Gibbons! Answer the Phone

The Smart City Memphis blog sends a request to Attorney General Bill Gibbons:

... [W]e received a call from two members of the Midtown Vietnamese community. Their question: how do they get Attorney General Bill Gibbons to return telephone calls to his office?

So, we pass it on to you in the event that you see General Gibbons on the campaign trail in the coming days. Ask him to please return the phone calls from some constituents asking for help.

Here’s the problem: in recent weeks, more than 40 Vietnamese people have been robbed ....

This community is just down the street from me. And SMC aren't kidding when they talk about how rough the neighborhood is. Most of the folks reading this blog would be afraid just to drive through it, never mind try to live there.

I've never been too impressed with Gibbons. He plays strange cat and mouse delaying games with some cases, as John Branston has documented in the Memphis Flyer. He's sometimes willing to work the press; other times he's impossible to find. Late last year he ballyhooed an expansion of the "No Deals" policy, but examination of the numbers showed that it affected only a few dozen of the hundreds of cases that pass through his office.

Almost two years ago, he came in with some sheriffs and every television news station in town to stage a high-profile media event as he and the sheriffs were going to sweep my apartment buildings and arrest drug dealers.

Problem was, no one was there! Somehow the dealers had gotten word just hours before everything went down and they were all long gone by the time Gibbons and his media circus arrived. All the news people could do was photograph the empty, ruined apartments and poke through the trash.

And less than a year later, the drug problem in my apartments was worse then ever. It has stayed that way ever since, despite repeated requests to the management company and the police.

I guess we don't help him get re-elected.