JACKSON, Miss.—On the heels of a series of shootings, the Jackson Police Department is increasing its presence at the capital city’s gas stations and convenience stores, JPD Chief Joseph Wade says.
“You will see a strong law enforcement presence around these businesses,” Wade said during Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba’s Aug. 5 press conference at City Hall. “We’ve identified at least four stores per precinct that have a propensity of violence around them—gun violence in particular.”
Wade said the initiative, “Operation Gas Up and Guns Down,” will target loitering, panhandling and trespassing as well as drug and gang activity.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said that in addition to the increased police patrols, he and law enforcement leaders have talked with several gas station owners about the possibility of the City of Jackson declaring their businesses to be public nuisances.
The news came a week after The Jackson City Council debated a resolution calling for a no-confidence vote in City Attorney Drew Martin. Ward 3 City Councilman Kenneth Stokes proposed the resolution, arguing that Martin—who took over the position after former city attorney Catoria Martin resigned from the role in January—had not done enough in his tenure to pursue legal statutes to help increase safety at gas stations and convenience stores in the capital city.
The council rejected the resolution against Martin in a 4-2 vote during the regular council meeting at Jackson City Hall on July 30, maintaining their confidence in his ability to work on behalf of the City.
Stokes said the City Attorney’s office should invoke the nuisance ordinance and declare at least one of the city’s gas stations—a Texaco station on Medgar Evers Boulevard—a public nuisance. On July 20, 23-year-old Jacobi Austin died in a shooting at the store.
In 2015, the City took action to declare the Express Fuel location on Northside Drive to be a public nuisance—a week after a JPD officer was injured in a shooting at the store. The business shut down soon after that same year.
“When you care about these citizens, you’re not going to make excuses for why not to do something. You’re going to work hard to do something,” Stokes said on July 30, referring to previous comments Drew Martin and Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba made regarding their efforts to ensure that ordinances are enforceable under the law and won’t come under legal attacks on their constitutionality.
Ward 6 City Councilman Aaron Banks countered Stokes’ argument, saying that the city attorney is not at fault for the enforcement of the nuisance ordinance. “The enforcement of those ordinances is not on the city attorney’s office. It’s up to the (mayor’s) administration to make sure that whatever department is responsible, enforces it,” he said.
Ward 5 Councilman Vernon Hartley, along with Stokes, supported the no-confidence vote. Councilwoman Angelique Lee, who represented Ward 2 at the time, was not in attendance during the vote. She would later resign on Aug. 14, hours before pleading guilty to a bribery charge in federal court.
Some service stations and convenience store locations in the city have been rife with incidents of violence in recent months.
On July 8, a 60-year-old security guard died after being shot during an apparent attempted robbery at the M&M Food Express convenience store on Cooper Road. Police charged three teens with capital murder in his death.
Three more gas-station homicides happened between July 20 and 21, police said.
“If this had happened in another neighborhood, something would have been done,” Stokes said during the Jackson City Council meeting on July 30, before attacking Lumumba. “I bet if it was his loved one out there dead, he’d do something. If it was the mayor’s loved one out there dead, he’d do something.”
Lumumba has reiterated that he wants to ensure any ordinance is enforceable and will not face legal challenges.
For years, state, federal and city officials have sought to increase policing to reduce crime in Jackson. But simply adding more police to an area or a city does not necessarily reduce violence. In fact, doing so can backfire in some cases. One 2021 study, for example, found that while adding more police officers can have marginal benefits at reducing the crime rate in some cities, that is often not true for cities with the largest Black populations—particularly in the South and Midwest.
“Adding additional police officers in these cities doesn’t seem to lower the homicide rate,” NPR reported in 2021, reporting on a study by NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service economist Morgan Williams and his colleagues. “Meanwhile, more police officers in these cities seems to result in even more arrests of Black people for low-level crimes.”
The Jackson City Council has passed two ordinances this year to tackle safety concerns at service stations. In April, the council passed the “Connect JXN — Blue Light Safety Initiative” ordinance, which requires gas station operators to connect their cameras to the Jackson Police Department’s camera network feed.
That ordinance did gain attention from the Institute of Justice, an Arlington, Va.-based law firm that wrote a letter to Jackson’s mayor and city council members on May 20, arguing that the camera ordinance was unconstitutional.
In addition to that ordinance, in July, the council passed another ordinance requiring gas station operators to employ security personnel during their hours of operation.