District Attorney Coty Wamp
Crime in Hamilton County is down overall, District Attorney Coty Wamp told the Hamilton County Pachyderm Club Monday at Monkey Town Brewing Company.
“For the first time in a while, I have good news for you,” she said.
Fatal and nonfatal shootings are down 17 percent year-to-date, a trend DA Wamp said will continue under the leadership of new Chattanooga Chief of Police John Chambers, who was appointed by the Mayor’s Office Aug. 30. Former Chief Celeste Murphy resigned in June following 17 indictments from the Tennessee Bureau of Investigation.
“He’s going to let police officers do their job,” DA Wamp said.
Auto theft is an outlier, up 300 percent, she said.
DA Wamp again called out local pastors in Black communities to step in to the “hopelessness” of juveniles who “don’t care whether they live or die.”
DA Wamp is currently prosecuting two 16-year-olds in separate cases for murdering two other 16-year-olds, one as he stepped off a school bus in September, and one who was shot the day before school started in August.
“I am begging you to help me,” she said.
“The church can step in and have influence over these young men,” she said. “We have to make them understand that their life is valuable.”
She said in most cases a victim’s mother or sister has not been contacted by a local pastor.
“I am asking the church to seek her out,” she said.
She also observed that the defendants don’t go to school but “wander around… and gun people down,” she said. She called on the school system to work harder to keep young people in school.
DA Wamp also advocates putting a defendant’s negligent parents in jail.
“The kids are not going to hold themselves accountable,” she said.
DA Wamp said her push to try some juveniles as adults is working, and that next year she expects to report fewer transfers.
“It’s life in prison for juveniles, if I have to do it,” she said.
DA Wamp said she continues to prioritize prosecution of child sex offenders. After hiring a prosecutor just for child sex offenders, she said convictions are up from three percent to nearly 30 percent.
Her office has tried more cases since July this year than her predecessor tried in a whole year, she said.
More trials mean offenders aren’t taking cozy plea deals, she said.
DA Wamp said critics have asked why she pursues a case when the victim doesn’t care. She addressed an acquittal handed down Friday in the nonfatal shooting of two victims who didn’t want to cooperate with the trial, she said.
“We have to care as a community,” she said, and advocate for victims who cannot advocate for themselves, she said.
DA Wamp said she fought for three state laws which went into effect July 1:
A statute specifying that someone who sells or delivers drugs that result in death is charged with second-degree murder, an effort to “kick drug dealers off the streets.”
“No excuses,” she said.
New Tennessee law allows the death penalty for aggravated child rape, or rape of a child younger than eight years old. DA Wamp said Tennessee will fight the U.S. Supreme Court for the penalty, and that her own office will seek the penalty in such cases more often than not.
“It looks like it might be struck down at some point,” DA Wamp said.
Under the Chris Wright Act, a sixth misdemeanor is a felony, which allows enhanced punishments, plus the perpetrator loses the right to possess a firearm. A third domestic assault conviction is also a felony.
“This is the type of gun control that I do believe in,” she said.
Darryl Roberts, the defendant who is accused of shooting and killing Chris Wright, has more than 60 misdemeanors on his record, many in Georgia.
The Hamilton County jail houses 500 inmates who have been arrested more than 10 times, she said.
“It was a no-brainer,” she said, across the left and right. “We worked together to do that.”
Though DA Wamp had supported Republican incumbent Rep. Patsy Hazlewood, she called on Pachyderm members to support the candidate who won the primary election.
“Obviously we need Michele Reneau in the state House,” she said.
“We know what direction Red Bank is heading,” she said. “We need to save it and pull it back the other way.”