Is This What Some Memphians Want

Detractors of the Mayor blame him for the rising crime in Memphis. Regardless what you show them and no matter what the facts say to prove otherwise. I guess they want him to get out with a nightstick and gun and physically attack crime himself. Though his duties may be many, he isn't a policeman. You wouldn't want the hospital administrator to perform open heart surgery. In today's climate of filing lawsuits on a whim. Mayor Frank Melton in Jackson, Mississippi did exactly that. Look what happened to him.

Crime-Fighting Mayor Finds Himself Embroiled in Charges
James Edward Bates for The New York Times
Mayor Frank Melton of Jackson, Miss., greeted by supporters on Tuesday night. Mr. Melton won election in 2005 promising to fight crime.


By SHAILA DEWAN
Published: September 21, 2006
JACKSON, Miss., Sept. 20 — Most politicians who run afoul of the law are accused of bribery, kickbacks or ethics violations.

A raid last month left a duplex damaged and led to Mr. Melton’s indictment.

Mr. Melton on a raid by his mobile command unit in April.
But not here in the state capital, where Mayor Frank Melton, an erratic figure who took office in July 2005, does nothing by the book. Mr. Melton has disdained such basic functions as drawing up the city’s budget in favor of cruising through the city’s worst neighborhoods in a police department “mobile command center.”

He is known for carrying two guns, wearing a police jacket and a badge, searching cars, knocking on doors and raiding nightclubs while brandishing a large stick.

Mr. Melton’s activities now threaten to derail his career. Last week, he was indicted on eight charges, including burglary, malicious mischief and causing a minor to commit a felony. Prosecutors said he had illegally carried sidearms and improperly helped demolish a duplex he says was a crack house.

Although no drugs were found in the house, occupied by a man with a history of mostly petty crimes, the mayor’s sledgehammer-wielding crew took down its front wall.

Despite the indictment, the city’s frustration with crime has kept the mayor a popular figure. At the City Council meeting on Tuesday, he was bolstered by people chanting, “Fight, Frank, fight,” and criticizing other officials for inaction.

The mayor portrays himself as a man whose mission, lowering the city’s crime rate, has been hampered by the slow-moving wheels of government.

“The only mistake that I made was a procedural mistake,” Mr. Melton said when asked this week about the duplex demolition. He did not take the time to have the house declared a nuisance, he said, because young children next door were being exposed to the drug trade.

In June, he declared a state of emergency for the city, using the latitude this gave him to impose a curfew on the homeless.

Yet it is not clear that Mr. Melton’s unorthdox tactics have had any beneficial effect. This year, crime in Jackson has increased by about 16 percent over the same period in 2005, according to police reports leaked to local newspapers. (The city generally declines to release statistics.)

In April, the Hinds County district attorney, Faye Peterson, was forced to drop murder charges against an accused gang member, she said, when it came to light that Mr. Melton had provided an apartment and cash to a crucial prosecution witness.

Tricia Raymond, the executive director of SafeCity, a watchdog group on whose board Mr. Melton once served, said the increase in crime might be a result of underreporting by the previous administration.

“I can’t say there’s been a positive long-term effect,” Ms. Raymond said of the mayor’s focus on crime. “I do know that the community just feels energized simply because we have a mayor that’s willing to address the problem.”

But Mr. Melton’s vigilantism has raised concerns from critics, including the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, that he is bypassing due-process rights and engaging in racial profiling by focusing on black neighborhoods. (The mayor, like 77 percent of Jackson, is black.)

Though state officials have warned him that he cannot perform law enforcement duties or carry a gun in certain public places like parks and schools, Mr. Melton says he needs protection because he has “taken down some of the biggest gangs in Mississippi.”

A former local television executive, Mr. Melton was fixated on crime well before he took office. As the host of a commentary segment called “The Bottom Line,” he took out billboards featuring names and photographs of wanted drug dealers and helped negotiate the surrender of several suspects.

In 2002, Mr. Melton was appointed to lead the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics, where he got into trouble after leaking a memorandum accusing two agents of illegal conduct. He said in a deposition that he did not leak it, but later admitted he had.

Though there is no evidence that Mr. Melton has ever been formally certified as a law enforcement agent, his anticrime platform and reputation as a man of action helped him rout the incumbent, Harvey Johnson Jr., in the Democratic primary with more than 60 percent of the vote.

Mr. Melton is known for his deep familiarity with the poorer neighborhoods of Jackson, often addressing criminals and street addicts by name and regularly volunteering at the YMCA. Over the years he has taken in dozens of teenagers and young men who he says have no one else to care for them.

He says he has put many of them through college and has paid for the funerals of others who did not take his advice. Although he is not officially a foster parent, the youths live in his gated home in Jackson and, before his indictment, often rode with him on his nighttime crime raids.

Some were with him on the night of Aug. 26, when the mayor and his two bodyguards approached the home of Evans Welch, 45.

Accounts of what happened next are somewhat jumbled, but Mr. Welch said in an interview in his parents’ home, where he is now staying, that the mayor came through the back door with a gun and that Mr. Welch was ordered to leave.

The mayor cut his hand on broken glass and left to get treatment, but returned later and ordered his youth crew to demolish Mr. Welch’s side of the duplex with sledgehammers. Mr. Welch was then arrested on charges of violating the open-container law and possession of drug paraphernalia, which court papers describe as a crack pipe. He pleaded guilty, but a new lawyer is now trying to withdraw the plea on the ground that Mr. Welch is mentally ill.

Mr. Melton said the house was a known crack den that had been repeatedly visited by the police, but his administration has offered no documentation to support that contention. Neighbors said that although there was plenty of crime in the neighborhood, Mr. Welch’s house was not the source of disturbance.

In an interview at his parents’ house, where he is now staying, Mr. Welch said he feared that the mayor would find him. “I’m afraid he might kill me,” Mr. Welch said. “Why did he do this to me?”

At least for now, Mr. Welch can rest easy. As a condition of his bail, Mr. Melton has been ordered to stay away from guns, drugs, alcohol and minors. And police vehicles.