The bill that expands police was approved by the Mississippi Senate

Investigations into a Black-Centric Water Crisis in Jackson, Mississippi, based on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Interaction with the State Department

The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency is looking at whether Mississippi state agencies discriminated against the Black capital city by not funding improvements to its water system.

The announcement came days after leaders of two congressional committees said they were starting a joint investigation into a crisis that left most homes and businesses in Jackson without running water for several days in late August and early September.

Heavy rainfall in late August exacerbated problems at Jackson’s main water treatment facility. Republican Gov. Tate Reeves declared an emergency Aug. 29, and the state health department and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency have been overseeing operations and repairs at the facility since then.

Jackson was down 25% from 1990 to today as White residents moved to the suburbs. In the same time, the city went from about half Black to 83% Black, which is the highest percentage in the US.

The EPA’s investigation is a step in the right direction after many years of the state withholding federal funds needed to save the city’s water system, according to the NAACP President.

Johnson was named among several resident complainants in the NAACP’s civil rights complaint against Mississippi. He said that the state’s failure to intervene in Jackson is indicative of systemic neglect.

Taken together, the changes in the House bill would put White, conservative state officials in control of much of the criminal justice system across a significant swathe of Jackson. That prospect has mobilized opposition in a city where more than eight in 10 residents are Black.

CNN has not been able to determine the ethnic makeup of the current CCID, but Rep. Trey Lamar, the bill’s sponsor, says that under legislation that passed the state House to expand the district, the makeup would be about 55% Black.

HB 1020: A Bound on the State’s Best Judges’ Right to Protect the Public Interests in Hinds County

Some lawmakers, like Lamar, say the new measure is needed to address Jackson’s growing crime problem, but state Democratic leaders say efforts like this are about control, not about helping the people of Jackson.

The elected judges of Hinds County, alongside the Hinds County prosecutor, all signed and released a joint statement on January 30 strongly denouncing the proposed measure. According to them, it would remove the authority of elected judges to hear and preside over cases in the Capitol Complex Improvement District and unconstitutionally give that authority to the appointed judges, violating the rights of voters in Hinds County to elect their own judges.

The bill approved on Thursday by a Senate committee dropped the Capitol Complex district expansion and the new court system, in response to criticism. Instead, it would add five new temporary judges in Hinds County, appointed by the State Supreme Court chief justice. Those judges would be replaced by a single new locally elected judge starting in 2027.

The bill has been criticized by Jackson leaders and groups who say it doesn’t address the root causes of crime.

The Southern Poverty Law Center’s Action Fund echoed this statement in a tweet posted Friday, saying, “HB 1020 is authoritarian and a blatant state effort to dilute the rights of Jackson, Mississippi, residents. It would strip Jacksonians of voting power to elect judges and district attorneys they feel serve their best interests.”

Senate Democratic Minority Leader Derrick Simmons and House Democratic Minority Leader Robert Johnson released a joint statement denouncing the bill, calling it an “insult and distraction” and likening it to modern-day Jim Crow.

The judges should be elected instead of being appointed, as one of the seven amendments proposed by Democrats. Both amendments were defeated, and Lamar responded to the latter by saying that allowing judges to come from other areas would ensure “the best and brightest” could serve.

John Horhn says that the question of the state taking over the City of Jackson has been raised. If it looks like a duck and walks and quacks like one, it is a duck.

The Jackson VS. Everybody siege in the Capitol Police: Implications for the city’s water system, police power, and purse strings

Lamar told CNN he believes the bill will go to the Senate floor in the next three weeks.

The volunteers at New Jerusalem Church gave out cases of water to a line of cars in the church parking lot last week in Jackson, Mississippi, which has struggled with a failing water system.

But inside the church, a parade of pastors and organizers addressing the crowd railed against another threat they described as dire to the city’s future: their state legislature.

The T-shirt she wore underscored the political mood of the event – and the siege mentality that city leaders say they’re feeling: JACKSON VS. Everyone.

The fight comes at a time when the legislature is debating other bills that would also narrow the city’s authority, including over its broken water system. And around the country, other Republican-controlled state legislatures are also clashing with big-city leaders over power struggles and purse strings.

