Judge Joe Brown, Champion of Women

Support a person just because she’s a woman without concern for honesty, vision, and ability? This is foolish and disregards fitness to fix a city where: fatherless youth rampage and kill at unprecedented levels, corruption matches incompetence, and infrastructure, economy, and education, etc. are in decay.

Violent crime and lawlessness are among the most serious threats facing everyone, NOT gender identity squabbles. I have always been a champion of women folk, but there are those ‘manhaters’ who will take any opportunity to get their way at the expense of the public.

This whole thing started when I was asked why I am running for Mayor when I could be supporting a Black woman for the office. Aside from the sexist and racist nature of the question, what I said was not a negative ‘about’ women, but truth about the ‘dangers’ they actually face’. I make no apologies for wanting to protect women folk, that’s how I was raised.

In Memphis, as in many places fatherless boys, unemployment, and hopelessness have made it an unsafe and dangerous place, particularly for women and children. Fatherhood must be put back in the “hood” if we are to fix this and restore order.

The next Mayor needs to be a leader who can get up close and personal with the problem. I did this as a Judge and it worked. A Mayor could work that even better. Some might say I unnecessarily put myself in harms-way, but I saw what I did as a necessary thing. By being an example who came to the at-risk-youth and talked to them, I was able to help them turn themselves from engines of destruction and disorder to productive citizens.

It is ‘BAD’ out there and anyone who thinks they can just sit behind a desk instead of going out among the people cannot handle this and does not need to be the next Mayor.

I did say: ‘if a woman tried to do what I could, she would likely be dragged into an empty apartment and raped’ A tragic example of reality shows how bad the situation is. Recently a woman went for a morning run, she did not make it home, she was kidnapped, raped, and murdered. The suspect had a long rap sheet of similar offenses.

The suspect might have been harmlessly in custody if it had not been for the criminal failure to test 28k rape kits that remain untested or discarded. That extraordinary number of untested kits speaks to the extent of the problem. The unfortunate list of such things is long. It is certainly true that the Criminal Justice System fails to protect the people, but ‘an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure’. And, the next Mayor must be in the forefront of delivering ‘prevention’.

It is unacceptable that our fine women and children remain so badly endangered.

IT IS NOT SAFE.

JJB