Jackson Free Press

Sheriff Malcolm McMillin was confirmed this week in his new role as part-time chief of police for Jackson. From what we know of McMillin, we like him, and there is word already that morale may be improving in the Jackson Police Department as a result of his leadership. We hope that continues to be the case, and we'll monitor it to the best of our abilities.

However, we continue to have reservations both about the way that Mayor Frank Melton's office managed the confirmation process and the precedent of confirming the Hinds County sheriff in a part-time role as JPD chief without having in place an inter-local agreement between the two governments.

Council President Leslie McLemore and Ward 7 Councilwoman Margaret Barrett-Simon raised extremely valid and relevant concerns—namely, that the city has not addressing the need for an inter-local agreement and how the sheriff plans to keep county and city resources separate when, publicly, part of the proposed benefit of having the sheriff take the office is to oversee all of the local law-enforcement assets that can be brought to bear on a given problem.

The sheriff appears to have a solid sense of how to run a law-enforcement department—and he may be able to handle both. We don't question that he's a good choice to stem the public relations bleeding from Melton's previous efforts at crime-fighting, and we hope he's able to affect both the reality and perception of crime.

We also think it's possible that, over time, a merger of the City of Jackson and Hinds County could be worth pursuing, so as to consolidate and focus resources. But that should only happen after a great deal of public debate and deliberation—and it may, ultimately, not be the right answer.

Instead, we get a mayor's office that's either unwilling or unable to provide City Council with an inter-local agreement before they're asked to confirm the new chief, while the mayor himself continues to add thousands of dollars to the JPD payroll despite a city budget that he already has in serious deficit. As usual, the mayor's default approach to this confirmation has been to blanket it in the appearance of incompetence.

We call on the mayor to produce an inter-local agreement quickly (and the sheriff to encourage it), and we applaud efforts by McLemore and Barrett-Simon to improve transparency in this process.

Jacksonians need to know that Melton is once again presiding over a process that—while hopefully a good step—still needs the 'I's dotted and 'T's crossed.

Previous Comments

ID

75739

Comment

Finally, mellon got his t crossed. Now we can officially spell it melTon. My reference is yesterday's City Council meeting. The vote was 6 to 4 to disallow the $185.00/hr payment for melton's legal representation. It will be interesting to see if Danks will surface as the Savior for melton by taking the case pro bono. Danks was excellent in his "back-door" deal with McMillin and frank. I am still confused and shocked that this could be done in a "DEMOCRACY:" This was total disregard for the Legislature or the Council.

Author

justjess

Date

2007-12-19T14:07:01-06:00