One-on-one with Memphis' new public safety director

Yahoo

a day ago

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MEMPHIS, Tenn. — Memphis' new public safety director has only been on the job for a few months, but he says the city is headed in the right direction.
Darren Goods, who reports directly to Mayor Paul Young, sat down with WREG to talk about his work to help reduce crime in the city.
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Goods has held many roles in the Memphis Police Department. He put a fresh set of eyes on the Lorenzen Wright murder case and got it solved.'We followed the evidence, and the evidence led us to Billy Ray Turner and Sherra Wright,' Goods said.
Now after five years of work in Juvenile Justice at the Tennessee Department of Children's Services, Goods is back as public safety advisor to Memphis Mayor Paul Young.
'It was the perfect fit for me to come back and serve in this capacity, where I could lean on not only my experience as a police officer, but my experience on the social services side, as well,' he said.
He sat down with WREG to talk about his new role as of April 2025 to oversee a Violence Reduction Initiative already in place, and enhance programs like Gun Violence Intervention using experts.'I think it is imperative that we scour the earth to find those people so that we can, you know, leverage their experience to help reduce gun violence here,' he said.
And Street Outreach to get ahead of gun violence and retaliation.
'Organizations that are boots on the ground, so to speak, that are out there reaching the people,' he said.
At MPD, Goods worked everything from organized crime, to homicide and the Gang Unit. But he says DCS opened his eyes.
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'That experience of just seeing and having a better understanding of just the trauma and the different things that young people were exposed to at such an early age, it just gave me a completely different vantage point, from the law enforcement side to the social services side,' he said.
Goods says there is a misconception about young people being behind the crime in Memphis.'In that age bracket of 18 to 24, to 34, 35, those are primarily the people that are committing the gun crimes and the gun violence and that sort of thing,' he said. 'But certainly there's that's not borne out when you, their perception, that's not the perception.'And about crime numbers, he says, 'Murders were down almost 12%, from year to year. You had the, shooting incidents were down 26, 27%. And incidents where people were actually shot were down about 27 to 28%. So the data supports that, the strategies that are in place now, they are effective. But I'm just not sure that, the average, the everyday citizen is actually feeling that.'
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Goods wants to work on that by aligning strategies.'How do we bring everybody to the table? How do we create a strategic plan that's going to be, sustainable, evidence based, and based on national best practices?' he said.And for those who see Memphis as unsafe and a place to avoid, Goods has this message: 'We are heading in the right direction, and we are going to make Memphis a better place, and we're going to make Memphis a place that that people can be proud of.'
Goods' position is funded in part by the Crime Commission as part of a public-private partnership to reduce crime in Memphis.
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