The NAACP is suing Mississippi over an expanded role for state-run police in Jackson
The NAACP warns that "separate and unequal policing" will return to Mississippi's majority-Black capital under a state-run police department, and the civil rights organization is suing the governor and other officials over it.
Republican Gov. Tate Reeves says violent crime in Jackson has made it necessary to expand where the Capitol Police can patrol and to authorize some appointed rather than elected judges.
But the NAACP said in its lawsuit filed late Friday that these are serious violations of the principle of self-government because they take control of the police and some courts out of the hands of residents.
"In certain areas of Jackson, a citizen can be arrested by a police department led by a State-appointed official, be charged by a State-appointed prosecutor, be tried before a State-appointed judge, and be sentenced to imprisonment in a State penitentiary regardless of the severity of the act," the lawsuit says.
Derrick Johnson, the national president of the NAACP, is himself a resident of Jackson. At a community meeting earlier this month, he said the policing law would treat Black people as "second-class citizens.
https://www.npr.org/2023/04/22/1171482347/naacp-mississippi-jackson-state-police-racism
NaziPubliKKKans in Mississhitty setting up a brownshirt patrol in the state capital. How odd. /s
= new reply since forum marked as read
