Memphis Police Shooting: Officer Killed In Shooting
A Memphis police officer was shot and killed Sunday afternoon in the Memphis suburb of Cordova, according to a report from The Commercial Appeal.
According to the Appeal, the Memphis police shooting happened shortly after 1 p.m. on Longshadow Lane in Cordova.
The paper reports the Memphis police officer was transported to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis, where he died in surgery after being “shot multiple times.”
Fox News identified the victim as Terence Olridge, 31.
“Olridge had only been with the Memphis Police Dept. since September 2014, when he started as a basic recruit, and had a fiancé who is four months pregnant, Armstrong said.”
“Olridge’s uncle told WREG that the officer was in uniform in his car on his way to work when he was shot. Olridge crawled back to his house to seek help after being shot, the uncle said.”
Fox 13 in Memphis had interviewed Olridge at his graduation from the police academy. At the time, the now-murdered Memphis police officer had said he knew joining the police force in Tennessee’s largest city would be work.
“Got a task ahead of me and I am prepared,” said Olridge told the local Fox affiliate.
Fox News reports a shooter is in custody, though additional details about the Memphis police shooting are not known at this time.
For the city of Memphis and the Memphis Police, this is the second shooting to rock the city and the department in less than a month. According to CNN, Memphis Police Officer Sean Bolton, 33, was killed in a shooting during a traffic stop in August. The reason police cited for Bolton’s death was a drug deal gone bad, as Bolton’s traffic stop apparently interrupted the deal as it was going down.
There is no named reason for why so much violence is being aimed at police in the Memphis and Shelby County area, but for outsiders unfamiliar with the city made famous by Elvis and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., among other notable reasons, Memphis has long carried a reputation as a dangerous city for police and non-police alike.
According to WREG-TV 3, the city of Memphis was ranked the third most dangerous city this year by the FBI. The local CBS affiliate reported that the FBI used 2013 crime numbers from across the United States to create its ranking.
“It reported there were 124 murders, 7,200 aggravated assault, 366 arsons and more than 40,000 property crimes,” WREG reported. Crime overall had decreased from 2012 to 2013, with violent crime down four percent. In spite of the drop in violent crime, the city’s murder rate – again using FBI totals – was up seven percent from 2012 to 2013 though rapes and aggravated assaults in the city were down overall.
According to the Tribune Media Wire, the top 20 most dangerous cities in America include cities many likely expect, while there are others which may come as a surprise. (The Tribune article ranks slightly different from WREG‘s based on combining FBI data with visualizations from FindTheHome.) Coming in at number 20 is Miami, followed by 19) Stockton, California; 18) Buffalo, New York; 17) New Haven, Connecticut; 16) Indianapolis; 15) Newark, New Jersey; 14) Kansas City, Missouri; 13) Washington, D.C.; 12) Atlanta; 11) Birmingham, Alabama; 10) Rockford, Illinois; 9) Milwaukee; 8) Baltimore; 7) Little Rock, Arkansas; 6) Cleveland; 5) St. Louis; 4) Memphis; 3) Flint, Michigan; 2) Oakland, California; and 1) Detroit, Michigan.
A spate of other police officers have been shot this year, including the shooting of a Lake County, Illinois, police officer who was shot and killed. The Inquisitr reported at the time on the shooting, noting that like the officer killed in August in Memphis, the Lake County deputy was also killed during a traffic stop. One suspect was arrested in that case, while police were seeking two others.
[This is a breaking news story. As more information becomes available, this story will be updated.]
