Behind the Badge: A Look Inside the Life of Nashville Sheriff Daron Hall

Sheriff Daron Hall and Lonnie Spivak.

Lonnie Spivak

This is your show, right? The podcast that deals with Davidson County, the state of Tennessee, and issues that affect us right here at home. I'm your host, Lonnie Spiewak. And today we're going to be talking with Nashville Sheriff Darren Hall. Darren, welcome to the program.

Sheriff Hall

Thank you. Lonnie. Happy to be here.

Lonnie Spivak

You know, you and I kind of go back a little ways. We've known each other for a while. Not because I've wound up in your jail system, but just through politics and other things that we've been doing here in Nashville. And, so one of the things that's really interesting to me is that you're your constitutional office for the for the county, in the state, in the Tennessee Constitution that says, you know, every county must elect a sheriff, pretty much.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. You know, I was born and raised here, and I get this question. I was born in 64. So just to kind of help a little bit and 63 the voters of the county decided to form the first metropolitan type of government in our country. And obviously, I wasn't alive, but I have done a lot of research and kind of looking back into that and basically what was going on, and it was voted on multiple times.

It failed several times. But, the issue really was how does the government remove duplication? How do we get rid of two school systems and two law enforcement agencies, and how do we streamline it for the voter, so to speak? And so that was put forth. The voters voted it in. And like I said, 63, there was a charter written that basically tried to identify the duties of people like the chief of police and the sheriff and the school board and so forth.

But because it's the state constitutional office, the county cannot take duties away. That would require a constitutional amendment and, obviously change it statewide. So there was all sorts of compromise. But my, my simplest way of explaining it is the voters required that we do not duplicate services. That means the chief of police and the sheriff should not be doing the same thing in the county.

And so over the many 60 plus years, I think we've worked all of us prior to myself and, in trying to streamline that in a way that says here are the duties of the let's call it the police department, here are the duties of the sheriff's office. Here's the duties of probation and courts and all that.

But in the end, the legal, and the legal determination is that the duties of the sheriff cannot be stripped away by the city that comes up from time to time because we have a council and a mayor, an organization that at times forgets that. And they're sometimes difficult.

Lonnie Spivak

They're getting pretty radical over their 4040 member Metro Council. You didn't say that. I did. But, so it since you can't duplicate. So what are the things that you're responsible for in Nashville?

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. And maybe the simplest way to say that, and I try to visualize it for people, is that the police, Metropolitan Police Department are doing the arrest of the person, meaning me. They're going up, they're investigating the crime, or they're pulling you over and making the arrest. And then that individual, every one of those for any crime, are turned over to us.

We do all of the housing of every arrestee, from bad checks to multiple murder. We house those people until their court time and court dates and so forth, and then either head to the prison or they're obviously turned out and released. And so that's a large chunk of what we do. Over 1200 employees, $150 million budget. That money is primarily owned.

A lot of it is on housing and operating the institutions, the jails and systems. But we oversee all the security and all the government buildings, large function nowadays and courthouses and general government buildings throughout the city. We also do all the civil law enforcement. Now, the reason that's important is we both can't do it. So the police department cannot come and serve you a divorce paper or garnishment or civil process, as we wouldn't go serve you a warrant for burglary or murder.

And so it's interesting, though, Lonnie, because there are a lot of times those overlap. You can imagine there's a physical assault in a domestic situation. The police are involved with the criminal aspect of that crime. We're involved with that situation. So it gets a little blurry as to duplication. But, we primarily house everyone and process everyone. The police do the physical arrest and hand us the person.

Lonnie Spivak

Now, the the sheriff throughout the whole state is a partizan. It's a partizan position. So you run for sheriff as a Republican or a Democrat. That has that seemed like an issue to you here in Davidson County? Big little.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. You know, so I was elected in 2002. And so we're in 24. So 22 years ago was the first time I was on the ballot. And maybe before that I was the number two guy for eight years. So for, you know, 30 plus years I've been in, somewhat of the political seat in the political spectrum of Nashville.

I've never even back then and tonight, I do not really believe judges and sheriffs should be partizan. The reality of it is not. Which is right or wrong, it's that a judge or a sheriff does not house people or adjudicate cases based on Partizan issues. And so it's just always been it's the way it is. I knew that I run as a Democrat in Nashville.

I just don't really understand why. I just think about this. Most voters don't know the mayor is a nonpartisan race, right.

Lonnie Spivak

But that's I mean, it's the most politics in politics.

Sheriff Hall

You would want to.

Lonnie Spivak

Know. Now, one of the things I've been lobbying the legislature for is exactly making our judges nonpartisan. In Memphis, they're nonpartisan. It happened in 1995. They, the Democrats in the state legislature, because they ran the state at the time, had put a provision into law that said once a county reached a certain population, the the county commission or Metro council could then decide to make their judicial appointments nonpartisan.

