MFP Contributor
Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba chided the Jackson City Council on Feb. 24, 2022, for removing Richard’s Disposal’s name when approving a garbage-disposal emergency contract.
Mississippi Justice Center President and CEO Vangela M. Wade said that an expired driver’s license, auto registration, or liability insurance is not necessarily indicative of criminal behavior or intent. Her organization filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Jackson Police Department on Feb. 23, 2022, for setting up roadblocks across the capital city.
Special agents from the Mississippi Office of the State Auditor arrested Hinds County District 2 Election Commissioner Toni Johnson, 36, and businessman Cedric Cornelius, 46, on Friday, Feb. 18, 2022, as alleged accomplices in defrauding the county. An alleged collaborator, Sudie Jones-Teague, surrendered herself at the Hinds County Detention Center on Feb. 22.
For over 30 years, Waste Management, Inc., has been the garbage-disposal contractor for Jackson. After the council twice rejected FCC Environmental Services as the contractor last year, Waste Management began running a six-month garbage-disposal contract to last till March 31, 2022, six weeks away.
Many are comparing the Jan. 24, 2020, alleged chase and shooting that D’Monterrio Gibson reported facing at the hands of two white men in Brookhaven, Miss., with the fatal shooting of 25-year-old Ahmaud Arbery on Feb. 15, 2020, in Brunswick, Ga., by a white father-and-son duo and a neighbor.
Larry Hollins said that having his brother, Gregory Hollins, sentenced to 60 years in prison under Mississippi habitual-sentencing laws without the possibility of parole is like throwing him away.
FedEx has reinstated pay for D’Monterrio Gibson, a Black FedEx driver who said two white men chased and shot at him on his route in Lincoln County. The 24-year-old Utica native said the incident happened while he was making deliveries in Brookhaven, Miss., on Jan. 24. While recounting the story to the Mississippi Free Press last week, Gibson said FedEx had initially asked him to return to the route after the shooting. When he declined, the company placed him on unpaid leave.
State senators from Jackson are asking the Mississippi Legislature for millions of dollars to help fund additional police and misdemeanor jail beds to keep those charged with low-level crimes who cannot afford bail locked up as a strategy to prevent violence as it rises in the capital city, they say. They are not asking for funds to support earlier interventions that a BOTEC Analysis study of Jackson crime recommended in 2016—which the Legislature authorized for $500,000 in taxpayer dollars. Kayode Crown reports.
U.S. Southern Mississippi District Court Judge Carlton Reeves declared Hinds County in contempt of court on Friday, Feb. 4, 2022, for non-compliance with a 2016 consent decree on the running of its detention facilities.
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