The Tennessean – October 30, 2025 – If current trends hold, Nashville could end up with its lowest homicide rate in 60 years.

The robbery rate could hit its lowest mark since 1972.

These are just a couple of the public safety milestones Nashville Mayor Freddie O’Connell flagged earlier in October. It’s not new messaging for O’Connell, who over the past several months has highlighted Nashville’s declining violent crime rates, which he said have dropped across the board in all tracked categories on a year-over-year basis.

One more indicator of Nashville’s positive trajectory: O’Connell said the city didn’t see a single homicide in September, a feat he said may be a first in modern memory.

“We’re seeing historically low moments of these particular categories of crime, and it’s happening at a time where we’re making strategic investments,” O’Connell said.

Here’s how, and what comes next as O’Connell aims to continue the trend in 2026.

O’Connell points to several strategies that could explain Nashville’s current moment in public safety.

One of them is bringing on new Metro Nashville Police Department officers, 250 of them since O’Connell took office in 2023. Then there’s the dedicated public transit security division that launched earlier this year, expanded safety resources that have rolled out at Nashville’s public schools and MNPD’s new Southeast Precinct that will soon open in Antioch.

“All of this has happened while we’ve made strategic improvements in response times, letting reporting frameworks change, using 311 more effectively, changing response times at our Department of Emergency Communications,” O’Connell said. “Across the board, we’re very excited to see what we want.”

The list doesn’t end there. O’Connell also pointed to Nashville’s new Office of Youth Safety and the continued growth of mental health co-response initiatives like MNPD’s Partners in Care program and the Nashville Fire Department’s Responders Engaged and Committed to Health program, both of which have expanded in the past year or so.

That progress comes at a time when progressive-led cities from coast to coast are experiencing heightened scrutiny from state and federal lawmakers, with crime the impetus for the National Guard’s presence just over three hours away in Memphis.

Emphasizing Nashville’s progress to state and federal partners has been a focus this year, O’Connell said. But those conversations aren’t meant to imply that there’s not still more to accomplish.

“I also don’t want to paint it as a picture that’s rosier than it is,” O’Connell said. “We still know we have work to do. We still know there’s progress to continue putting down pressure on crime. We still know that we do want to have police presence be understood and felt in communities that it makes sense.”

“We want to continue to look at meaningful ways to reduce gun violence,” O’Connell said. “Within that, we’ve also seen reductions in non-lethal gun violence incidents, so we want to continue that pressure.”

That means looking at expanding gun violence intervention measures, O’Connell said, and improving on the Office of Family Safety’s efforts to standardize the city’s firearms dispossession standards for cases like domestic violence.

O’Connell said increased capacity in the city’s budget should boost efforts to expand the staff at the Office of Youth Safety, and O’Connell’s staff is in the middle of reviewing applications for a director of violence prevention and crime prevention in the mayor’s office.

Part of the work lies in illustrating Nashville’s progress to community members who may otherwise not be aware of it, or who personally feel less safe because they’ve been the victim of a crime directly. O’Connell said it’s just as important to highlight resources like the Office of Family Safety’s and MNPD’s family intervention program.

“I know this from firsthand experience — anyone who becomes a victim of a crime, there is no easy way back to feeling safe,” O’Connell said. “If you have seen break-ins in your neighborhood, if you have had a property crime occur, if you have been a victim of a robbery, those are the points of people (feeling) unsafe. So I also want people to understand the resources we have for victims of crime.”

August 15, 2025 – A Davidson County jury found 60-year-old Roger McElroy GUILTY of killing a fellow driver and injuring a Metro Police officer in a horrific 3-vehicle crash that occurred in the Joelton area of North Nashville in 2020.  The 60-year-old McElroy admitted he smoked marijuana and took prescription medication before the high-speed crash that killed Steven Toth and injured MNPD officer Benjamin Cantrell.

Assistant District Attorney and Vehicular Crimes Team Leader, General Matt Gilbert played video during the trial from officer Cantrell’s dash cam showing McElroy’s speeding red pick-up blow through a stop sign at the intersection of Clarksville Pike and Bernard Road at a high rate of speed, killing the 66-year-old Toth and injuring officer Cantrell, who was on his way home from his police shift.   General Gilbert stated that it’s one of the first times the combination of prescription medication and marijuana have resulted in a fatal crash and an eventual conviction at a jury trial.  At the time of the crash, McElroy had two previous convictions for driving under the influence.

 

After 10 years of waiting, justice is awarded to a young rape victim.

Congratulations to Assistant District Attorneys Lauren Hogan and Macy Pesavento, who secured a Guilty conviction on July 15th, 2025, against defendant Leopold Mpawinayo on the Class A Felony charge of Rape of a Child.    The victim was only 12 years old in 2015 when Mpawinayo picked up the victim, who was a stranger to him, and raped her.   Although the victim reported the crime immediately, the DNA didn’t hit CODIS (the national DNA crime database) until five years later.  Mpawinayo was then connected to this case, and several other crimes.

Prosecutors praised Crimes Against Children Detective Rob Carrigan, who was able to locate the victim almost 10 years after the crime.  Victim Witness Coordinators Alex Ondrus and Hannah Estes provided support to the victim, who was finally able to get Justice after years of waiting and wondering if her attacker would ever be held accountable.

