Pubdate: Mon, 02 Feb 2009
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Paulo Prada

MAYOR GETS TOUGH, GOES ON TRIAL

JACKSON, Miss. -- Mayor Frank Melton got elected by wooing 
working-class blacks and upper-class whites with a promise to 
personally evict the "thugs" and drug dealers who plagued his 
crime-bedeviled city's streets. "Get ready," he told residents. 
"Because this is going to be different."

On Monday, Mr. Melton is scheduled to go on trial -- for the third 
time since taking office -- on felony charges related to his 
hard-line, gun-toting tactics. Mr. Melton is battling three counts in 
the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on 
civil-rights and related weapons charges after he and two police 
bodyguards, and a group of young acquaintances wielding 
sledgehammers, allegedly destroyed a home where the mayor has claimed 
occupants used and sold crack cocaine. Mississippi has a long history 
of tough-talking local candidates. But the rise and potential fall of 
Mr. Melton, an African-American, have exposed a big rift among 
blacks, who make up more than 70% of Jackson's population. Some 
African-Americans here say the mayor has "talked down" to the black 
community and used the same kind of harsh words and tactics once used 
by club-wielding whites. In his zeal to fight crime, many add, he has 
ignored other city needs and led Jackson government astray.

While some residents still approve of his efforts to combat crime 
himself, others complain that his efforts haven't actually lowered 
the crime rate. "He means well and has a huge heart, but he's not an 
effective mayor," said Brad "Kamikaze" Franklin, a 35-year-old rapper 
and Jackson developer who once supported Mr. Melton.

In an interview Friday, Mr. Melton said his 2005 landslide, with over 
80% of the vote, was "a mandate to get this place cleaned up." He 
declined to discuss the pending charges, but reaffirmed his innocence 
and said he plans to run for re-election, despite what he calls his 
"frustration" with bureaucracy.

"I'm from the private sector and used to ... having things done," he 
said, lamenting his inability, because of his legal problems, to 
conduct police activity himself since the incident in which a home 
was destroyed. Crime hasn't fallen, he argued, because "I'm not out 
there." Mr. Melton, 59 years old, grew up in Texas, where he managed 
several local television stations. In 1984, he moved to Jackson and 
with a group of investors purchased WLBT, the city's NBC affiliate. 
He also began volunteering as a swimming coach at an inner-city YMCA. 
The YMCA gave him entree into Jackson's poor neighborhoods, where he 
mentored needy kids. He became a surrogate father for some troubled 
boys and over the years invited some to live with him.

Troubled by increasing crime, Mr. Melton decided to shed light on the 
problem. In the late 1980s, he began purchasing billboard space, 
where he put the names and photos of suspected drug dealers. In 1992, 
after a teen acquaintance was murdered, Mr. Melton began airing a 
personal editorial on WLBT, dubbed "The Bottom Line," in which he 
lambasted the city's police force and continued naming suspected dealers.

After merging the television station with another media company, Mr. 
Melton in 2002 was appointed the director of the Mississippi Bureau 
of Narcotics. There, he employed some of the tactics that would later 
make him a controversial mayor. Though the job is a political 
appointment, Mr. Melton would don a badge and carry handguns and 
conduct raids and random roadblocks, often in black neighborhoods.

"This isn't a black-white thing," he responded to critics then and 
now in the interview Friday. "That's where the drugs are openly 
sold." When a new governor took office in 2004, a new director was 
appointed. The next year Mr. Melton ran for mayor, vowing to clean up 
the streets of Mississippi's capital, a city of 178,000 people that 
for years, according to government statistics, has ranked as one of 
the most crime-ridden in the country. As of his first night in 
office, he began leading police searches of homes and vehicles. He 
parked the police force's bus-like "mobile command unit" at his house 
and kept wearing guns and badges, sometimes putting a badge on his 
dog Abby, who also went on some raids.

In a May 2006 letter, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood warned 
Mr. Melton that he had reviewed "allegations that your conduct in 
several particulars has exceeded lawful authority." Later that year, 
the state charged him with two misdemeanors for carrying a firearm in 
a park and a church, and one felony for doing so at a university. In 
a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanors and 
"no contest" to a reduced charge instead of the felony.

That August, Mr. Melton conducted the raid that led to his current 
charges. According to the indictment, Mr. Melton and the two 
policemen invited "several young men into the Mobile Command Unit." 
The men drove to a home in north Jackson and one of the policemen 
forced the occupants out at gunpoint, according to the indictment. 
Mr. Melton then broke several windows of the house, the indictment 
adds, and "ordered the young men...to damage and destroy the home."

In September 2006, state prosecutors indicted Mr. Melton and the two 
policemen on charges around the raid, but a jury found that it had 
been a legitimate effort to fight crime. Defeating the federal 
charges could be more difficult. One of the policemen has pleaded 
guilty in exchange for a lesser charge and is expected to testify 
against Mr. Melton, according to court records.

The indictment, filed last July, charged the men with conspiring and 
depriving the landlord and tenant of the house of their 
constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. A 
separate count is for using a firearm in connection with those 
charges. The civil-rights counts each carry a maximum prison sentence 
of 10 years, and the firearm count a sentence of five.

Mr. Melton vows, despite opposition from a majority of the City 
Council on most issues, to press ahead. At the moment, he plans to 
issue an executive order against baggy, hip-hop-style pants, despite 
a rejection last month by the council of a similar initiative. 
Council members said at a meeting that they believed such a measure 
could violate rights to free expression. Speaking to council members 
last month via conference call, the mayor said: "We have some issues 
that are much bigger than the Constitution. 
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