And I was I've been lobbying the state legislature to move that to Davidson County. It would take a tweak to the population in the law, and it would take a slight tweak in the language from May to child, but there's an existing law that they could tweak that that would then make Davidson County just judicial appointments or elections nonpartisan, which to me, that makes all the sense in the world because, like you said, it's it's one of those things you really hope that the party's not an issue.

And, it and on a selfish measure, it helps us as Republicans, me being a partizan person, because then our lawyers and those people who are Republican or conservative who work in Nashville don't feel obligated to vote in the Democrat primary, because it affects their job. Yeah. And so that's been one of the things that I've been working with, the state Senate and House on.

And I hope that one day I'm able to get that across the finish line. I think that would really help us here in Tennessee. So you I guess I don't know how long it's been, but you, you've been you built a new jail and a new facility next to the jail, and something crazy happened, during the construction, it made national, even worldwide news.

You, somebody posed a question as a construction worker and hid loaded weapons in the wall. Is that what happened?

Sheriff Hall

Yeah, a long I, five years ago tonight. Believe it or not, we were in the throes of this, the early phase of this major investigation. I, I've never seen anything like it. It's still one of the most bizarre stories in my lifetime. And, and unfortunately, was a very evil act. It really, really could have gone much worse.

And we basically were building up what turned out to be a $200 million complex that we had spent seven years both designing and training and implementing and getting it ready to go. We were about two weeks away from opening, and, you know, 700 of the most high risk, offenders in our city were scheduled to be moved into this building at a maximum security jail.

We were in the building training, getting ready to go, like I said, two weeks before the opening. And we were very fortunate that one of our, our lieutenants in our, in our facility, recognize there was something kind of, you know, a in the, in the key, a key ring where multiple keys and key rings.

And he noticed something was weird. And he went further and watched and looked at it, counted the keys. A couple of keys are missing. That seemed so insignificant that they called me. I was on a, a New Year's trip, and I thought, oh, you know, what's the big deal to keys right now? It's it's an empty facility.

But he was so diligent. Went and watched the video. We had 600 cameras in that building that was going to be operational. Wow. And he went back and watched and discovered a man disguised as a construction worker that had slowly but surely, dropped those keys in his pocket, left the facility. We kind of now knew who we were looking for.

We watched him later on, returned to the facility with a full disguise. He had a mask on before Covid and a in a hard hat and of course, vest. So you wouldn't have noticed. And when thousands of construction workers there. But he come to find out for some 4 to 5 years was planning and designing and implementing his this evil plot, and it involved bringing in loaded you know, two were two or, all three were handguns, but, loaded weapons with ammunition, handcuff keys, knives and so forth.

And I don't mean just hid them. I mean, he he planted and dug into the walls and and had all that covered back up with epoxy, you know, all sorts of different plaster. Paris. You would never have been able to see it. And we were lucky because our cameras saw some of his peculiar movements at times, and that allowed us to go looking once we'd call him with the keys.

It turned out to be this three year deal. We delayed the opening. It cost the city millions and millions of dollars. We cleared the building with the FBI and and many, many others. Border patrol, we had also.

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Lonnie Spivak

He probably had that bomb squad come through there. I mean, you you had no idea what he put in the building.

Sheriff Hall

And Lonnie, I mean, making a decision about moving 700 inmates and 200 of your staff in a building that may or may not be secure is not something that's easy to sleep with. And I know I struggled and told many people we were going to tear it down before we were going to move people back in until we can be assured everything was done.

And he was, you know, an evil mind that had a lot of very bright thinking. And his plan. And so we were very fortunate we were able to get him charged, indicted, eventually convicted. He's now serving 40 years in prison and, and needs to be, it was just a very, very evil thing to do and very lucky a lot of people's lives.

Lonnie Spivak

I mean, I hope you gave that that, deputy a promotion or something. I mean, goodness gracious. How just being that on in tune with it, maybe, like, there's a couple keys missing. So what? You know, in the grand scheme of things, who knew?

Sheriff Hall

I want to be his agent because it's going to be a movie. And he he deserves all that comes with that, where he and I and a couple of others that are involved are heading up to, like Wisconsin here in a few because they're building facilities. And but the main thing is, is they were very attentive to detail back at a time where it didn't seem super significant, which led to, you know, and the other thing the listeners may need to know is that correctional officers in jails and prisons do not carry guns.

Now, in transportation moves and so forth. Surely the persons arm once, but inside of a jail or a prison, no one in this country has a deadly weapon. That would be just I mean.