In the end, it only took the jury 30 minutes to find Mpawinayo Guilty of Rape of a Child, which is a mandatory Range 2 offense, carrying prison time of 25 to 40 years at 100%.  His sentencing will be September 4^th.

 

 

A Davidson County jury found 26-year-old Deandre Conway Guilty Thursday night (June 26, 2025) on all eleven counts he faced in the October, 2022 deaths of a Nashville man and Cheatham County teenager.  24-year-old Terry Farmer was shot to death during an altercation with Conway at a Madison area apartment complex.  Following the shooting, Conway fled the scene in a Chevrolet pickup, and plowed into a Toyota Rav 4, killing 17-year-old Landen Guye.  Several other young people in the Toyota were also injured in the crash.  Conway fled from the crash scene on foot and was later arrested by Metro Police TITANS detectives in the Hendersonville area.  During the emotional 4-day trial, prosecutors called more than two dozen witnesses, many of them family members of the two individuals who were killed.  After just 3 hours of deliberations, Conway was found guilty of charges ranging from Second Degree Murder and Reckless Vehicular Homicide to multiple counts of Reckless Aggravated Assault.  If sentenced to serve all of his time consecutively (back-to-back), Conway could spend more than 60 years behind bars.  Sentencing will be August 20th in front of Criminal Court Judge Mark Fishburn.

Deandre Conway                                        Terry Farmer                                         Landen Guye                                              Photos from the crash scene 10/2022

A Davidson County jury found 30-year-old Ryan McCann guilty this week of assaulting and intimidating a man of Jewish ancestry while in a downtown Nashville parking lot in July of 2024.  McCann, a self-proclaimed antisemitic and white supremacist, was convicted of Assault Resulting in Bodily Injury, along with Civil Rights Intimidation for the attack.  McCann was in Nashville with the hate group, Goyim Defense League, as they marched through Nashville last summer.

It took the jury only three hours to convict the Canadian born McCann, who faces up to 13 years in prison for the two guilty convictions.  In addition, McCann faces additional charges for an altercation with another man that took place along Broadway.

Criminal Court Judge Steve Dozier stated in court that this is believed to be the first trial of its kind in Tennessee for a Civil Rights Intimidation violation.  Jewish leaders from across Nashville and the state praised the Metro Nashville Police department, as well as the District Attorney’s prosecution team.  Nashville District Attorney Glenn Funk says the prosecution and convictions prove that violence, hate, and intimidation will not be tolerated in Nashville.

Ryan McCann                               Instagram post of attack

The Nashville District Attorney’s office Criminal Court Division III Team Leader Megan King and Assistant District Attorney Gracie Moore secured a GUILTY VERDICT in State v. Ronnie Phillips this past week.

70-year-old Ronnie Phillips was found guilty of First-Degree Premeditated Murder in the murder of victim Christine Estok, along with Especially Aggravated Kidnapping and Aggravated Assault against Phillips’ girlfriend, Pascha Baskette.

Facts of the case:   On July 19, 2022, the defendant, 70-year-old Ronnie Phillips, was spending the day with his girlfriend (31-year-old Pascha Baskette) and her aunt (Christine Estok).  They all spent the night at the defendant’s home in Donelson, planning to hang out the next day.  Pascha and Phillips went to the bedroom leaving Christine sleeping on a den sofa.   When Pascha woke up the next morning, she found her aunt, Christine Estok, dead on the sofa with a gunshot wound to the head.   Phillips claimed he killed Christine because someone named “Pa” called and told him that Christine was trying to set Pascha up with another man.   Then, holding a gun and a taser, he told Pascha he was going to kill her.  Pascha begged for her life.    Phillips finally agreed to contact police only if they told them Christine committed suicide.   Phillips staged the scene prior to police and paramedics arriving, but once authorities arrived, Pascha told them what really happened.

Based upon all the proof, prosecutors believe and argued that the defendant shot Christine while she was sleeping, then held his girlfriend Pascha against her will, threatening her with a gun and a taser.

The jury agreed, finding Phillips Guilty of all charges in just one hour of deliberations.  The guilty verdict carries an automatic life sentence.

Convicted Killer Ronnie Phillips                          Victim Christine Estok

On Wednesday, May 14^th, a Davidson County Criminal Court Jury handed down two GUILTY verdicts against 31-year-old James Ritenour, including First Degree Premeditated Murder, which carries an automatic life sentence.  Ritenour was found guilty of killing 29-year-old Alexis Douglas and wounding her 29-year-old boyfriend, Gene Fernandez in Douglas’ Donelson apartment in December of 2020 in a fit of jealous rage.

The second guilty verdict was for Premeditated Attempted First Degree Murder for the shooting of Fernandez.  Sentencing on that conviction will be in August.

Gene Fernandez took the stand in the trial, pointing out the killer in Judge Jennifer Smith’s Division IV courtroom.   Fernandez and his family, along with the relatives of Alexis Douglas were overcome with emotion following the verdict, hugging the DA’s prosecution team, lead by Assistant District Attorneys Debbie Housel and Elizabeth Huertas, as well as Victim Witness Coordinator Susan Tucker Smith.

Ritenour will begin serving his life sentence immediately.