Horror for Children in Tennessee
Rutherford County, TN is part of the Nashville MSA, and is home to the largest auto plant in the south. Its population is overwhelmingly Republican – including a significant portion of its black population. Its judicial system appears horribly broken.
Over many years, the county has jailed hundreds of children illegally, including some for crimes that do not exist. A recent scandal, reported by ProPublica and Nashville Public Radio, involved several young children arrested for non-existent crimes by police officers in 2016, nearly all of whom were crying at some point for being ordered to arrest children who were difficult to identify for a crime that appears nowhere in local, county or state ordnances or law. This is the very definition of Kafkaesque.
In 2015, I lived in Rutherford County, renting a room until complications arising from a move could be sorted out. We go to or through Rutherford County routinely, living within a few miles of both Rutherford and Wilson Counties. It’s a pleasant-enough place, with no overt signs of significant conflict. My landlord was a gay redneck, and his home usually had two to five visitors at a time. They were a cross-section of America and the local population by age, skin color and gender.
The neighborhood was fully integrated. I got to meet most of the neighbors; if they weren’t coming in and out of the house in which I lived, they were standing in the street early in the morning when the tree-cutting crews came through as early as 5:30 a.m. The crew members were all Hispanic immigrants who spoke no English, and it appeared I was the only Spanish-speaker within walking distance.
Law enforcement in Rutherford County has a checkered past, having little to do with either children or race. In 2016 the county Sheriff was jailed on charges of corruption. He had awarded sole-source contracts for jail purchases to companies in which he had an ownership stake. That same year, the state board that certifies detainment facilities voted unanimously to decertify the county jail.
I’m not certain that the horror in Rutherford County is due primarily to race, but it certainly plays a big role. Marginalized people are the easiest to ignore and the easiest to abuse. My ranking of causes has to start with plain old greed. Next is a general disregard of, and dismissal of the citizenry, now a nationwide phenomenon. I’d have to add race as number three. Despite attempts to link it to party affiliation, that’s difficult to do. Joe Biden took only three counties in Tennessee, but beat his statewide results in Rutherford.
I don't mean to belittle the injustice that the kids in Tennessee endured, but illegal detention is unfortunately neither uncommon nor exclusive to redneck states (example: https://time.com/5847453/protests-illegal-jail-new-york-nypd-george-floyd-coronavirus/). This seems like more fodder to further the red/blue divide. The bottom line is that this is yet one more way in which it just sucks to be poor no matter your political leanings.