[If our state lawmakers really wanted to help fight crime, they
would invest more tax dollars into mental health and anti-poverty
programs to better support all of our communities, not finding new
ways to oppress and overpower the Black residents of this state. ]
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NAACP SUES OVER MISSISSIPPI LEGISLATION EXPANDING STATE POWER IN
JACKSON  
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Nick Robertson
April 22, 2023
The Hill
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_ If our state lawmakers really wanted to help fight crime, they
would invest more tax dollars into mental health and anti-poverty
programs to better support all of our communities, not finding new
ways to oppress and overpower the Black residents of this state. _

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba, left, listens during a hearing
hosted by the Jackson delegation of the Mississippi Legislature,
(Rogelio V. Solis/AP)

 

The NAACP filed a lawsuit
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Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves 
[[link removed]](R) and other members of the
government over two pieces of state law which would expand state
influence
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policing in the capital city of Jackson.

Reeves signed the two laws — House Bill 1020 and Senate Bill 2343
— this week. The House bill creates a separate, state-controlled
legal system for the Capital Complex Improvement District (CCID), a
17.5 square-mile area surrounding the Capitol building in Jackson,
including a panel of state-appointed judges. The Senate bill makes it
more difficult for people to protest at the Capitol and other state
buildings by requiring permits through the state-controlled Capitol
Police.

The NAACP argued that the two measures violate the 14th Amendment by
discriminating against the citizens of Jackson, an overwhelmingly
Black city. The state’s government is GOP-controlled and majority
white.

“In violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, these laws target
Jackson’s majority-Black residents on the basis of race for a
separate and unequal policing structure and criminal justice system to
which no other residents of the State are subjected,” the suit says.

The bills double the CCID in size and give Capitol Police complete
jurisdiction inside it, as well as secondary jurisdiction in the
entire city. As a state department, Capitol Police are not accountable
to Jackson voters. 

Anyone arrested by the police would be tried in a court made
state-appointed judges, making the CCID the only region in the state
which would not elect its judges.

CCID judges also would not have to live in Jackson, and the bill
creates a state-appointed prosecutor position for the district, who
would also not be accountable to local voters.

The four elected judges in Hinds County, which includes Jackson, are
all Black. The bill would also add judges to that county circuit,
appointed by the white Chief Justice of the Mississippi Supreme Court.

“Taken together … these provisions strip Jackson residents … of
their rights to enjoy the full protections of the law and to exercise
the same civil liberties as other Mississippi citizens,” the suit
reads.

The state government has feuded with Jackson leaders for years, and
the current state legislature has increasingly passed bills wearing
away the city’s independence from state control.

In February the state took control
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the city’s utility, which has struggled
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recent years to properly supply water among a slew of breakdowns and
aging infrastructure.

Another bill on the state legislature’s docket would control how the
city is able to spend its sales tax revenue
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if passed.

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba (D), who is Black, has harshly
criticized the pair of new bills, comparing them to apartheid.

“If we allow this type of legislation to stand in Jackson,
Mississippi, it’s a matter of time before it will hit New Orleans,
it’s a matter of time before it hits Detroit, or wherever we find
our people,” he said.

The bills’ authors have defended the provisions, saying they are
necessary to curb rising crime in the city.

“There’s absolutely nothing about House Bill 1020 — when I say
nothing, I mean absolutely zero — that is racially motivated,”
state Rep. Trey Lamar (R) told The New York Times.
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is the primary author of the House bill.

But the NAACP says the bill doesn’t help stop crime at all.

“Jacksonians want a safer city more than anyone, but this is not
what real public safety looks like,” Mississippi NAACP Executive
Director Jarvis Dortch said in a statement Friday. “If our state
lawmakers really wanted to help fight crime, they would invest more
tax dollars into mental health and anti-poverty programs to better
support all of our communities, not finding new ways to oppress and
overpower the Black residents of this state.”

“No one should have to live with the fear of being targeted,
harassed, or killed by law enforcement, especially in their own
neighborhoods,” he added.

* Jackson Mississippi
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* policing
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* Racism
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* NAACP
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