Lonnie Spivak

I mean, you could see it would be for the safety of the officers and, you know, the inmates really take somebody, kind of went off the rails and overpowered, a deputy or officer and, you know.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. So he, he was in, by the way, he was a reformed, supposedly a reformed, a criminal justice advocate had served time 20 years ago. He had studied and knew a lot about jails and prisons from his expertise of advocacy. But what I'm saying is, he knew so much about it that he knew how deadly a weapon would be inside the walls.

And and we believe, I believe strongly that he was planning his own re-arrest. He had made those comments to, some women. He had a relationship with that his retirement plan was to go back to prison. And so we believe he was doing all this. So he would then come into the facilities knowing where this stuff was.

Lonnie Spivak

A lot of carnage.

Sheriff Hall

Just a horrible situation.

Lonnie Spivak

And well, to talk about something a little, I guess it's it's better. But along with the prison, you built a mental health facility, right, that that you're using to help process those people that have interactions with the police officers who come in are either strung out on drugs or have some other mental issues, instead of getting put into a general population or jail, you're running them through what I think is a brilliant program, that we really need more of, which is mental health, and to help those people maybe adjust and get.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. So, Lonnie, I was really lucky. Years ago, I was the president of the American Correctional Association. That's not a big deal, but it was over jails and prisons and just kind of how these these facilities operate is I've been working in almost my life. And as a role of president, the only perk that I ever found was that you got to travel once or twice internationally representing the United States.

I thought that was a cool thing. It wasn't worth what all you had to go through to do it. But on this year, one of the first times my wife and I went to Belgium to represent the the association and the United States and the International Conference of Corrections, I won't ever forget, I stood up representing the United States at some point and identified myself and introduced, you know, who I was and what was going on.

And I remember other countries, virtually every modern country was represented. I remember the snickering when I said what country I was from. This is long before, let's call it the political rhetoric of yesterday or today. I'm just saying, not that it was just our country, really. It wasn't about anything else. And I felt it because I said, my name is Darren Holm, the president of the American Correctional Association.

I'm representing the United States of America. And it was not outward and overt, but it was kind of snicker, giggle grand. And so over the next 3 or 4 days, you get to know one another a little better. And what most people and for the first time I had ever heard, they laughed at our country because we over incarcerate.

Now let me finish. I've always known that right. We've always heard that.

Lonnie Spivak

Yeah.

Sheriff Hall

I lived in Australia, working in a prison for a year, one time back in the early 90s. And, you know, I knew the numbers in our country were different than most countries, and I knew that we were often labeled as that. What I never really took the time to figure out is why in our country, the word race gets a lot of attention.

And it should. There are issues that it's real. But today in Nashville, 50% of the people arrested are going to be white. Our our city, our county is 58% white. So it's not dramatically off. It is disproportionate in some numbers, but that's not why people laugh at us. What they laugh at us for is using our system called the criminal justice system to solve problems that, number one, it's not equipped to do right.

And number two, their countries have a much better mechanism to resolve it. If you were naked in a park today in Germany or Italy or Australia or Switzerland, you're not viewed as a criminal. Believe it or not. I mean, a naked person can't stay in those places, but in this country we have no alternative. And so that naked man or woman is swept off the streets because the criminal justice system is our only avenue.

Right? Every other country has a means to say Lonnie may be off his medication. Lonnie can't be naked. Let's go evaluate what's wrong with him and determine does he know what the law is? Does he understand what's wrong? Right. If you don't, our system is never going to work. And so I have, over the many years of the embarrassment of back in Belgium, we're just trying to figure it out.

And having been in the system, I returned and got on a really a crusade of my own to figure out what is the reasons that we we put people in jails that are mentally ill. Why do we do that? When the 60s, under the Kennedy administration, our country wanted to tear down the old hospitals, our country here in our own city, we had one called Central State, right?

Those hospitals were institutions that were large and ineffective, by all accounts. But the plan was and the Kennedy administration was to tear down the hospitals and build a mental health system, kind of a, if you will, community mental health system that would be smaller in nature. And you or you or I could take our loved one, whoever that is, to go be evaluated.

And if they needed help, they would get it today. What? Scuse me. Once in the 60s, we said, let's tear the hospitals down. The Vietnam War took off, and a lot of the funding for the replacement of those facilities never really ended up in the hands of mental health. It ended up and doing what I do for a living, which is jails and prisons, right?

And literally bed for bed as they were torn down over the next 40 to 50 years, cities and states had to build where to put people. And unfortunately that's a jail or prison. And as I tell everybody, I have two young sons or young men who are growing up in this community, I don't want a naked man or woman next to them in anything that they do.

Yeah, but I don't like our solution is to criminalize that and bring them to an environment that I'm very familiar with that is not successful in treating addiction or mental health. So I was at a weird time in my professional life because we were also in need of replacing a downtown facility that had been here. Montara. Well, since 1982, the old criminal justice center in that building was old and out of date and in need of repair.

