Jackson Free Press

To the proud men and women of the Jackson Police Department: Help is on the way. Our law enforcement officers have been put through hell by this irresponsible, incompetent administration, and change is long overdue.

Since Frank Melton took office, the force has lost officers at an alarming rate, with dozens of terminations and even more resignations. Under the leadership of JPD Chief Shirlene Anderson, who has not so much led the department as provided cover for the mayor to do whatever he wants, morale among officers has nosedived, according to sources on the force. Her assistant chief, Roy Sandifer, wrote the infamous Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics memo that had Melton in court (again) just two days before he was indicted.

Law-enforcement insiders describe Sandifer as a “hatchet man” who specializes in purging other officers. JPD Detectives Marcus Wright and Michael Recio have proven that they were always more Melton’s men than they were police officers. They rocketed to positions of power within the department on Melton’s coattails, and now they are going down with the ship.

It’s time to clean house.

At City Council’s special session on Friday, Councilman Marshand Crisler said, “I hope and trust that we will all rally around our chief of police.”

We can and must rally around our police department, but it is far too late for Anderson to salvage any credibility. Any real police chief would have seized the Mobile Command Center from the mayor months ago. This might have cost her her job (she makes around $8,000 a month), but she would look like a hero now.

At his press conference Friday, Attorney General Jim Hood said: “(Citizens) have been sold this bill of goods that you can have good law enforcement for nothing. You’ve got to have more officers, more prosecutors, more judges and more jail space.”

The Maple-Linder report recommended that Jackson field a force of 630 officers, but today, there are only 455. The two-mill tax increase just passed by City Council will add only 35 officers to the force, according to Council President Ben Allen.

Melton, along with Councilmen Kenneth Stokes and Frank Bluntson (both Melton loyalists), have said that drugs drive crime, yet JPD now has only 13 narcotics officers, according to information the JFP acquired through a public records request.

How will we ever control drug crime with such a paltry number of narcotics officers? How will we ever bring peace to our most troubled neighborhoods without consistent, visible patrols from an adequately staffed police department? Real drugs raids and community policing will scare the “dope boys” more than smashing up a mentally disabled drug user’s house.

The police department must also become a more professional agency, which requires higher salaries and better education. It is also one of many reasons why City Council should pass an ordinance establishing a citizens’ review board, as recently proposed by the ACLU. Such boards have been hugely successful in other cities.

At present, citizens have absolutely no input into police misconduct. The department’s internal affairs division conducts its investigations in secret, and even the results are withheld from the public. This means that an officer with a long history of misconduct can remain on the force free to violate citizens’ rights again—many examples have come to light in the last year of violations by officers who should have been removed from the force long ago.

A citizen review board will not solve this problem, but it will provide a way for citizens to speak out about police misconduct. The decisions of such boards are usually non-binding, but they provide a measure of transparency, which restores public confidence and trust.

Incompetent or corrupt officers hurt other police officers by undermining that trust. When people believe that the police are corrupt and indifferent, they stop providing the tips that are essential to effective community policing. I cannot imagine the outrage career officers must feel toward colleagues who repeatedly break the rules without suffering any consequences.

If we are really serious about controlling crime, we must provide our police department with the resources needed to get the job done. We must also demand a higher degree of professionalism from the force, which starts at the top. Police officers under the command of incompetent and corrupt leaders will take their cue from those commanders.

The sacrifices these improvements require will be well worth it in increased investment and development alone. The anchor around Jackson’s neck is its relatively high crime rate. If we make substantial progress on that problem, there is no limit to what Jackson can become.

Previous Comments

ID

172638

Comment

Update: Jackson Police Dept. Narcotics Division has 10 detectives with one detective out on light duty. Two resigned, one is an acting Sergeant.

Author

Tiger

Date

2006-09-20T15:19:47-06:00

ID

172639

Comment

Interesting. Thanks for the update.

Author

Brian C Johnson

Date

2006-09-21T16:43:17-06:00

ID

172640

Comment

Brian C Johnson, do you know what happened to the police officers who were assigned to horses and by the way, where are the horses? Also, do you know why there is such a small # of motorcycle police officers? One other thing, what happened to the cameras purchased during the Johnson Administration for City surveillance?

Author

justjess

Date

2006-10-23T11:07:25-06:00