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"I am the ultimate authority." - Frank Melton, May 1, 2006
For those of you who aren't from Jackson, let me catch you up. Frank Melton is just finishing out his first year as mayor of Jackson. Before I rip into him for several hundred words, let me state that not everything about Melton is bad. His record of community service as a private citizen is unimpeachable. I do respect him for that, though we disagree on pretty much everything else.
Before becoming mayor, he served as head of the Jackson NBC affiliate and the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics. For all his posturing and displays of force, drug arrests by the MBN were at a record low during Melton's tenure, according to Governor Barbour.
As mayor, his actions have only become more costly and less sensible. Let's take the King Edward problem. The King Edward Hotel, with its unique art deco architecture, has been a Jackson landmark for decades. Unfortunately, it has been vacant since the 1980s, housing part of the city's homeless population. A number of plans have been proposed to renovate it. Melton's first plan was to blow it up; since giving up on that, he has repeatedly stalled the construction, bouncing from builder to builder. By all rights, the renovation should be started, if not half-finished, by now.
Under Melton's order, Jackson has been under an official civil state of emergency since last Thursday. Last week, Melton increased the strictures of an already-existent curfew for minors, moving it for minors back an hour to 9 p.m. on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends. At Tuesday's city council meeting, Melton simply walked out when asked why the emergency order persists. He refuses to share his plans with the council, because he believes it will destroy the element of surprise necessary in dealing with criminals.
According to the Clarion Ledger, Melton stated later that his plan for reducing crime in Jackson was, "I want to put the bad guys in jail and keep kids in school." Yes, that was the strategy that was so important he felt he couldn't tell the council in public.
Particularly disturbing is Melton's recent order that police be more aggressive in their search of vehicles at random roadblocks. Obviously, police require probable cause to search any vehicle, even at a roadblock. If they don't, anything they find is inadmissible in court.
Oh, but Frank Melton has an answer to that pesky probable cause problem. "Probable cause is that we are under the state of emergency," he told the Clarion Ledger. That's right. Melton thinks he can declare the right to refuse a warrantless search null and void. Civil liberties? What are those? We're in an emergency here!
Melton even wanted to call out the National Guard to assist in stopping crime in Jackson. I'm sorry, but the National Guard has better things to do. We're sort of in this war, which the National Guard never should have had to go to in the first place. But I digress. The National Guard has got problems coming out its ears already. The last thing it needs is a completely unnecessary assignment.
Eventually, the Governor informed Melton it was impossible. You know you've got a problem when Haley Barbour has to be your voice of reason.
For the foreseeable future, the political situation in Jackson is and will be a morass. The racial divide and economic gap are extremely wide. Jackson city politics are notoriously corrupt, and the city council spends more time fighting amongst itself than trying to fix Jackson's problems.
What Jackson needs is a strong, diplomatic leader. It needs a leader who can work with the city council, not against it. Most importantly, it needs a leader who is willing to formulate an actual plan for fighting crime which- and this is key- isn't illegal. What it doesn't need is a cowboy with no regard for the law, civil liberties or his fellow officials. Heavy-handed posturing is no substitute for real results.
And that's the bottom line.
