Mississippi Today
Mississippi Lawmakers Propose Measures to Oversee Police
Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield are examining the power of sheriffs’ offices in Mississippi as part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship.
Mississippi lawmakers have introduced a bill that would increase oversight of law enforcement officers and give state authorities more power to punish misconduct after a series of scandals was uncovered across the state last year.
The law would give the state agency that certifies law enforcement officers the ability to investigate claims of police misconduct.
If lawmakers pass the bill, the Mississippi Board on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Training will gain the power to respond directly to complaints or allegations, putting Mississippi on par with states that regulate officers more aggressively.
If the board ruled that conduct violated professional standards, it could revoke an officer’s certification, potentially ending that officer’s career in Mississippi.
Under current law, the board can accept complaints but cannot investigate them. The agency largely has focused on running criminal background checks on new officers applying for certification, ensuring they have met basic training requirements and tracking where officers work.
All Mississippi law enforcement officers are currently required to become certified except sheriffs, who are elected officials and are exempt from certification requirements.
The proposed law comes after The New York Times and Mississippi Today published a series of articles last year revealing allegations of sexual misconduct against two sheriffs and exposing a decades-long reign of terror by a group of Rankin County deputies who called themselves the Goon Squad.
Also last year, five Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputies and a local police officer pleaded guilty to federal charges for breaking into the home of two Black men, torturing them, threatening to rape them and then shooting one of them in the mouth.
For years the state ignored or was unaware of allegations of jailhouse rape, brutal beatings and corrupt acts by sheriffs and their deputies.
The revelations have led to increasing calls from the public for accountability.
In Rankin County, just outside Mississippi’s capital, Jackson, billboards have sprung up encouraging residents to report police brutality and hate crimes to the F.B.I. The local chapter of the NAACP has repeatedly demanded Sheriff Bryan Bailey’s resignation.
“They’re tasked with protecting and serving, but they’re not protecting and serving. They’re harassing, they’re terrorizing, they’re torturing,” said Cardell Wright, president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party. “We have to have oversight if we’re going to abate any of these issues that are happening in our communities.”
State Representative Fred Shanks, a Rankin County Republican who introduced the bill in January, said it would require all officers to complete annual training, a provision he said could improve community relations with the police and protect law enforcement agencies from lawsuits.
“This is both pro-law enforcement and pro-citizen,” he said. “The more training you have, the better you’re going to be.”
Mr. Shanks was personally impacted by one law enforcement officer’s actions in Rankin County.
According to an investigation by the local district attorney, Sheriff Bailey improperly used grand jury subpoenas in 2014 to obtain phone records belonging to his girlfriend, Kristi Pennington Shanks, who is Mr. Shanks’s ex-wife.
The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation examines police shootings, deaths in custody and other misconduct when a local department asks for help. Mr. Shanks’s proposal would add a second layer of oversight and could expand the kind of misconduct that is reviewed in a state that has historically resisted police oversight.
“It’s long overdue for Mississippi to change a lot of their policies, a lot of their training” related to law enforcement, said Representative Jeffrey Hulum III, a Democrat from Gulfport who said he planned to co-sponsor the measure with Mr. Shanks.
Mr. Shanks wrote the bill with Sean Tindell, the commissioner of the state’s Department of Public Safety. Mr. Tindell oversees several statewide law enforcement agencies, including the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and the law enforcement training academy. Mr. Tindell said that while he and his colleagues had discussed changing the law in the past, the conduct brought to light in 2023 was a factor in pushing for the bill this year.
“I think it’s OK to look in the mirror and say, ‘Hey, maybe we need to make some changes,’ and this could be that opportunity where everybody feels the same way,” he said. “We can look at a bill like this as a way to improve the overall profession and the perception of that profession.”
Mr. Shanks said that if his proposed law had been in place, many of the events that became public in 2023 could have been investigated by the certification board, even if prosecutors did not bring criminal charges. In some of those cases, charging an officer was made difficult by statutes of limitation or the high bar of evidence required to win a criminal conviction.
Mr. Tindell said leaders of both the Mississippi Sheriffs’ Association and the Mississippi Association of Chiefs of Police supported the new bill, giving it a healthy chance to reach the House floor for a vote. A House committee will decide whether to move the bill forward in the coming weeks.
State Senator Juan Barnett, a Democrat from Heidelberg, introduced another measure that could double criminal penalties for law enforcement officers who are convicted of abusing their power.
Legislators have not decided whether to hear that bill. Joey Fillingane, a Republican and the chair of the judiciary committee in the State Senate that will decide if the bill advances, did not respond to requests for comment.
Mr. Barnett said the national push for greater accountability for law enforcement officers inspired him to sponsor the bill.
“We just want to make sure that people feel like they are getting protected and served by the men and women who are in uniform,” he said.
Mississippi Today political reporter Taylor Vance contributed reporting.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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Mississippi Today
On this day in 1997
Dec. 22, 1997
The Mississippi Supreme Court upheld the conviction of white supremacist Byron De La Beckwith for the 1963 murder of Medgar Evers.
In the court’s 4–2 decision, Justice Mike Mills praised efforts “to squeeze justice out of the harm caused by a furtive explosion which erupted from dark bushes on a June night in Jackson, Mississippi.”
