and our ability to detect threat and fear, you know, we're all going to have different experiences of what is safe. You know, what's safe to me might be different than what's safe to Stephanie. I also am a Nashville resident and live in South Nashville. And I feel very safe. And that doesn't mean that somebody else in South Nashville feels that same way. Stephanie was talking about gunshots. I'm sure there's some listeners who are like, if I heard gunshots at my house, I'd be calling police until they come right to my house. You know, that kind of thing. Right. Right. And so our bodies are incredible. They are this threat detection system. However, through our lived experience, you know, that can change. Our response to different sounds or stimuli, you know, where I might hear a loud pop and think, "Oh, who's having a birthday party? Are there balloons?" Stephanie might hear gunshots. You know, my husband and I joke because it's all, it's probably like once a day, there's something on next door, the app, you know, the neighborhood app, where it's like, "Don't you hear gunshots?" And in my neighborhood, probably 99% of the time, it's not. It's not. So, you know, I think everybody's different experience, that matters. And if you've had an experience or you've lived through a traumatic event where you've had to lay on the floor, your experience is going to be different. Well, I do wonder though, do past experiences like, I don't know, being the victim of a crime or even just like a witness to a crime, does that necessarily make us feel safe or could it almost make you feel like, "Okay, this is, I don't know if normalize this the right word?" Yeah, so I mean, it really depends. I mean, trauma is such a broad field. And every individual is different. So like, us four could all experience the exact same traumatic event and all process it very differently. So again, like, my past history or your past history, things that have happened to us in our lifetimes and our ability to be resilient, it changes our outcome of what comes out of that trauma. You know, we know that fear and anxiety can be reprocessed effectively in therapy, but not everybody processes the exact same event the same way. And so, you know, your previous experience of, let's say we, you experience, we all experience some event, like your previous learning, your learning of how to process emotion, fear, is it even okay to show fears? It's okay to be scared. Our experience of feeling those things and normalize and like, that those emotions are okay, is going to affect how we process that outcome. Yeah. Lonell, I hear you kind of nodding along there. What does that bring up for you? Well, early when you asked me, do I feel safe? I think part of that is because I have normalized some things that are very traumatic. And I also think that my perspective has changed as I've got an older, so I'm less risk averse now than I used to be. You would take more risks now. No, I used to take more risks when I was younger. Well, no, so I'm more risk averse. You're right. I'm more risk averse now. I got it. I avoid risk because I'm older, so I don't go out late at night. I don't go to night clubs. I don't hang out in these same spaces. I'm also a parent. And so as Stephanie was talking, I thought about that perspective of I'm concerned more about my child safety than my own, in most cases. So I will put myself in probably an unsafe situation to prevent them from being an unsafe situation. We're walking down the sidewalk. I'm going to put my child to the inside so that if a car does jump the curb, they're going to hit me first instead of my child. And so I think, normalizing, I'm not a medical expert. So I think it's a thing, but I also think that trauma informs that. Right. To listeners here, how have you felt after, you know, even just I hear people feeling almost violated for a while after having their car broken into, even though nothing was taken, let's say, but being a witness of a crime to some kind of just being within some proximity where you know a crime has occurred. How did that change every day life? Stephanie, you were talking about your daughter and moving to a neighborhood that people almost like warned you against that has improved a ton in terms of safety. But I wonder how you felt were you anxious for your own daughter thinking like, have I put her in an unsafe position? Yes, absolutely I was. And there was times that my spouse would be like, what do you just want to move? I was like, that's not the answer. We can't just pick up and move like, what are we going to do? So, but I don't know necessarily that my kids have ever felt unsafe. Right. So it is to Lionel's point. It is the data doesn't erase the history. Right. And so- But would you consider that like a good thing? And I say that kind of with my story growing up in East Nashville, I think it helped me feel more safe generally. Yeah. I think is that good for your child? I guess what I'm asking. Yes, it absolutely is. They don't they love the neighborhood, you know, they know me and the neighbors. We know they go outside and they play and they do all these things. There are not many young kids on our street, but they have each other. I have more than a daughter. I have a son as well, but he he came a few years later. Yeah. Well, interested to hear know how listeners are feeling about this because the how safe we feel. Boy, that's different to a person. And then when you start to bring in the parent a point, yeah, we all feel differently. And how much risk we're we're going to allow our little ones to feel 615, 760, 2000. Or you can chime in on our video stream at the WPL and YouTube page. A, I guess we'll just call them an anonymous user message here and said one of the reasons that the crime numbers are down is that the police won't show up for a lot of calls. Numbers are down because the police are ignoring huge parts of their jobs. So, you know, kind of an accusation there on ignoring parts of their jobs, but there certainly fewer arrests. Lonella