A modified version of the bill stripped of some of its most controversial provisions passed a state Senate committee Thursday – although they could be added back in as the two legislative houses come to an agreement.

Both versions of the legislation would greatly expand the jurisdiction of the Capitol Police, a force that has been criticized for aggressive tactics and multiple shootings by officers.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/us/jackson-mississippi-capitol-criminal-justice-invs/index.html

The Legislature’s Capitol Complex Improvement District: The Case for a Criminal Justice System in Jackson, Miss. (Mississippi)

“It is taking us back in time and it puts us on the wrong side of history,” Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba said in an interview. It is the worst of what Mississippi can be.

The House version of the bill stood out for its audacity according to a law professor at the University of Mississippi.

State legislators wanted to help support the city and in response created the Capitol Complex Improvement District to fund infrastructure projects around the state Capitol, where government office buildings sit near empty storefronts.

Last year, with bipartisan support, the legislature added funds for policing in that district with an expansion of the state Capitol Police. Formerly a sleepy department patrolling state buildings, the force has significantly increased in officers since the middle of last year, and its shiny SUVs are a ubiquitous presence downtown.

Now, Republican leaders say more changes are needed, pointing to a significant backlog of criminal cases in the county courts, which leave some defendants waiting months or longer for trials.

The museums and Capitol building are located in the newly expanded district which extends from the downtown to the northeast limits of Jackson and includes Jackson State University and the University of Mississippi Medical Center.

According to the bill text, about 45% of the people who live in the district are Black, compared with 80% of the Jackson population. The district includes most of the densest White neighborhoods in the city, which are also some of Jackson’s most affluent areas.

The proposed district “looks like a redlining map from the ’60s,” Johnson said, referring to the decades-old discriminatory practice of denying loans in minority neighborhoods.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/us/jackson-mississippi-capitol-criminal-justice-invs/index.html

A State of the Art: Unconstitutional Policing in Jackson and the Case for a New High-speed Sheriff’s Office

“There are too few law enforcement officers, too few prosecutors, too few public defenders, and too few judges to effectively administer justice,” Lamar, who represents a rural community two and a half hours north of Jackson, wrote in a recent op-ed.

In an interview last week, the senior elected judge asked if the people were concerned about helping speed along how cases are handled, then they should add more judges.

The differences between the houses of congress would have to be worked out in a conference committee if the amended bill passes the full Senate.

A coalition of activists and faith leaders have organized against the bill, holding rallies on the Capitol steps and at churches around the city, and are planning to fight it out in court if it becomes law.

Supporters say that the bill is legal because it has a new court in the House that would be under the supervision of the elected judges and could be appealed to.

The proposal would violate the state constitution because it would take away the authority of elected judges, and go against Voting Rights Act provisions protecting representation for minority groups, according to the executive director of the ACLU of Mississippi.

A city with no say over policing or their judicial system would be ideal for Black people, Dortch said. It is blatantly unconstitutional.

In recent months, some residents have complained about officers unnecessarily escalating confrontations with suspects, especially when they are involved in high-speed car chases around the city that have left civilians injured or ended in shooting. According to local news reports, at least five people were shot by officers in a three month period last year.

The officers involved in the shooting were part of the department’s “Flex Unit,” a plainclothes street crime unit that drives cars. Capitol Police Chief Bo Luckey told the local paper that the purpose of the unit was having boots on the ground.

The department says that the shooting is still under review by the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, and it can’t release more details until that investigation is complete. The department didn’t reply to a request for details about the other four incidents.

More broadly, there’s a significant divide in how some White and Black residents of Jackson see the Capitol Police. Many of Johnson’s White friends wished everyone in Jackson could have the department, which he said was an answer to a pressing problem. Some friends of Black people told him they were scared for their kids to drive through the jurisdiction of the department.

But critics say the plainclothes unit’s aggressive tactics make it similar to the notorious Scorpion Unit of the Memphis Police Department, which was disbanded last month amid national anger over the beating death of Tyre Nichols.

