Tearing Down the Wrong Walls | Jackson Free Press | Jackson, MS

Tearing Down the Wrong Walls

By Donna Ladd Wednesday, February 11, 2009 6:29 p.m. CST
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Out of all the disturbing things emerging in Mayor Frank Melton's trial this week, the worst to me has been Michael Taylor's testimony that he lived with the mayor for a year and a half or so when he was a minor and never attended high school.

The now-19-year-old said he did go to GED classes while he lived there; "Danky" would take him. "Danky" is Anthony Staffney, Melton's long-time friend and mentee who works for the city's "youth initiative," as he called it in court Tuesday.

It seems clear that Taylor was riding around with Melton and his bodyguards on the city's Mobile Command Unit a lot more than he was in GED classes, however. He was part of the entourage that destroyed the duplex on Aug. 26, 2006, apparently at Melton's request, according to him and ex-bodyguard Marcus Wright and other witnesses. He had already been on at least five similar outings, he said in court, including one on Congo Street where he had helped tear down walls of abandoned houses. Wright testified Tuesday that Melton burned those houses down in defiance of Mississippi Department of Environmental Quality officials.

Taylor said that he and several of his friends—including Fredrica "Jermaine" Brunson—would ride around on the Mobile Command Unit with the mayor and police officers, often hanging out in the back watching television, at least when they weren't doing whatever the mayor asked. I've been on the mayor's joy rides, although thankfully none of the "lawn crew" were along for the ride on my excursions. But on the first one, Melton was clearly drinking—the smell of liquor was unmistakable, and his voice was slurred—and on both, he seemed to be doing the "raids" for fun more than for crime-fighting. It is emerging in the trial that he was likely drunk the night of the Ridgeway demolition, and perhaps others, when he had these young men in his care.

From the beginning of my rather-oddly congenial investigative coverage of Melton—he told me he "still loved" me this week in front of the courthouse—I have felt moments of sympathy for a man so misguided and egotistical that he thinks it's acceptable for him to serve a subpoena to the schizophrenic victim of the Ridgeway duplex attack. He is surrounded by many people who want something from him—money, prestige, jobs, a raucous time—but who seem utterly incapable of speaking up about his destructive behavior. Even his family lives over in Texas at a distance, and hasn't shown up in the courtroom to sit behind him as of press time.

But when I'm feeling sympathy for Melton, who certainly looks pitiful these days, I think of the sad faces of young men like Michael Taylor. Or Christopher Walker. Or Jeremy Bibbs. Or the many others to whom "Pops" (which they call him) is teaching very bad lessons. And I remember Christopher Walker sitting outside a restaurant on County Line Road and explaining in detail how all of them—the young black men of our city—are pawns in an ugly chess game.

It is clear to me after four years of intensely studying Melton that he picks and chooses the young men he helps with his own set of rules, and expects them to play his game, his way. No doubt, they are rewarded for loyalty. He gives them something many of them have never had: hugs, a refrigerator full of food (as Taylor pointed out in court); a "father figure," as he called it.

They are needy, and he gives them something to fill that void. No question. This "help" comes at grave cost to them, though, and our city as a whole. He is teaching select members of a young generation (and the one that already graduated from his school of mentoring that are now mentoring the younger ones) that he is above the law, and they are, too, by extension. It seems to be no real secret why many of them go out and get in serious trouble while living in Melton's home or afterward or both. Melton is teaching them an every-man-for-himself philosophy. You see a problem; you go solve it your way.

The mayor told me once that his college thesis was about Buford Pusser, the infamous and romanticized Tennessee police officer who swung a big stick to clean up the Dixie Mafia. Melton clearly thinks he's that kind of vigilante. But what he is doing is creating a whole new set of problems with the solutions he says will solve crimes. He doesn't even try to get a warrant first; he's above such details.

As is coming out in this trial—which is so much less stacked in Melton's favor than that joke of a state trial—Melton actually picks weak targets to turn into examples of supposed crime-fighting. Evans Welch was needy himself; Melton was in no way helping him when he gathered a mob—twice—to go over there and destroy the place. Duplex owner Jennifer Sutton was working hard to get by; it turned my stomach to listen to defense attorney John Reeves (himself a trial attorney) try to make it sound like she was trying to get one by on the taxpayers by suing in both state and federal court.

I hate to tell Melton, but picking a schizophrenic drug user in the Virden Addition to make the symbol of his supposed drug-fighting efforts was absurd, if that was even his goal. The only message this would send to an actual drug kingpin is that Melton is not willing to take him or her on in a meaningful way. He just wants to get buzzed and take a bunch of kids on a testosterone-soaked jaunt in one of the city's neediest neighborhoods.

Watching Michael Taylor testify broke my heart. Melton has sent him down a road it will be hard to return from. He is clearly confused about his allegiance to "Pops" and the need to tell the truth to keep himself out of prison (and possibly because he'd like to be in a position to do the right thing).

Melton is quite possibly a brilliant criminal, whether he means to be one or not. He finds the weakest young men to pick on and the weakest young men to do his dirty work. Then when he gets called out on it, his victims and his enforcers get put on the stand and laughed at by people watching. This is wrong all around. These young men need help and attention, and not the kind that Melton has foisted upon them in his own quest to be every man's father. Regardless of the outcome of the trial this month, that reality needs to sink in for all of us.

CORRECTION APPENDED ABOVE: The original column stated that Sutton had sued in "city and state" court, and should have read "state and federal" court,

Read our minute-by-minute of the Melton trial and past Melton coverage, and sign up for our trial Twitter feed, at Meltonblog.com.

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