After failing to notify two men’s families about their deaths this year, the Jackson Police Department has adopted a new death-notification policy requiring officers to make exhaustive efforts to reach a person’s “next of kin” or “significant others” in the event of a death.
The Mississippi Free Press obtained a copy of the new policy through a public-records request after the department’s handling of the deaths of Jackson, Miss., residents Dexter Wade and Marrio Moore drew national outrage in October and November. The department did not previously have a death-notification policy.
In both cases, JPD officers and Hinds County Coroner’s Office investigators failed to notify the men’s families before the county buried their bodies in unmarked graves in a pauper’s field at the Hinds County Penal Farm.
“They just (said), ‘Oh, well, he ain’t got nobody,’” Marquita Moore told NBC News on Nov. 22 while speaking about her brother Marrio Moore’s death and burial. “And they just threw him away.”
Unknown assailants beat Marrio Moore to death on Feb. 2, 2023, and left his body wrapped in a tarp on Gunda Street, NBC News reported.
After learning of her brother’s death from a WLBT news report in October, Marquita Moore said she went to the Jackson Police Department for answers but that officials told her—after no city or county official could supposedly make contact with their family—that the county buried his body on July 14.
In November, NBC News reported on documentation showing that authorities said they made attempts to contact Marrio Moore’s family about his death.
“A Hinds County coroner’s office investigator said in a report that she called Marrio’s brother, but the phone number didn’t work. A police commander told the family that a detective left a card at Marrio’s mother’s house. But neither his mother, brother nor two sisters recall being contacted by anyone responsible for reaching his next of kin,” NBC News reported.
The story said that none of Moore’s family members were aware of any attempts to contact them.
“What are you hiding?” Marrio Moore’s mother Mary told NBC News. “Why can’t you just come and just tell somebody that their child is gone?”
‘How Could They Not Put All That Together?’
Marrio Moore’s family shared their story days after the funeral of Dexter Wade, a 37-year-old father of two who died after an off-duty JPD officer in an SUV struck and killed him while he was crossing Interstate 55 on March 5, 2023.
Wade’s mother, Bettersten Wade, filed a missing person’s report on March 14 and searched for her son for months only for police to tell her about his death in August—a month after the county had already buried his body without contacting anyone in his family.
Bettersten Wade has made numerous accusations that JPD’s failure to contact her after the death and burial of her son may have been related to the conviction of a JPD officer charged in the 2019 beating death of her brother, George Robinson.
“How could you not say this is a vendetta? I put in a missing person’s report. There’s my address. There’s my phone number. How could they not put all that together?” she said at a press conference on Oct. 30.
City of Jackson officials have maintained that miscommunications among various city and county agencies led to the lapse in communication with Wade’s mother—not police misconduct. On Oct. 27, Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba called Dexter Wade’s death and the subsequent failure to notify his family “honestly, an unfortunate and tragic accident.”
‘Every Effort Shall Be Made’
At a press conference on Nov. 13, Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said that before that day, JPD had no death-notification policy. “We have several policies that we have to revise, create and change,” he said.
The chief named the JPD vehicle-pursuit policy and a media-release policy as two of the other policies that the department will update. “You would think that we’d have a death-notification policy, but we do not. But we will as of today,” he said on Nov. 13.
JPD’s new death-notification policy states that “every effort shall be made to locate and notify the next-of-kin and/or significant other as soon as possible.”
Mississippi law states that county authorities in the areas where a deceased person is located “shall make reasonable efforts to notify members of the decedent’s family or other known interested persons, and, if the dead body or portion thereof shall not be claimed for burial or cremation by any interested person within five (5) days of the aforementioned written notice, the board of supervisors or coroner shall, as soon as it may think appropriate, authorize and direct the burial or cremation and burial of the residue of such dead body or portion thereof.”
In 2017, Madison County Coroner Alex Breeland told WJTV that the county typically buries people when it absolutely cannot find family members or someone else to claim the body. But the he clarified that “an unclaimed body would be someone who literally has no family.”
“Typically it’s someone who was homeless,” the Madison County coroner added.
The Hinds County Coroner’s Office did not respond to requests for comment for this story by press time.
On Oct. 26, City of Jackson Communications Director Melissa Faith Payne told the Mississippi Free Press in a statement that “officers were unable to identify (Dexter Wade) at the time” of his death on March 5 but that days later “the coroner’s office was able to identify the victim as Dexter Wade by way of medication found in his pocket.”
“However, the contact information for Mr. Wade was outdated, and neither the coroner’s office nor investigating officers were able to make contact with Mr. Wade’s family.” Payne added. Although Wade’s mother reported him missing on March 14, “Missing persons officers did not know that the pedestrian victim from March 5th was the same person reported missing on March 14th,” she said.
Payne told the Mississippi Free Press on Dec. 1 that JPD’s new death-notification policy was “developed by the Chief and his command staff with support from the City of Jackson legal department.”
Chief Joseph Wade was not available to comment for this story.