Capitol Police and State Government Challenges in the City of Jackson, North Carolina, and Tennessee: A Key Issue for Water Infrastructure, Pastoral Teams, and the Public Works Department

Arkela Lewis said a friend of Lewis told them they were being followed and didn’t realize a police car was behind them.

In December, a Capitol Police traffic stop of a stolen vehicle led to a high-speed chase that ended in gunshots. A bullet went through the wall of Latasha Smith’s apartment in northwest Jackson and hit her daughter in the arm as she slept. There are still two bullet holes in Smith’s wall.

A statement by the Capitol Police at the time said that there had been an officer-involved shooting and shots had been fired next to Smith. The department said that the MBI would investigate the shooting, but has not released further details.

The pastor of a black church said he has been asked by his flock to stay on the line when a Capitol Police cruiser pulls up behind them.

The city, which has experienced a water quality crisis that has forced residents to rely on neighborhood distributions of bottled water, received about $800 million in federal funding for water infrastructure upgrades, most from a spending bill that passed Congress last year.

Another bill being debated in the state legislature would create a new regional board that would be made up of appointees by the governor and lieutenant governor and take control of Jackson’s water and sewer system. That has raised the alarm of the federal monitor appointed to oversee the system.

In Missouri, a new bill would let the governor strip locally elected prosecutors of the power to handle violent crime cases. The state attorney general is trying to oust the Democratic prosecutor from office in St. Louis, which she denies.

In North Carolina, Republican legislative leaders have signaled that they might block Charlotte from issuing a sales tax that would pay for an expansion of the public transit system. The speaker thinks the plan is impractical.

And in Tennessee, the state legislature is moving forward with bills that would effectively cut Nashville’s city council in half and take state control over the city’s airport and stadiums – after the city council killed a bid for the 2024 GOP convention.

At the same time, local leaders in conservative corners of blue states have also clashed with their state governments – from California sheriffs who refused to enforce mask mandates during the pandemic to New Mexico’s Democratic attorney general suing local towns that have passed restrictions on abortion.

While tension between city halls and state capitols has long been a fixture of American government, experts say the fights are becoming more frequent – and more high-stakes – as the nation’s politics become more polarized and acrimonious.

GOP legislators were more likely to vote for restrictions on local governments than their Democratic colleagues, and that those efforts were most common on hot button issues such as guns and LGBTQ rights.

A paper co-authored by a political science professor from Western Illinois University says that some rural legislators focus on liberal cities as a way to score political points and pour more gas on the culture wars.

Some locals in Jackson say that the bad blood between them will stay even if the legislative proposals do not pass in the coming weeks.

Source: https://www.cnn.com/2023/02/27/us/jackson-mississippi-capitol-criminal-justice-invs/index.html

“It’s still a snake,” Sen. John Horhn said of the Jackson vs. Jackson homicide bill

After she said goodbye, she started leading chants of “kill the bills!” At the church rally last week, wasHolmes, activist in Jackson vs. The boy sat in the front pew and took a closer look at the situation.

“It feels like some of our leaders want a piece of Jackson for themselves,” she said. “So, it’s very important that we continue to say that Jackson is not for the taking.”

“It is vastly improved from where it started, but it is still a snake,” Democratic Sen. John Horhn of Jackson said of the bill during Tuesday’s debate.

The city of Jackson has had more than 100 homicides in each of the past three years, and supporters of the bill say they want to improve public safety.

We all know that the nation is watching. “They’ve been.” Republican Sen. Brice Wiggin said before Tuesday’s Senate vote. This bill is about standing up for the citizens of Jackson and for our state capital.

The Senate version removed the permanent new courts. Instead, it would allow the chief justice to appoint one judge to work within the existing court system through December 2026.

Jackson is home to four elected circuit court judges who handle criminal and civil cases. The elected judges in Hinds County will get some of the federal COVID-19 relief money to pay for four judges to help with the cases that have developed after courts were shut down due to the swine flu. The Senate version of the bill would add a fifth temporary judge.

The Capitol Police Expansion would have left a little more than 100 million $rm Y_1$ left in the state Capitol

The House version of the bill would have expanded Capitol Police territory into affluent parts of Jackson, including shopping areas and predominantly white neighborhoods — but not into the entire city.