He wrote that Beckwith’s constitutional right to a speedy trial had not been denied. His “complicity with the Sovereignty Commission’s involvement in the prior trials contributed to the delay.”
The decision did more than ensure that Beckwith would stay behind bars. The conviction helped clear the way for other prosecutions of unpunished killings from the Civil Rights Era.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Medicaid expansion tracker approaches $1 billion loss for Mississippi
About the time people ring in the new year next week, the digital tracker on Mississippi Today’s homepage tabulating the amount of money the state is losing by not expanding Medicaid will hit $1 billion.
The state has lost $1 billion not since the start of the quickly departing 2024 but since the beginning of the state’s fiscal year on July 1.
Some who oppose Medicaid expansion say the digital tracker is flawed.
During an October news conference, when state Auditor Shad White unveiled details of his $2 million study seeking ways to cut state government spending, he said he did not look at Medicaid expansion as a method to save money or grow state revenue.
“I think that (Mississippi Today) calculator is wrong,” White said. “… I don’t think that takes into account how many people are going to be moved off the federal health care exchange where their health care is paid for fully by the federal government and moved onto Medicaid.”
White is not the only Mississippi politician who has expressed concern that if Medicaid expansion were enacted, thousands of people would lose their insurance on the exchange and be forced to enroll in Medicaid for health care coverage.
Mississippi Today’s projections used for the tracker are based on studies conducted by the Institutions of Higher Learning University Research Center. Granted, there are a lot of variables in the study that are inexact. It is impossible to say, for example, how many people will get sick and need health care, thus increasing the cost of Medicaid expansion. But is reasonable that the projections of the University Research Center are in the ballpark of being accurate and close to other studies conducted by health care experts.
White and others are correct that Mississippi Today’s calculator does not take into account money flowing into the state for people covered on the health care exchange. But that money does not go to the state; it goes to insurance companies that, granted, use that money to reimburse Mississippians for providing health care. But at least a portion of the money goes to out-of-state insurance companies as profits.
Both Medicaid expansion and the health care exchange are part of the Affordable Care Act. Under Medicaid expansion people earning up to $20,120 annually can sign up for Medicaid and the federal government will pay the bulk of the cost. Mississippi is one of 10 states that have not opted into Medicaid expansion.
People making more than $14,580 annually can garner private insurance through the health insurance exchanges, and people below certain income levels can receive help from the federal government in paying for that coverage.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, legislation championed and signed into law by President Joe Biden significantly increased the federal subsidies provided to people receiving insurance on the exchange. Those increased subsidies led to many Mississippians — desperate for health care — turning to the exchange for help.
White, state Insurance Commissioner Mike Chaney, Gov. Tate Reeves and others have expressed concern that those people would lose their private health insurance and be forced to sign up for Medicaid if lawmakers vote to expand Medicaid.
They are correct.
But they do not mention that the enhanced benefits authored by the Biden administration are scheduled to expire in December 2025 unless they are reenacted by Congress. The incoming Donald Trump administration has given no indication it will continue the enhanced subsidies.
As a matter of fact, the Trump administration, led by billionaire Elon Musk, is looking for ways to cut federal spending.
Some have speculated that Medicaid expansion also could be on Musk’s chopping block.
That is possible. But remember congressional action is required to continue the enhanced subsidies. On the flip side, congressional action would most likely be required to end or cut Medicaid expansion.
Would the multiple U.S. senators and House members in the red states that have expanded Medicaid vote to end a program that is providing health care to thousands of their constituents?
If Congress does not continue Biden’s enhanced subsidies, the rates for Mississippians on the exchange will increase on average about $500 per year, according to a study by KFF, a national health advocacy nonprofit. If that occurs, it is likely that many of the 280,000 Mississippians on the exchange will drop their coverage.
The result will be that Mississippi’s rate of uninsured — already one of the highest in the nation – will rise further, putting additional pressure on hospitals and other providers who will be treating patients who have no ability to pay.
In the meantime, the Mississippi Today counter that tracks the amount of money Mississippi is losing by not expanding Medicaid keeps ticking up.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1911
Dec. 21, 1911
Josh Gibson, the Negro League’s “Home Run King,” was born in Buena Vista, Georgia.
When the family’s farm suffered, they moved to Pittsburgh, and Gibson tried baseball at age 16. He eventually played for a semi-pro team in Pittsburgh and became known for his towering home runs.
He was watching the Homestead Grays play on July 25, 1930, when the catcher injured his hand. Team members called for Gibson, sitting in the stands, to join them. He was such a talented catcher that base runners were more reluctant to steal. He hit the baseball so hard and so far (580 feet once at Yankee Stadium) that he became the second-highest paid player in the Negro Leagues behind Satchel Paige, with both of them entering the National Baseball Hame of Fame.
The Hall estimated that Gibson hit nearly 800 homers in his 17-year career and had a lifetime batting average of .359. Gibson was portrayed in the 1996 TV movie, “Soul of the Game,” by Mykelti Williamson. Blair Underwood played Jackie Robinson, Delroy Lindo portrayed Satchel Paige, and Harvey Williams played “Cat” Mays, the father of the legendary Willie Mays.
Gibson has now been honored with a statue outside the Washington Nationals’ ballpark.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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