Jackson isn’t just Mississippi’s capital. It’s America’s murder capital

Jackson, Mississippi, knows the blues.

There's the old men at sunset carting old amps through a full parking lot to the back of an otherwise nondescript bar, to deliver a fearless late-night symposium in the oldest school of blues.

And then there's the Jackson that wakes up in the morning wondering how many young men got killed somewhere else that night. Jackson isn't just Mississippi's capital. It's America's murder capital, two years running.

Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba is perfectly, painfully aware that his city has a murder problem. And he wants to do something about it.

"Our residents aren't against police," he said. "Our residents are supportive of having more law enforcement to cover gaps and show presence. But they want a police force that is accountable to them."

But who do those police officers answer to? In a city where 83% of residents are Black and 90% of its voters are Democrats, the only person who lives there with the power to hire or fire the capitol police chief is the white Republican living south of Smith Park in the governor's mansion. This is a democracy problem. .

The response of Mississippi's predominantly white conservative state legislators and Republican governor, Tate Reeves, to violent crime in the state capital last year was to expand the jurisdiction of the Mississippi capitol police department, a state-controlled agency. House Bill 1020 expanded the footprint of the Capitol Complex Improvement District to much of north-east Jackson, while creating a parallel court system to handle cases brought by the capitol police, bypassing the district attorney and locally elected judges.