Officers from the state-run Capitol Police and the city-run Jackson Police Division stand watch outdoors a Jackson, Miss., church the place a group assembly was held to addresses youth crime points on Feb. 14.
Rogelio V. Solis/AP
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Rogelio V. Solis/AP
Officers from the state-run Capitol Police and the city-run Jackson Police Division stand watch outdoors a Jackson, Miss., church the place a group assembly was held to addresses youth crime points on Feb. 14.
Rogelio V. Solis/AP
JACKSON, Miss. — The NAACP warns that “separate and unequal policing” will return to Mississippi’s majority-Black capital below a state-run police division, and the civil rights group is suing the governor and different officers over it.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves says violent crime in Jackson has made it essential to increase the place the Capitol Police can patrol and to authorize some appointed relatively than elected judges.
However the NAACP stated in its lawsuit filed late Friday that these are severe violations of the precept of self-government as a result of they take management of the police and a few courts out of the palms of residents.
“In sure areas of Jackson, a citizen could be arrested by a police division led by a State-appointed official, be charged by a State-appointed prosecutor, be tried earlier than a State-appointed decide, and be sentenced to imprisonment in a State penitentiary whatever the severity of the act,” the lawsuit says.
Derrick Johnson, the nationwide president of the NAACP, is himself a resident of Jackson. At a group assembly earlier this month, he stated the policing legislation would deal with Black folks as “second-class residents.”
The laws was handed by a majority-white and Republican-controlled state Home and Senate. Jackson is ruled by Democrats and about 83% of residents are Black, the most important proportion of any main U.S. metropolis.
The governor stated this week that the Jackson Police Division is severely understaffed and he believes the state-run Capitol Police can present stability. Town of 150,000 residents has had greater than 100 homicides in every of the previous three years.
“We’re working to deal with it,” Reeves stated in an announcement Friday. “And after we do, we’re met with overwhelming false cries of racism and mainstream media who falsely name our actions ‘Jim Crow.'”
In keeping with one of many payments Reeves signed into legislation Friday, Capitol Police may have “concurrent” jurisdiction with Jackson Police Division within the metropolis. The expanded jurisdiction for the Capitol Police would start July 1.
One other legislation will create a brief courtroom inside a Capitol Complicated Enchancment District protecting a portion of Jackson. The courtroom may have the identical energy as municipal courts, which deal with misdemeanor circumstances, visitors violations and preliminary appearances for some legal prices. The brand new legislation says folks convicted within the Capitol Complicated Enchancment District Courtroom could also be put in a state jail relatively than in a metropolis or county jail.
The decide of the brand new courtroom will not be required to stay in Jackson and shall be appointed by the Mississippi Supreme Courtroom chief justice. The present chief justice is a conservative white man.
