Jackson Free Press

It's really something to watch Melton shift into full spin mode about how the federal indictments (apparently brought by "political enemies") are not going to stop him from doing his job and fighting crime, especially drug crimes, in interviews going out nationally. He told The Associated Press, for instance:

"I'm not going to have drugs sold with impunity in neighborhoods where senior citizens have worked all their lives and children play. I'm not going to allow them to be exposed to 24-hour drug-selling out of a house in the neighborhood," Melton told The Associated Press in an interview Thursday.

"I'm not saying to you that mistakes have not been made. If the system was doing what it should be doing, I wouldn't have been over there in the first place," Melton said.

Come on. Since when is Melton "fighting drugs"? His personal pick for police chief led a department that reported not a single arrest for drug sales in 2006—the year of the duplex attack. Not one.

When he spent 14 months as head of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, drug arrests dropped dramatically, leading Barbour to fire him when he was elected. Why? Because he focused all his time on a few cold murder cases he was obsessed with for some reason, not to mention "bringing in" young men wanted for crimes before police could get to them to interview them. What the young men wanted for armed robbery he wouldn't let deputies arrest? Why the disparate treatment of certain drug dealers/users?

We have seen little sign of any king of "crime-fighting" from Melton to date. Don't believe the hype.

Previous Comments

ID

132017

Comment

"I'm not saying to you that mistakes have not been made. If the system was doing what it should be doing, I wouldn't have been over there in the first place," Melton said. If he didn't like what the system was doing, he should have done what he could to help fix it instead of setting a poor example and breaking the law. That's the logical thing to do when you're elected to hold an office.

Author

LatashaWillis

Date

2008-07-11T10:34:46-06:00

ID

132019

Comment

Right. What a message to send all those young men—who were yelling about being Wood Street taking on Virden Addition or some such.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-07-11T10:46:11-06:00

ID

132022

Comment

I blame Walker, Texas Ranger. If only Frank watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl instead, none of this would have happened. The media are corrupting our youth! (And our disturbingly impressionable middle-aged men.) Crosslinked your Melton coverage on my civ lib site, by the way, not that you're likely to need the hits.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2008-07-11T12:17:03-06:00

ID

132028

Comment

Ladd, maybe you could ask him why, then, there were ZERO drug arrests in Jackson in 2006 (the same year of the "Crack House Beat-Down", at least according to the FBI's UCR data)? Interesting juxtaposition, huh?

Author

emsy

Date

2008-07-11T13:47:00-06:00

ID

132030

Comment

I'm curious: Were there an unusually high number of drug possession arrests that year? It would be interesting to know whether there were actually no drug dealers arrested, or if they were just classified under another heading. I know that most drug sale arrests I hear about are technically arrests for possession with intent to distribute, which should be classified separately from simple possession but might not have been under Chief Anderson.

Author

Tom Head

Date

2008-07-11T13:50:08-06:00

ID

132035

Comment

Melton hasn't used any of his experience as a former media executive in his capacity as mayor of his city. I think that this man definitely can't be called incompetent from a public relations perspective. How he could have helped the image of Jackson greatly? It could have been something like this: "Crack house? No sir, that isn't a crack house. That's a small business operation. It's a scientific lab. Dilapidated house, no, prime real estate. A fixer upper" Now I know I didn't give the best examples, but I assume you get the picture. He could have used his skills to capitalize on the good things going on in our city. Instead he focused on trying to uphold his image as a John Wayne, that was NOT his job (as many on the 5 o'clock news seems to believe it was), his job was to uplift his city.

Author

optimisticaboutNewJackCity

Date

2008-07-11T21:04:13-06:00

ID

132049

Comment

I listened to WOAD yesterday (whatever much I could withstand) and the pro-Melton spin was in full force. Rep. Jim Evans even claimed that this is double jeopardy. It's amazing how people who would know better would dumb us down and scream double jeopardy when they know it isn't the case. Melton was never tried on civil rights violations. I wanted to call in and argue with these people, but the lines were busy. That might've been a good thing since I didn't really want to get my blood boiling.

Author

golden eagle

Date

2008-07-14T08:48:00-06:00

ID

132050

Comment

Ladd, I asked "Sheriff - Chief" (CS) McMillan at his Leadership Jackson luncheon appearance last spring about there being no drug busts in JAckson for 2006. He responded by saying that was not true and the lack of JPD reporting drug arrests in Jackson for hat period was due to an FBI (?) administrative requirement (Huh?). Actually, acording to the CS, there was a combined county -city task force that did make drug arrests that year, although JPD was not able to file the arrests as JPD work to the FBI. I didn't bother to follow up that response from McMillan during theLJluncheon with another question. It was his first month on the job.. honeymoon period and all. Does McMillan's statement pass the smell test to the more FBI fluent among us out there?

Author

FrankMickens

Date

2008-07-14T08:58:14-06:00

ID

132057

Comment

Casual, I'm sure there were "drug busts" in Jackson. The point is that JPD reported no arrests for drug sales that year, regardless of how many that were made. That is no way to help public confidence. Despite his rhetoric, Melton does not seem eager at all to arrest drug dealers, at least not for dealing drugs. To wit: his tenure at MBN when arrests for drug sales plummeted.

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-07-14T13:06:23-06:00

ID

132058

Comment

Melton said this at the Gospel music awards last night: Mayor Frank Melton helped open the program with welcoming remarks, during which he joked about his ongoing legal troubles. Melton learned on Wednesday he has been indicted on federal civil rights charges for his alleged role in damaging a Jackson duplex in 2006 he considered a crack house. "It is now 6:32 (p.m.), and I haven't been in trouble yet," he said. "But you know me, it's still early." Melton went on to explain how he wouldn't let up on his efforts to rid the city of drug dealers, no matter the consequences. "It may cost me everything," he said. Could someone tell me one thing Melton has done—beyond talk big—"to rid the city of drug dealers"? Just one? Seriously, how much B.S. can one city stomach?

Author

DonnaLadd

Date

2008-07-14T13:12:08-06:00

ID

132060

Comment

Could someone tell me one thing Melton has done—beyond talk big—"to rid the city of drug dealers"? Just one? I can't even think of one-tenth of a thing.

Author

golden eagle

Date

2008-07-14T15:32:49-06:00