JACKSON, Miss. -- The national American Civil Liberties Union on Tuesday
accused the city's black mayor of civil rights violations including racial
profiling in his crusade to stem crime in Mississippi's capital city.
The accusations against Mayor Frank Melton and police are based on
complaints from people who say they were pulled over on the basis of their
race and searched without probable cause, the ACLU's national racial
profiling coordinator, King Downing, said at a news conference.
"For me to leave my office and come into one of the states means that there
is a very serious problem," said Downing, who is based in New York. "There
are problems here that it's going to take the attention of the nation in
order to solve."
Downing said the mayor's race should make him "more sensitive to the
problems this is creating."
However, Melton said in an interview Tuesday that he wasn't interested in
the ACLU's complaints against him or the police, and denied he had violated
anyone's civil rights.
"We have 26 people that have been killed in Jackson this year. We have
300,000 people killed across America each year. The majority of them are
African-American and it's time to do something different," Melton said. "I
want to know what the ACLU wants to do besides criticize."
Melton took office last July after winning 88 percent of the vote on a
tough-on-crime platform.
Melton declared a state of emergency last month to attack the city's
escalating crime problem, basically adopting a stricter curfew for teenagers
and homeless people. He also continued his practice of riding with police
officers on patrol or at roadblocks.
The city's population of 184,256 is nearly 71 percent black, and 23.5
percent live below the poverty level.
Since his election, federal authorities have told him to quit packing his
pistol on commercial airline flights, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood
told him to stop wearing police gear, and Faye Peterson, the district
attorney in Jackson, has said the mayor was breaking the law by
impersonating a police officer.
http://www.ktvu.com/news/9609134/detail.html?treets=fran&tid=2656305714813&tml=fran_12pm&tmi=fran_12pm_1_02000308012006&ts=H
Incompetence is incompetence and most of the crime in America stems from
drugs. Remember the "War" on drugs?
Another War Bush has lost.
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