And to be totally honest with you, I have been around politics long enough. My dad was on the city council back when I was a kid, and one of the things that I knew was going and trying to convince everybody to do something new was not going to be easy. And there's always a reason why not to try something that never been done before.

And so what I decided to do was say, I need to replace the building that we've had for, you know, X amount of years. It's going to cost X amount of money. Had some experts explain all the cost. But once the money was approved to build what we needed, I took that money and built what I think we really need in Nashville.

And it wasn't a jail completely, just a jail. And so we basically are decriminalizing the individuals who we believe if in other countries were evaluated, they would never have ended up in the backseat of the police car. It's not the police fault. When you call 911, you have two options ambulance or police. And ambulance is really about physical injuries.

In in our country. Other countries have a various a variety of ways to evaluate what is the need of the person. And I ask people all the time and lunch and I did it today. It's just a few hours ago. If you ask a group of people in the community if you said, okay, if you walk out in the parking lot and someone's bleeding from the forehead and grabs their heart and falls over you down on one one, what are you going to ask for?

Are you going to say, I need an ambulance? Right? If you go out there and the person is naked and he's talking about the elephant that are flying over singing and all of a songs, what are you going to ask for? You're calling the police? There is. There is really no. And that's where the only country that does that.

So so my view of it is I don't blame the police because we call the police as a community. I blame our community or society that says we've got to invest one of these days in an alternative to incarceration, not because it's soft on crime, it's because that individual has been off or, you know, bipolar medication for six months is manic and may not understand anything.

Lonnie Spivak

You're you have have you seen a increase since Covid and the number of people who are coming through your system who really just need more mental help, than incarceration.

Sheriff Hall

So I'm, I'm a very I'm very interested in this subject. And I've been here's what I know anecdotally 100%. I have a 23 year old son who's senior year was interrupted by Covid, and I followed him really just watching kind of not just him, but how it's impacted him and that generation of 20 year olds who are really the audience.

A lot of times that we run into in the criminal justice system, there are so many impacts of what happened that I don't think I'll live to see the final chapters of what what is the increases really come from? And I know it's impacted mental health. I know it's driving issues that are still difficult. You know, what's harder for me, believe it or not, that the the arrest numbers in Nashville are way down.

Most people would never understand that.

Lonnie Spivak

I was crazy because we've had such a big population boom. I mean, you you look everywhere and they're just building. And Metro is doing everything they can to, upsize the city. Yeah.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. And so we, we take in every arrest. And so the only, only statement I'm making is not good or bad. Should we or shouldn't we? But what people would be surprised to know is five, six, seven years ago in Nashville, 100 people a day were arrested. So that means 100 people a day were coming to the system in which we oversee.

Today, that number is 60. It's been 60 for the last couple of years. It's not really moving up much in Covid to get way down, but we're post-Covid in 60 because it seems to be the number that's been pretty consistently done. So what that means is there's 40% of the people that were arrested that are no no longer being arrested, that may be a good thing.

It may be a bad thing. I know it's a surprising thing to most people because Nashville's got a lot going on.

Lonnie Spivak

But some of that might be because the, number of police officers in Nashville is down probably 20%. They're they're way down in officers. They could probably use 100 police officers.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah, they were. And we do this. So we have we have 600. They have about 1800. And one of the things that we've all been challenged with, how do we hire and keep it staffed and so forth. We're beyond that challenge though. And I get here's a better this is somewhat anecdotal, but there's other things that have gone on.

Sheriff Hall

There are a lot of things like bail reform, marijuana reform, all the Cha. There's a lot of laws that are different than they were back then. Yeah. So that I mean, look, look at the arrest data on or the police data on stopping vehicles.

Lonnie Spivak

Right.

Sheriff Hall

It's now 90 plus percent.

Lonnie Spivak

And they're not they're not pulling over anybody for speeding or anything of your tags or inspired. Nobody really cares.

Sheriff Hall

And so I'm not justifying or I'm not, you know, criticizing it. I'm just saying the reality of the by the way. And that's where a lot of police arrest occurs in stopping vehicles. And so all of that's happened. And so our percentage of people coming in the jail off the street, I mean, look what's going on Broadway.

Sheriff Hall

You were the same.

Lonnie Spivak

You just it was like New Orleans. Yeah. Mardi Gras sometimes I wanted to follow up with a couple things on the mental health thing. So in that facility, do you have train professionals in there have so, so you, you come in contact with somebody who's naked on the side of the street. Your officers, bring them to the facility.

Lonnie Spivak

I'm assuming you have some trained professionals who are determining which side of the building they go in. How does that work?

