Jessica Bliss, and Anita Wadhwani

The Tennessean

When Murfreesboro’s new police chief James “Karl” Durr started the job on April 4, he pledged to spend his first 90 days listening to the community and improving police community relationships.

A little more than two weeks later, Durr may be hearing more than he bargained for — and facing a crisis in police-community relations after his officers handcuffed and arrested multiple children ranging in age of 6 to 11 years old on allegations they failed to stop a fight that happened off school grounds. The arrests happened at an elementary school on Friday.

Durr pledged to investigate the incident, speaking at a community meeting hosted by a local church on Sunday.

Durr's response has so far earned mixed reviews.

Q&A with Murfreesboro Police Chief Durr

His statement that the incident was a "learning experience" earned the wrath of two Democratic state lawmakers who are calling for state and federal law enforcement to independently investigate,

"That shows that he completely misapprehends the seriousness of this incident of excessive force against young children," said House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart. "Clearly he is not capable of properly investigating this matter or holding all those responsible for their actions.”

But the church leader who brought the community together Sunday in response to these arrests has expressed faith in the chief and believes Durr has been given the "opportunity of a lifetime," to handle the response to these events in a way that will forge good relationships for the rest of his tenure here.

Murfreesboro police chief promises to review children's arrests

"If we handle this properly it can really reset the expectations and the understanding of the community toward the police department in a very positive way," said the Rev. James McCarroll, pastor of First Baptist Church on East Castle Street in Murfreesboro.

Durr got the job in Murfreesboro after three years serving as a captain and an assistant police chief in the Eugene Police Department in Oregon. He replaced retiring Murfreesboro police chief Glenn Christian, who had headed the department for the past 12 years. Durr's family — a wife and two sons, aged 8 and 12 — remain in Oregon until the school year ends.

In taking the $105,250 per year job, Durr said one of his goals was to improve technology within the department to free up officers to be in the community.

Kids' arrest outrages Murfreesboro community

“I think the nation has gotten away from community-based policing, where the officers know the people in their community, and I think that’s why there’s been this loss of trust in the police across the country,” he said during an interview earlier this month.

In Oregon , Durr led patrol operations in eastern Eugene and established data-focused policing. He was also part of an effort to equip all officers with body cams.

Durr was instrumental in lowering the number of high speed chases involving minor offenses, reducing the number of arrests of homeless residents, introducing software that tracked police use of force, and changing policy so supervisors were required to investigate use of force rather than officers filing their own reports said Mark Gissiner, an independent police auditor who reports to the Eugene City Council.

"Karl (Durr) understood you don't arrest your way out of problems, especially social problems," Gissiner said. "I suspect - and I don't know Murfreesboro - but obviously he's going to have to look more inwardly at the organization. I suspect, like Eugene, law enforcement in Murfreesboro are community enforcers rather than community partners. Karl's going to have to move them in that direction, and I think that's going to take a little time."

Durr "moved the needle in that direction" while he was in Eugene, Gissiner said.

He also weathered a national controversy in 2013 over one of his officers’ treatment of a 10-year-old child who was the subject of a custody dispute. The incident made national and international headlines when a cell phone video posted on YouTube showed a Eugene police officer striking the child’s head while the officer was removing him from his mother. Video also showed the child attempted to bite the officer.

Durr defended the actions and described the incident as a tap, not a slap, and noted that the Eugene Police Department did not have separate use of force guidelines for children, according to the Eugene Weekly.

Now at the helm in Murfreesboro, Durr must answer questions sparked by the arrests of multiple children.

"First impressions are hard to shake," said Terry Maroney, law professor at Vanderbilt University and co-director of the George Barrett Social Justice Program. "He may or may not have had any role in approving this particular operation, but he does have an opportunity now to set the tone and to say whether he thinks this is a proper use of the police services.

"He can walk it back a little and engage in some serious community dialogue and communication."

McCarroll met one-on-one with the chief on Saturday and interacted with him again on Sunday at the community meeting held at McCarroll's church. For Durr to come to a meeting attended by more than 150 angry and confused citizens "was huge," the reverend said.

"I think he values the pulse and the concerns of the community to the degree that he would adjust whatever schedule he had to make sure he was a present face and a present voice before the community. That means a lot."

To this point, McCarroll said, Durr has shown "if he gives his word he’s going to follow through with it. For the most part, he seems to be a very, very upstanding gentleman, a laudable family man."

Durr told McCarroll he planned to conduct an internal investigation of the arrests within 15 days. The chief reiterated that Tuesday afternoon in a statement issued by the Murfreesboro Police Department.

“The Department is committed to assuring that its officers consistently use good judgement and act in accordance with policy," Durr said in the media release. "If we need to make changes or address issues internally we will identify any issue and act accordingly."

Zacchaeus Crawford, who had three children taken into custody on Friday, was angered by how law enforcement handled the investigation and arrests. At Sunday's community meeting, Crawford shook hands with the chief, but Crawford said he has had no other interaction from police since his children were released from custody on Friday.

None of the investigation speaks of professionalism, Crawford said in an interview on Monday. "It denotes sloppiness, carelessness. It denotes all types of illegitimate actions."

When asked if he trusts the chief's promise to review the incident, Crawford chose his words carefully.

"The chief is new to his position," Crawford said. "I’m a fair man, so I’m going to take this man at his word.

"If he said he was going to look into this and make sure that anything that was done incorrectly is fixed, I’m going to take him at his word, because I don’t know him that well. All I have is his word. All I have is the word of people telling me this did not fall on deaf ears, but your word is only as good as your actions.

"If there is no immediate action taken to rectify this, anything he does from this point on, especially in this community, will always have a tinge of non-belief."

Durr declined a request for an interview on Tuesday.

The statement issued by the department Tuesday said: "While residents questioned the arrests of the students, Tennessee law prohibits the Murfreesboro Police Department from addressing the specifics of the juvenile arrests. The law is designed to protect juveniles and any information regarding incidents juveniles are involved in as it pertains to law enforcement records.

"MPD will not have further comment on these specific arrests because it is a matter before the Juvenile Court.​"

Before moving to Oregon, Durr served the majority of his career in Florida, beginning as a patrol officer with the City of Boca Raton in 1984 before joining the Palm Beach County Sheriff’s Department in 1987 where he would serve for the next 25 years.

While there, he led a Palm Beach County multi-agency task force charged with combating illegal prescription drug sales. He was involved in a then-new effort to deploy technology called “predictive policing” that analyzed crime-suspect and trend data to predict crimes that are likely to occur.

Durr also served as a major of a Homeland Security Bureau with 330 employees and oversaw operations that involved working with the FBI, U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Drug Enforcement Agency, among others.

Now, he has work to do in Tennessee.

The first step, McCarroll said, is to offer an apology for how the situation was handled. Second is to make sure there's an accurate investigation of what has taken place and then reprimand it in a way that fits with the findings. And, finally, McCarroll said, Durr should offer a personal commitment to the families so that it is "not only resolved in its immediate context but also shows a healthy reestablishment of trust between law enforcement and these families."

Reporter Brian Wilson contributed to this report.

This story has been updated to accurate attribute a quotation to House Democratic Caucus Chairman Mike Stewart, D-Nashville​.

Reach Anita Wadhwani at 615-259-8092 and on Twitter @AnitaWadhwani. Reach Jessica Bliss at 615-259-8253 and on Twitter @jlbliss.