as you were talking about that there that is intentional to to in some some ways, correct? Yeah, I think decriminalizing things that probably historically should not have been criminalizing in the first place, it's definitely been one of the goals of local government for the past decade or so. And making sure that we are keeping the main thing, the main thing. So if it is a crime, let's be, let's be very explicit in defining what is criminal. And not criminalizing things that are just being human, right? And having misfortune or being a product of your environment, because of certain stipulations or restrictions that have been systematically enforced upon you. The number to join us on air 615-760-2000. Let's go to the phones. Carolyn, you're on this as Nashville. Go ahead. Well, Carolyn, oh, excuse me, excuse me, Carolyn, we'll come to you in just a moment. Let's talk about this for just a second. I'm wondering if we can feel safe on our own street in our neighborhood. When we see through social media what's going on on streets, you know, really all over the world, Emily, how, how is that changing our own sense of safety? What we, you're asking like, saying through social media, well, it's just like you're seeing, you could see crime happening in Minneapolis, in Milwaukee, on the other side of the world. And does it make us think that's happening everywhere? So I think, man, I talk about this a lot with my clients of just we have, we are the people that have to be, uh, boundaries about our consumption of news, um, social media. If we are not the ones paying attention to and being in charge of that, we then just fall victim to consuming all kinds of information all the time. And sometimes too much information is not helpful. Um, you know, in grounding ourselves in like, what is, what are the statistics in your neighborhood? What is happening in your neighborhood? What is your surroundings? And yes, it matters what's happening around the world, around the country and other neighborhoods. But in terms of living your life, you can't make decisions on whether it's safe for you to go a walk in, on a walk in your neighborhood by using information about how safe it might be in a different neighborhood that has significant events happening. Right. And so paying attention to the facts and using, you know, your clues about what's happening in your neighborhood to determine what's safe for you. And that doesn't mean that like it doesn't matter about what's happening other places. It definitely does. Um, and it, and it definitely can be a warning sign for what can happen, right? Um, but paying attention to what's happening now, um, and making informed decisions on what you want to do in this moment and follow your values in your area. So can I, can I follow that question up? Um, when we see something that may happen in another place, but it triggers trauma that we've experienced. How, how, how would you, uh, advise in, in that situation? Yeah. So you mean, so let me give you an antidote of 2020 George Floyd, manyapolis, uh, Blake brought that up. Um, it made me experience as a black man, like certain interactions with the police that I've had. It just kind of triggered these other experiences that I have had that may inform how I respond to just seeing something like that. So, and it's going to, I mean, how does it not make you think about you in this world and putting yourself in that person's shoes and that is extremely scary. Um, I think, you know, we can get, we have to pull ourselves back down when we do start to get really worked up. I mean, that is a major event that happened and it shouldn't have happened, right? Yeah. Um, and so asking ourselves like, what can we do in this moment to help our, our cells feel safe to help our family, our community, um, and take action there. And yeah, I would normalize and validate yourself. Like, of course, you're, for a while, you're going to be a little shaky. You're going to be a little scared. Um, you're not going to, you know, see everything through the same eyes you had before you learned about it, right? Yes. And so validating yourself and like, yeah, of course, that's going to happen. And that's going to happen for a little while, um, you know, until, until the intensity of it comes down just a bit and we get back to our, you know, normal state of functioning. Yes. I could, I remember vividly, um, how I felt the day after the J.Quiz climate shooting here in Nashville. Yeah. And I was working in the mayor's office under Mayor Megan Berry at the time. And as soon as I got into the office that next day, I was pulled into a meeting. I was the public safety advisor. And I was pulled into a meeting within a chief Anderson. And my first expression to the mayor and chief Anderson was that I was so nervous just driving into work. I was looking in the rear view. I was making sure that I didn't pass any police or they weren't going to pull me over. That that was my feeling going into the office just based on the experience, based on my past experience. And I asked him, I said, I'm going to need a minute before we even meet. I'm going to have to compose myself and gather my thoughts and really deal with how I'm responding to this personally before I could advise on how the office should respond to this. Wow. And this is yeah, this is from the person who's going to advise how the mayor of Nashville is going to respond to our own version of what happened in Minneapolis in some ways. Love where this discussion is going. We've got a few callers waiting. We need to take a quick break and we're going to come straight back to the phones. But if you're just tuning in, we've got a conversation going on about a bit of contradiction that that, you know, we feel less safe. Even though the crime stats tell us we should feel safer. You can join the conversation at 615760 2000 or jump in on the video stream at youtube.com/atwpl. And this is Nashville. Stay with us. I'm Blake Farmer. We're talking about our crime and safety contradiction and