Sheriff Hall

Yes. So, really, really good question. So what we did, as I said earlier, we were in a really good time to make some decisions. We were building a building around this idea. So that allowed us to design it in a way that I think helps us tremendously. The idea is that everybody who, as we mentioned earlier, the police are called to the scene, they do their job.

Sheriff Hall

They're removing the naked man or woman or the circumstance from the community. When they arrive at the what you and I would refer to as the booking room or the front door of the system, the first person they see is a master's level mental health clinician. In that person's job, there's two things that need to be checked. One is what is your mental health acuity?

Sheriff Hall

I'm not smart enough to to know how to evaluate that, but I have made up an imaginary scale of 1 to 10. And I have said this to all the professionals over the years. I know a ten is more than one, right? It's a lot more than one. A nine is not a lot more than ten I need or less than ten I need.

Sheriff Hall

We need to evaluate this on what can we treat, what are we not interested in in treating on a level of mental health? Let's make it up. So Lonnie's girlfriend and he broke up 20 years ago in college. Your parents, took you to talk to someone about your mental health. And so when you're being booked tonight in a jail system for DUI, they're going to ask you.

Sheriff Hall

Have you ever, been institutionalized? You ever take medication? Ever thought of harmony yourself? There's all these questions. Go into it. You very well could say I. One time I went to see a psychiatrist. I'm just making this up that that indication is that there is a history that probably puts you on the one of this ten scale, if I am, you know, mutilating myself this morning at my home.

Sheriff Hall

That's a ten, right? And there's a lot of in-betweens. But the one and I'm using you for a second, the one of the person 20 years ago who is no longer in need of mental health treatment. That person is not treatable nor needs treatment in this new center. Right? The ten who is actively psychotic, who is homicidal, suicidal, is not who we're trying to treat at that moment.

Sheriff Hall

We gotta stabilize that person.

Lonnie Spivak

Right.

Sheriff Hall

So if you just let me use my made up system, we're looking for about 3 to 8.

Lonnie Spivak

Gotcha.

Sheriff Hall

And that 3 to 8 is a person who's oftentimes severely off their medication. As you well know, it's very well documented. People think they're feeling better and quit taking their meds. Then they self-medicate. And a lot of times alcohol. It's a co-occurring co-occurring disorder where you've got alcoholism and drug abuse inside of a mental health challenge. And when you get in the streets and that person's off their regular meds, but they're either severely, severely intoxicated, it's very hard to evaluate that person.

Sheriff Hall

We need to get them and detox them and then evaluate what can we do.

Lonnie Spivak

And so say if they're in the 9 to 10, are they going to Vanderbilt? Or they go on to, one of the other hospitals that has mental facilities, or are they going into the jail cell?

Sheriff Hall

Great question. They're going to stay with us. Keep in mind, they came to us because of a crime of some sort, right? When they're evaluated on the front door and they do not qualify for this, let's call it the the, the programing aspect. Right. What would happen is they're sent to what we call our restrictive housing. That means an isolated area isolated from other populations.

Sheriff Hall

But you have direct, supervision of the mental health team. Who knows? Because your score. I'm using a fake score. Your score is triggering them to immediately follow your movements through our system. They now know that you're you're in crisis mode. We need to evaluate your medications and your treatment model. And so all of that takes off. But you're not in a treatment program or housing because it's a pretty low level non locked down institution that we're built.

Sheriff Hall

So you couldn't move he or she until they get stabilized. They tell me experts that are working with us. You know over the weeks that person who is a 9 or 10 can easily get into the 60s or 71 stabilize and then we can move them over, get them prepared, try to evaluate as I'm calling it, the transition back in.

Lonnie Spivak

And some of that will depend on the district attorney whether or not you're going to prosecute or whatever. What's the average day for someone who either goes in as into the program for help or into the jail?

Sheriff Hall

Great question. So let's make you and I both the identical situations, and we come in just to let me if I can describe it, we just hit the front door and we are upon this evaluation, you scored out as a 9 or 10 or let's just say you were not eligible.

Lonnie Spivak

So, so I'm, I'm, I'm just crazy.

Sheriff Hall

You're actively psychotic and you're in danger of yourself or to others. Right? So therefore, putting you in a, in an open environment wouldn't work. Your day is going to consist of. As you can imagine, jails are pretty chaotic. There is there is court time feeding, lock down visitation, rec time, attorneys coming. There's all sorts of movement. It is a very difficult place to treat or to have any quality experience.

Sheriff Hall

And so what happens is you're being seen by the psychiatrist or psychologist. You're trying to be evaluated because we're worried about your physical harm. All of that's going on in an environment that is loud is difficult, and everything else going on around you makes it very, very what I call almost impossible to provide quality treatment. It may be a stabilization unit, it may be able to prevent you from hurting people, but it's not designed very well to.

