Jackson Free Press

There's never a slow news week in Jackson, Miss., and last week was no exception. Here are the local stories JFP reporters brought you in case you missed them:

1. JPS Interim Superintendent Freddrick Murray asked the Board of Trustees to close four elementary schools for the upcoming 2018-2019 school year last week.
2. A Jackson elementary school has to wait for new sidewalks because the City of Jackson has to restart a bid process for funding under the federal Safe Routes to School program.
3. Schools, colleges and universities around Mississippi could create school-safety programs, designating certain licensed firearm owners who complete approved training courses to carry a concealed gun for the explicit purpose of resisting violent intruders on campus.
4. The local community supports both Jackson Public Schools and the teachers in a stronger way than in many communities, a poll of 500 local residents in January found.
5. Johnnie McDaniels, executive director of the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center, wants law enforcement and the Hinds County district attorney’s office to stop the “finger pointing.” He says youth charged as adults are sitting in his detention facility for more than 100 days.
6. Lee Edward Bonner, 37, died after a Jackson police officer shot him on Feb. 21 in west Jackson. His family says it was "an overkill," while the City released scant information painting Bonner as the instigator of a shoot-out during a drug investigation gone awry.
7. Mississippi lawmakers on Thursday passed what is likely to be the nation's most restrictive abortion law, making the procedure illegal after 15 weeks of pregnancy.
8. In one of his more assertive and direct public statements, Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba refuted an ethics complaint from a branch of a local conservative think tank accusing the City of Jackson of destroying immigration records called detainers.
9. Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba presented best-selling author Angie Thomas with a key to the city at a Jackson City Council meeting on Feb. 27, 2018.
10. The SPLC and ACLU's case against the Mississippi Department of Corrections for its treatment of prisoners at East Mississippi Correctional Facility went to trial last week.

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