taking your calls. How do we feel safer in a city where crime has dropped considerably? In other words, how could we feel safer than we do right now because a lot of us feel like maybe things are going the other direction? What's the secret share your experience at 615760 2000 live on air or you can do it in the chat of the video stream at youtube.com/atwpl. And we're going to go straight to the phones with our panel here. Carolyn and Nashville, you're on the show. Go ahead. Hi. I was just saying I grew up in Nashville and my family goes back to even before the 1800s on both sides. So I've been around since the 50s and of course things have changed a lot. But you know, and one of the problems in Nashville have changed. And so, you know, someone else had mentioned traffic and things that we didn't hear as much of growing up. And so I just, you know, I feel like and I'm not blaming the media, but I'm saying that it's, you know, things that happen are before us a lot in our, you know, whenever we hear it or read it. And like, you know, the covenant shooting or whatever. And I feel like I'm one of the ones that when I read it, I've just got to keep reading and see it through to the end. And I just wonder if, you know, if it's kind of a back and forth thing, well, this is what the people want to hear. So we're going to tell them about it. Yeah. And so those kind of things. I mean, I'm, they affect me. And, and so I am surprised to hear that you're saying it's down since the 60s. Yeah. No, Carolyn, let, we're going to take that and run with it. Our panel includes therapist Emily DeSalvatore, Stephanie Nezbo, who lives in North National Businesswoman there in Lano Matthews Davidson County Criminal Court clerk and chair of the Community Safety Safety Task Force. Emila, I wonder if you could help illuminate any of this that that I don't, you're obviously not going to have to speak for the media. I'll do that, I guess. But yeah, like that, that the focus. I mean, you know, the crime does get around like, especially if it's going to exotic some sort of crime or scares scare really. It scares people people. Can you talk to Carolyn a little bit who has trouble keeping from learning everything there is to know about that incident? Yeah. So, you know, I think that there is kind of a line. There's like a threshold that we pass where we go from wanting and being interested in keeping up with what's happening in our neighborhoods and our community to almost compulsively like I need to know everything to make sure that I feel safe. And to be honest, like We can't always know when bad things are going to happen. And there has to be some acceptance with like, bad things will happen. They're going to. They shouldn't, but they do. And that's part of being alive is accepting uncertainty and learning to, you know, sit with that discomfort and keep moving forward and living by your values. But, you know, if we get to a point where it's like, I have to check the news every night or I, I have to find every news out, go to every news outlet about this specific thing. You know, then it's like, oh, well, maybe I need to pull back on that. Maybe I need to talk to friends, family, you know, see where they're at with it. Are they reacting in the same way? Or is my reaction greater or smaller than theirs? And if that's the case, then, you know, maybe we do talk to somebody about that. And there's nothing wrong with that. I mean, it's, it's so hard. I mean, our television radio, I mean, I, you guys want to grab our attention. And although I will say like, you know, we're, we're kind of careful in public radio, at least with our newscast. I mean, you, you could fill every newscast with just crimes that happen around middle Tennessee every day. We try to do it if it's on kind of a trend line of some kind for that very reason. We'll probably pick this back up. But let's take a few more calls on Alan in Bellevue. Go ahead. Thank you. I live also in Baltimore. And there's the same issue there. Crime has decreased. But people think it has gone on. Yeah. And my answer to that is perception, perception, perception. My, I had a professor in graduate school who said, crime increases when the national news decreases. And that's because the crime story makes it to the front page because they're not being pushed off by national or international news. Yeah. And other than middle class neighborhood, we're perfectly safe. People don't believe it. Unfortunately, the crime happens in not in middle class neighborhoods. But among the poor and they're so used to it a lot of times. They don't say anything. It's a very sad situation. They're the ones who need the most police protection. And yet in our neighborhood, we demand more police protection. I wonder if we have to respond to some of that. But Stephanie Nezbitt, I wonder if you could talk about this, you know, where crime happens. I, I guess I sense that it can, can happen a little bit of everywhere. And that people want police around. But I don't know. Like in your neighborhood, you are, is police being there make you feel like, okay, things are safer or like, oh, police are here. It must mean something bad happened. Both. I would say both. After 20, after the tornado. And we went into cold 2020. 