Lonnie Spivak

Yeah. You're not you're not you're not really making my mental that's right thing any better. You're you're just trying to control me, control my environment. And so I might be there a lot longer than someone who scored a 6 or 7 or a 1 or 2.

Sheriff Hall

That's right. And let me be the 6 or 7. And you and I were together. We we committed. Let's just say the similar crimes. For what it's worth, I sold a bunch of food and ran and broke a wind chill out of a car because I saw something in the backseat. And you did a similar thing. So these are not murder charges, but they're also not some, you know, shoplifting.

Sheriff Hall

We've got some felonies in the middle. And by the way, if there is a victim in the crime, the only way anyone can be diverted is if the DA's office contacts the victim and they approve it in lieu of jail, which is about 80% of the time, which I think is fantastic because the victim of the crime is worried, scared, angry.

Sheriff Hall

But they're also usually very responsible, saying we need to do something other than lock them up. They're going to be doing the same thing, right? So that that has to be approved. But in our comparison, I go into treatment. You go in to the to the facility. Yours is chaotic. It's 4:00 in the morning to 11:00 at night.

Sheriff Hall

Something's going on all the time or over here. The rules are simple. There are no court times. You're not called an inmate. There are no officers there. You can't go to and from court from there. Once you go the criminal justice system is out of your life. It's took me three years to convince people like the district attorney, people like the judges, people like others to say, look, if we really believe what brought him here is a mental health issue, why in the world do we want criminal justice?

Sheriff Hall

People like myself who know nothing about what is improving for the person. So when you arrive in the beat, we call the BCC. When we arrive there, the person who controls when I go home is the mental health technician, the mental health providers. It is the mental health co-op that is the clinical team. There are a nonprofit here who do a lot of work in mental health all over Nashville.

Sheriff Hall

They have the contract contract to provide the clinical care. My staff are in charge of overseeing what you and I would would call security. It really we use a term called technicians because we try to soften it a little bit to say, we're here for treatment. We're really not here for this, you know, apparatus. So that that works really well.

Sheriff Hall

They do a really good job. And the co-op does provide the clinical work. We're in there to try to be as you well kind of that the the enforcement of the rules, not necessarily the physical way. Right. We've been up and running.

Lonnie Spivak

Sure. Everybody's safe. That right, that the people are getting the treatment that they need and that. Yeah.

Sheriff Hall

And what we've learned is we've had very few, maybe 1 or 2 in five, four years physical, you know, challenges by by someone, you know, what we've had is we've had other noncompliance with the treatment by not wanting to take medication or not wanting to go through with a program that is prescribed for you. Both of those will kick you out of the program because you have agreed to receive what someone believes is better for you.

Lonnie Spivak

Now, I'm assuming you've seen a lot of success with this program and and just getting people at least maybe not. Well, but on the road to being well. Well, yeah. Where they can then continue their care with the doctors that outside of the facility.

Sheriff Hall

I just maybe I can say it this way. I've, I've, I've been in jails and prisons all my life for 40 years. And I know what failure looks like. In this country. And Nashville is no different. A person who goes to jail goes back 75% of the time. Basically, what that means is if you're arrested today, you will end up back in jail about a 75%, right?

Lonnie Spivak

It's a recidivism.

Sheriff Hall

Rate. That's a term used, which means you'll be rearrested in the near future, sometime between 3 and 5 years. So if you use 75 as the norm nationally and in Nashville, if you add to that, that's the average person. Add to that someone who is mentally ill, add to that someone who's off their medication. That number is in the 90s.

Sheriff Hall

No one really measures it because it's it's a little difficult because of HIPAA and everything else. Right. But you can trust me if 75 is the norm, what's moving that number from 50 up is a population that is very high risk to be rearrested. It is in the 90 range. So if you think failure is 90% of the time a mentally ill person is going back to jail.

Sheriff Hall

We've now moved that population into an environment called the BCC. It's about 20%. So that person is back in contact with what you and I would call the criminal justice system 20% of the time. Here's what I find interesting that the the listeners may not appreciate, but let's say Lonnie does get back out there. And for my analogy here is naked again in the park or breaks a windshield out of a car because he believes he sees his medicine and someone else's car.

Sheriff Hall

That's bad. You should be held accountable for it. But accountability is not the criminal justice system. But you will be brought right back. You come right back to the front door. You're evaluated again. And if you're acuity of mental health and your crimes do not exclude you, you would go back and receive what I consider to be the more helpful to of the outcome that you're looking for.

Sheriff Hall

It's not ignoring the fact that you need to be somewhere off the streets. But for years I watched the jail system arrest and release so many people, and people would say, why are they coming back? And a lot of times it's because we didn't arrest the problem. We just arrest the person. So if we can do both of those things and bring them to some accountability, I believe we have a better chance to be successful now.

