Nashville People's Budget Coalition

Posted January 16, 2026

The Mayor’s Community Safety Task Force will fail to produce the safety we all deserve — unless we show up and organize

Our “Housing & Safety for All Plan,” launched in April 2025, included a demand for a citywide non-police community safety plan rooted in public goods, prevention, and trauma-informed response. We proposed a $500k expenditure for positions to be housed within the Metro Human Relations Commission to carry out the process. 

In June 2025, we learned that the Metro Public Health Department (MPHD), led by new director Dr. Sanmi Areola, was preparing to lead a community-led safety planning process. We met with Dr. Areola, whose vision for a community safety plan resonated in many ways with our own. Here is what we wrote last June:

“We are willing to support and participate in this process if Metro Public Health guarantees that the process will not involve police, courts, jails, or surveillance at either the planning or implementation stage; that the process will invite impacted community members to play an active role; and that NPBC and other community-based organizations whose work relates to non-police community safety will be invited to play an active role in the plan’s development.”

Dr. Areola invited us to nominate a member of our organization to represent us on a task force that would facilitate the safety planning process, and he informed us that the Mayor’s Office would be making the final list and appointing those selected. We nominated our co-founder and member-leader, Theeda Murphy, an experienced organizer and non-police mental health practitioner and advocate. Dr. Areola forwarded her name, representing our organization, to the Mayor’s Office, along with dozens of others. 

In early January, we learned that the Mayor’s Office rejected Theeda’s nomination, along with many others, and that despite additional appeals, the Mayor’s Office was adamant that Theeda and NPBC would not serve on the task force.

On January 9 — the same day that the Mayor’s Office notified Metro Council that it would be seeking $3 million in police surveillance technology and equipment — his office released the final list of 29 task force members. While a few task force members have deep experience in and commitment to non-police community safety work, the majority are Metro department heads or nonprofit leaders with deep ties and commitment to police- and prison-centered approaches to public safety, including one former MNPD officer. 

Despite these developments, Dr. Areola has remained resolute and clear that this community safety planning process will center a public health and preventative approach. Still, we are deeply concerned that this process has already been compromised by the mayor’s appointments and his refusal to include individuals and organizations with frontline experience in creating and organizing for community safety. Groups such as the Raphah Institute, Gideon’s Army, the Southern Movement Committee, Unheard Voices Outreach, Mothers Over Murder, Nashville Peacemakers, and others received no invitation and only heard about the process from others. 

We also question the omission of the Metro Nashville Community Review Board and the Office of Youth Safety. How can a task force, which was ostensibly convened to be the voice of the community in this process, omit the two Metro agencies whose sole reason for existence is because the community conceptualized them and demanded that they be created? The mayor’s exertion of control over the task force and the absence of key organizations from it does not bode well for the integrity of the process or its outcomes.

Because of these dynamics, we have little faith that this process will result in the community safety resources that our communities so desperately need, and even less faith that the Mayor’s Office will implement any strong recommendations that the task force might make. Without significant presence and organized pressure from the community and other frontline organizations, this process may be doomed to the same fate as most mayor-appointed task forces: irrelevance. 

That said, as part of its larger invitation to the community, Dr. Areola and the Metro Public Health Department have invited Theeda, and NPBC, to participate in an informal capacity, attending public meetings, and supporting the community listening component of the process. We plan to attend and share reports from and assessments of the public meetings of the task force, to be held twice-monthly, and we invite the community to join us as we watch and organize to push for a genuine community-led non-police safety plan that benefits all Nashvillians. (The schedule of public task force meetings can be found here.)

Those of us who have been paying close attention have noticed that nearly every time Mayor O’Connell boasts about his seeming commitment to community-based safety, he also reaffirms his primary commitment to expanding police power and surveillance in Nashville. Multiple task force members identified this problem during the first meeting of the task force on January 15. We will not allow the mayor’s minimal and highly curated investment into community safety to serve as cover for his deeply harmful commitment to massively growing police and surveillance power in our communities. 

We renew our call in demanding a non-police community safety planning process anchored by impacted and frontline community members and rooted in public goods, prevention, and trauma-informed response. If Metro does not deliver, the people will.