Days Before Taking Office, the Incoming Criminal Court Clerk Says the "Shoot on Sight" Post Was Not His

A post on State Rep. Joe Towns Jr.'s Facebook page urged readers to "shoot on sight" and not to trust law enforcement. Towns, who takes office as Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk August 31, says his account was hacked. The post is confirmed; the hack claim is his alone.

MEMPHIS, Tenn. - The man about to run the record-keeping office of Shelby County's criminal courts is explaining a message published under his own name.

A post on the Facebook page of State Rep. Joe Towns Jr., the newly elected Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk, read "Keep your gun with you and shoot on sight. Deal with the system later" and "Save your own damn life and don't trust law enforcement," per Action News 5, which reported the story Wednesday, August 19, 2026. Towns says the account was compromised and the words are not his. "Yes. That's exactly right... I took it down," he said when asked whether his page was hacked, per the report. He added that he would never advocate violence: "that would be murder... You don't want to do that at all."

What is confirmed: the post appeared on Towns's page, and Towns removed it. What is not confirmed: who wrote it. The hack claim is Towns's own account, and no investigation, forensic review, or platform confirmation is reported. No law requires one; the public is simply left with an official's word on a question that his own office's credibility now rests on.

Towns won the office narrowly over incumbent Wanda Halbert in the August 6, 2026 election and is scheduled to take the oath August 31, 2026. Halbert's own tenure ended amid a two-year state effort to remove her from office that the state abandoned six weeks before her term expired, as The 901 Report reported in July. The Criminal Court Clerk's office keeps the records of every criminal case in Shelby County, an office whose daily work depends on the trust of courts, law enforcement, defendants, and the public simultaneously.

Whether the words were his or a hacker's, the episode lands on an officeholder-elect whose page reached the public with a message telling them to distrust the system he is about to serve, and the record of what happened is currently one man's statement.

Why It Matters for Memphis

Court clerks are low-visibility offices with high-trust jobs. An incoming clerk publicly disputing words published under his own name, with no independent verification either way, is an accountability question the county inherits August 31 whether or not anyone examines it.

The Transparency Gap

Who holds the authority here. Almost no one, which is part of the point. The Shelby County Criminal Court Clerk is an elected office, so the appointing authority was the voters on August 6 and the removing authority is either the voters or a state ouster proceeding, the same mechanism the state used against Halbert and then abandoned. Towns currently holds a separate elected office as a state representative, and the General Assembly holds its own discipline authority over its members. Facebook holds the account records. No county body reviews the conduct of an incoming clerk, and nothing here is a criminal matter.

What has not been disclosed. No platform security notice, login record, or account-access log has been produced. No police report or complaint to any agency has been reported. No forensic review has been announced or requested. The date the post appeared and the length of time it stood before removal have not been stated. And Towns has not said whether he intends to seek any confirmation of the hack.

Why the gap matters, and what we are requesting. A hack claim is ordinarily easy to support: a platform notice, a login record from an unfamiliar device, a report filed somewhere. None of the three has been produced, and none has been asked for on the record. That does not make the claim false, and this post does not treat it as false. It makes the claim unverifiable, which is a different problem for an incoming officeholder whose office runs on the integrity of records. The 901 Report is requesting any platform account-security notice or login record Towns has obtained, any report he has filed with a law enforcement or state body, the certified August 6, 2026 election results for the office, and the county's transition schedule for the August 31 oath. We will report what those records show.

Your city. Your money. Your receipts.

Days Before Taking Office, the Incoming Criminal Court Clerk Says the "Shoot on Sight" Post Was Not His

Why It Matters for Memphis

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