Lonnie Spivak

Sheriff, there, the one last thing that I wanted to get with you on before, we're done today is, you know, we have a new president and his administration has made it an issue to really remove the legal population, the illegal immigrant population from the United States. They've done a I mean, really in just spectacular pace. They've secured the southern border.

Lonnie Spivak

They're on pace to deport a million people. This year. So they've really made it an issue to get rid of the illegal immigration, illegal immigrant population in our in our country and states and whatever. And they're mainly focusing on those who are have committed a crime. And so that that would bring those illegals to your system.

Lonnie Spivak

Now, years ago, you ran what was called a 187 G program, where you worked with the immigration officials to remove people who were arrested, who were illegal to then work with them to be deported. And then there was a period of time where we didn't do that. Do you see the 187 G program coming back? How how do you see yourself working with the immigration system now?

Lonnie Spivak

How is that working here in Davidson County?

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. So it's some things never change. I mean, it's ironic because that would have been 2004, 2005, 20 years later, we're still sitting here talking about really the same exact issue. There have been some changes, though, that the the average person may not realize that does help. And I'm talking more in identification. For example, at the time we got involved with us years ago, there was a man and woman who were killed in a head on collision, by a person who'd been in the jail 12 or 13 times.

Sheriff Hall

And each one of those times we would send his his information to what was called ice. Back then, an ice was to clear them and let us know whether we could release him or not. They cleared him 13 times and on the 14th, arrest. Now it's a double homicide ice. The same information went to them and they sent back and said, do not release him.

Sheriff Hall

He is a serious immigration violator, to be honest with you. They had never checked him and didn't check them. And up until that time. And so we were the false sense of security I was given the community, and the community was, was under was that you were being cleared of of what was your immigration status? A lot happened over the next few years.

Sheriff Hall

We did get involved with the program. The reality of it, it was 280, 70. But the and by the way, and an interesting I get to ask this question, that's where it's located in the federal code, just so people know. But it's 270, which is is exactly what you were describing. But what happened was once we got involved with it, it allowed my staff, who were trained to do the work of Ice on people who were booked into jail, of clearing them, which is really their job that they weren't doing.

Sheriff Hall

And so we did that for five years. It was a contra, over those next, you know, 3 to 4 years as we were under the program, presidential administrations changes, we were going into the Obama administration. And one of the things that happened then, which is unique and people don't don't realize is instead of having to send the information in on every arrest under the Obama administration, what they did was they made your fingerprints biometric share automatically with Ice.

Sheriff Hall

That means every arrestee in every jail in America, those prints are automatically sent to immigration. That's important because you may not know if your book tonight your your fingerprints are also being checked against the FBI. Excuse me? The national crime database to make sure you're not wanted any other criminal charges. Well, now we have a dual system checking to see if you're, quote, wanted in immigration and wanted in criminal justice.

Sheriff Hall

So that starts in the Obama administration. And then you can debate from that point forward what people were doing once they learned that Darren Hall was no longer was not legally in the country, but what we in the jail systems all over the country were doing is if immigration, who now knows Darren is in the jail, wants to hold me for Ice, they send me a detainer, listen to detain electronically, he says hold on to there and we there.

Sheriff Hall

Darren held that hold of me is then turned over. It has always been since this time we hold the individual and turn them over to ice. So? So what's changed dramatically in the last few months? Everyone was checked from that point on back 20 or 15 years ago. So now they were always aware of at least your status of an arrestee because it was automatically done, each time.

Sheriff Hall

What? I'll give you the numbers. Last year, Ice told me to hold 500 people rounded off. There's a handful over and are below 500 people out of 30,000. Arrest. Of those 500 people, half of the time I sent back and said, that's not a priority. Even though they had already lodged detainer, they changed their mind about not wanting that person removed.

Sheriff Hall

And so we don't have a detainer. We have to turn the person loose. What's happened since January of this year is those fingerprints are still being shared now automatically. I look today just coincidentally the the the number of people who are having, what you would call detainers lodged against them. It's the same arrest population is up 120% since January.

Sheriff Hall

What that really means is there are many more people that they're sending us a detainer to hold. And then now, of course, we've been doing it for two months now. I guess nearly that data is showing that they're they're not only putting their them, they're a lot, lot lower lot more people, but they're also picking up a lot more folks.

Sheriff Hall

So here's what that means. The arrest populations fingerprints are automatically being shared. Ice and the Trump administration is keenly aware they have always been whoever the administration was of who was coming in and out of the jails that they're interested in, where I think the public and the media and folks need to kind of think about they're looking at roundups and so forth.

Sheriff Hall

You hear these word in the media and everybody else. I think what you should focus on is there are roundups, at least occurring by people who are committing crimes in other communities. Right? They're coming to a jail. You don't really need to 87 g to sort to improve dramatically the numbers of people that you're really talking about that are in our country, undocumented, illegally and are also involved with crime.