2020. And we went into COVID and all of that. There was a high presence of police on every corner in North Nashville. At that time, it did feel safe because there were, I would say, predators within a different way. There were going to people homes and trying to buy them out of their homes. When it's the most drastic thing has just happened to them to try to take their land. So that was one thing. But it wasn't necessarily crime. It was protection of the people. What I have seen transition. And I think this is also through our, our councilman Brandon Taylor. There is community policing, right? That you will see a police kind of just drive down the street or they may sit at a corner. But they're not like intentionally just outpochine or looking forward. Wait for somebody to run a stop sign or something. Yes. And so I, for me and where I live, I like the community policing because you get to know the people and you get to understand maybe this person does have a mental health issue like La Nelle was saying or this may be, I know this home. There's an elderly person there that has younger kids around and I may need to be when I hear calls from here. I know that person because I've gotten to know the people in this community versus, you know, having the other thing we're coming in to guns blasting, right? And we're coming into get to know, get to ask, learn about the neighborhood. And I think that is where police and change is when you're learning the community. And just one thing I know Emily mentioned about like the ring apps and stuff like that. I think that heightens, at least for me, it's sometimes of you know too much, you know too much. And that's my know that's why I know new people have moved in because like, oh my god, they're shooting, but it's really like a game happening, right? At the stadium because you can hear their fireworks going. And they're ring doorbell caught it and then they think there must have been gunshots. There must have been gunshots. They just know too much. Now boy, we do a whole show on that. Let's take a couple more calls before we end the hour. Dibral and East Nashville, you're on the show. I hope I said your name correctly. Go ahead. Yes. Thank you, dear. I think for having me, I have been on the east side since 1995 and I've really noticed a huge antich, decrease in police presence. People speak through all of these school zones all every day. If I go that way, they speed on Galaton Road like it's a raceway. I almost watched a homeless man in a wheelchair get hit a few months ago in this night's citizen stopped and stopped his car in the fast lane on Galaton Road going away from town and wheels him out of harm's way. But it just, you know, I feel so sad for the school kids. People blast and do there with no. Yeah. Well, you know, Dibral, you make a good. That risk. Yeah, you make a great point. And we've heard it today from several folks that safety can feel, you know, safety is largely dependent on how we feel. We feel just doing our everyday things, just even driving, you know, around town. Our perception of our safety is changed. Let me work in one more call before we end. Jana in Nashville, you're on the show. Go ahead. Hi, I was just appreciate everyone's thoughts on this, but I really do feel like our culture today and our presence on social media and just everything that we hear. Kind of misinformed us. And I think the best way to combat in our neighborhoods are feeling of fear or being on stage is to really know your neighbors and to see a presence yourself in your neighborhood. Get out there, walk your neighborhood, let everybody see that you're not afraid for your children to play with your neighbor's children. And you know, just to really make your neighborhoods your own. And I think for our own city going into other parts of our city. I have a school teacher. I've taught in East Nashville. I taught in North Nashville. I teach now in Midtown or in the Waverly Belmont area. And so I feel like, you know, those places are familiar to me. So I don't feel even though, you know, you hear maybe that it's more because poverty levels may be different in certain parts of the community. If you know families there and you know people there, you feel safer there. So I would encourage all of us to get to know our neighbors. All right. Janice says get to know your neighbor and then make a neighbor on the other side of town and problem solved. Lawnell, you're co-chairing this community safety taskworts. The mayor has put together and your work's really just now beginning. But what are you taking from all this that might inform your work on, you know, how to help us all feel a little safer? So this is something that the task force actually addressed at our last task force meeting last Wednesday. But and it's a challenge that we're going to have is safety is such a broad topic. How do we channel it down and make the types of recommendations that the mayor is expecting at the end of our work in six months. And we have a very limited scope. We're supposed to be focusing on violence reduction with community based solutions. And so it's a limited scope. But how can we take community voices and take broad perspectives of safety and at least acknowledge them and give them and package them for the mayor in a way that maybe we don't address them as a task force. But we get the mayor to give those to the right agencies or organizations so they can begin to address those things that people are going to voice to us. Well, it's a difficult thing to navigate because it's one thing to show them data and it's another thing for them to say, yeah, but on my street. And that's what we're feeling today. Well, that's all the time we have for our show. Lawnell Matthews, Davidson County Criminal Court, Cleric and Co-Chair of this task force. Stephanie Nezbit, Businesswoman in North Nashville, Longtime resident there, Feeling Safe for all the time and Emily Desalvatore, a therapist who specializes in anxiety. Thank you all for your time and for your insights. And thank you for tuning in this hour and being part of the conversation on air. This is Nationalist with production of Nashville Public Radio. You know, we had a related conversation last week specifically about our kids and how they're doing with everything school screens and crime. You can listen at this is Nashville.org or in our podcast feed. You can also watch that one at the WPL in YouTube page. Today's episode produced by Josh deepened directed by Tasha A. F. Limley who's also handling the cameras. Mary Menseenie on the phones board operator is Liv Lombardi and the masterminds behind that theme music, a little orange and the mere blade. You can find us anytime on Instagram if you like at this is Nashville underscore WPL in. I'm Blake Farmer, Go In Peace.