MFP Contributor
City of Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba said he spoke with New Orleans and Baton Rouge, La., mayors, where Richard’s Disposal operates, who gave the company positive reviews. However, on Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2022, the city council rejected the company as a garbage-disposal contractor.
The Hinds County Detention Center has been under a federal consent decree since 2016. Elizabeth E. Simpson, the federal court appointee tasked with monitoring the consent decree, reviewed the video footage of how Michael Richardson died and wrote to the court about it on Oct. 28, 2021, identifying this incident as the latest in a series of deaths at the jail that year. Malik Richardson, 22, said that his father unexpectedly dying in jail left a hole in his heart.
John Knight, Terun Moore and Benny Ivey have all experienced life in prison and now mentor criminal-justice-system-involved young people as credible messengers with the Strong Arms of JXN, which launched in 2018. The Strong Arms of JXN gathers formerly incarcerated individuals devoted to showing young people alternate paths from the ones they at one point chose and have since turned away from.
City of Jackson Ward 6 Councilman Aaron Banks says Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba will have to present yet another garbage-disposal option and lamented the council’s limited time to review Richard’s Disposal bid before the vote on Jan. 18.
Children at the Henley-Young Juvenile Justice Center were abused, a lawsuit filed in 2011 alleged, which led to a federal consent decree forcing Hinds County to make changes to its operations. Magistrate Judge F. Keith Ball is holding a hearing in his chambers today concerning the settlement that Southern Poverty Law Center and Disability Rights Mississippi reached with the county. The Zoom hearing, which is closed to the public, is part of an ongoing federal court supervision of the settlement agreement’s implementation.
A jury rendered a not-guilty verdict for Duane Lake, 35, for a capital-murder allegation against him in November 2021. He had been in jail since 2015 and got his freedom after the verdict. The MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Mississippi School of Law says his story highlights Mississippi inmates’ plight in county jails without legal representation.
A one-year-old in Laurel, Miss., had a blood lead level that was too high, which led Mississippi health officials to visit the city in Jones County in 2015. The child’s blood lead level of 43µg/dL was close to the 45µg/dL level that would have required urgent medical attention.
City of Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba elected to close down City Hall from Wednesday, Dec. 29, 2021, to Wednesday, Jan. 5, 2022, to mitigate the spread of COVID-19.
Following a routine home test, City of Jackson Mayor Chokwe A. Lumumba tested positive for COVID-19 on Tuesday morning, Dec. 21, 2021, and is quarantining at home. He urges Jacksonians “to abide by the citywide mask mandate to limit the spread of the virus and to continue getting the vaccination and booster shot to limit the possibility of serious health effects.”
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