Sheriff Hall

What you're going to have to do as taxpayers, I haven't heard what the president said today or tonight. My understanding is there's going to be conversations about how much money it's going to be needed to accomplish housing that individual to get them removed, hiring staff. There's a lot to do.

Lonnie Spivak

Now. One of the things that I've advocated for, and you could tell me if that's a good idea or not, this was this was what my idea is you you build a couple of Ice detention facilities, maybe in Texas, maybe new Jersey. Somewhere in Colorado or whatever. You have a handful of detention centers across the country. Each one maybe holds 5000 people, is just say.

Lonnie Spivak

And so once, once, once you would get, someone would come across your jail system and you get a detainer notice from Ice or whatever they're called these days. Then you would contract with the immigration system to transport that, to transport that detainee or group of detainees each week or whatever, to the closest detention center, where they could then be quickly processed and removed.

Lonnie Spivak

That was one of the things that I was proposing, to some of our congressmen and people who I know in the Trump administration, I haven't got any traction with it. It may be the world stupidest idea, but that was one way that I thought I kind of thought of it as a funnel, something that you could direct all the the detainees from a certain area to one location where they could then be processed and deported.

Sheriff Hall

Yeah. It's not a bad idea at all. Here's here's a couple things to think about. And the average person forgets this, arresting a person via a police or let's call it ice, is pretty cheap, right? Housing them.

Lonnie Spivak

As that's what I meant. But that's why I was like to get that. Get them from being housed from the local level where the the Nashville or the state of Tennessee or sheriffs and Murray County or some of the smaller counties aren't aren't being burdened with the long term housing of these, detainees. They are getting moved to a federal facility, for prosecutors and deportation.

Sheriff Hall

I think you're you're right on. Here's what I see here. No one's told me this, but I see I see a hybrid of what you're talking about. I see counties I can tell you one right now is in Etowah, Alabama. It's not 2.5 hours, mayor. It is bigger than the Batman building. I mean, joking, but I mean, it's huge building in this very small county that they built years ago and basically built it with ice money and Ice contracts with them to house the transport everything.

Sheriff Hall

That's not something Nashville would ever be a part of. And I say that because it's number one.

Lonnie Spivak

It's just politically, the political climate in Nashville is not.

Sheriff Hall

It's not going to do it. And you wouldn't do it in a metropolitan area anyway. I mean, my sister lives in Perry County, Tennessee. Yeah. I mean, the jobs are difficult there. It's a very rural area. I'm not pushing anything on anybody, but there's a county in Kentucky, Edmonson County, Kentucky, and they house all the federal marshal inmates.

Sheriff Hall

Most all of them. We have a federal courthouse. We're two miles away. That's not political at all. It's it's a contract. The Kentucky went and did with the marshals. So they can have people for right, for money. So I see your model working. I think we as a city, as a, as a community and as a country are going to have to decide.

Sheriff Hall

Here's the one piece that I learned years ago that has not been fixed. It's not been talked about. And if it doesn't, we're not moving anywhere. And that is every case. We're talking about has to have an appearance in front of a federal immigration judge. And that's not a judge at our federal courthouse. It is an immigration judge.

Sheriff Hall

There are two of them in four states. Yeah, they they reside in Memphis. And so what I'm saying is the Trump administration and everybody that supports all this, I'm just trying to say we've got to come up with a means that process is the I mean.

Lonnie Spivak

I think once you get those little facilities across the country, then you put a federal immigration judge in there, you.

Sheriff Hall

Can do it. You can do virtual hearings. You could. But but I'm going to tell you that, that there's some work to be done. Housing is a big component of the expensive component. I'm not a lawyer, but the processing of immigration cases is very complicated. And so what I what I see happening is some evaluation of how do you stream on some of that.

Sheriff Hall

And I think no matter who the president is or what the law is, it has to be on some priority basis. Right. Who do you want removed?

Lonnie Spivak

Right. You need the worst offenders. That's right. First. Yes. And, that's wrong. Yeah.

Sheriff Hall

So gotta keep that in mind as we all go forward.

Lonnie Spivak

Well I really appreciate it. What a great conversation. I think, you know, the people of Nashville and even, you know, whoever listens to this, will be very interested in how we do things, how you're handling your, your mental health stuff here in Nashville. And hopefully, that model will spread across the country.

Sheriff Hall

Well, thank you for having us. Thank real.

Lonnie Spivak

Well, Sheriff, thank you so much for being here. Thank you for listening to the You're So Right podcast. You can find me on X at the Lonnie. Be back on Facebook and Instagram at Lonnie speak back and everywhere you find podcast. Thanks.