[Editor’s Note] Good Times with Recio & the Gang
by Donna Ladd
October 10, 2007
Michael Recio was big and hulking and provided decent cover for a reporter who wasn’t used to walking up to people’s homes unannounced in the middle of the night. I may have looked SWAT-chic, in the bulletproof vest the mayor loaned me, my black pants and those chocolate-brown Skechers I bought at Stein-Mart for just this occasion—but I still needed a bodyguard. And this one carried that long MP5 slung over his vest.
It was Chief Anderson’s idea. At our first stop that night somewhere off Bailey Avenue, I followed as Melton and the bodyguards got off the Mobile Command Center. “Stay close to Recio,” she told me, sounding reassuring like an aunt telling you what shade of lipstick you ought to wear to the prom. So I did.
During my first ride-along with Melton and his entourage, on April 2, 2006, the chief was with us on the RV for much of the night, although she’d occasionally get a call and have to go take care of some real police business instead of watching over a silly mayor and his two obedient bodyguards who were up to stuff that seemed trivial at best—an ego exercise for an attention-starved mayor at worst.
I kept wondering how she stayed awake for her day job, after trailing these guys several nights a week, presumably to keep them out of trouble. That night, and the next Sunday night, there were lots of jokes about the chief when she wasn’t within earshot, usually started by Melton who liked to jokingly call her “mama” to the other cops. They’d snicker about how they couldn’t get away with stuff because “mama” was there.
When we got back on the RV at Pops Around the Corner (after Melton had sung “On the Road Again” on the dance floor), Anderson sniffed a cup of juice I bought, making noise about how no one could bring alcohol on the MCC. It had never dawned on me to drink alcohol on, or before, a police outing.
Outside Birdland, as she stayed behind on the bus, Melton snickered with the manager of the club about how they couldn’t have a drink because Shirlene was with them.
Meantime, from the moment I had arrived at Melton’s home earlier that night for the ride-along, his breath had reeked of hard liquor and continued to through the evening. No one seemed concerned about his breath as I watched him fumble with gun belts and storm homes without notice.
Certainly, I did not hear the bodyguards question a single request Melton made. He would point, and they would jump. They slung on their submachine guns and went inside a home in the middle of the night, without a warrant, because a guy down the street told Melton that he had bought pot there. They breathlessly followed Melton off the bus every time he got a wild hair—I remember the MCC creeping slowly down Wood Street for no apparent reason with Melton and one of the bodyguards walking in front of it, while the other one drove, and I sat up front watching them walk tall past dark houses.
I felt like I had fallen asleep and awakened in the middle of a cop-drama dream where all that mattered was the thrill, the drama, the sheer fun of strapping on weapons and laughing and snickering and occasionally lecturing through Jackson under cover of night.
I wondered about the money being wasted as Melton, Anderson, Sandefer, Recio, Wright, I and my photographer went to visit a young man in University Medical Center. I remember Melton joking about the MCC getting about a mile per gallon as we used it as a joy-mobile around Jackson—driving down to Pops just so that he could ask the band to play a Willie Nelson tune for him, leaving a bizarre carbon footprint in our wake.
I don’t remember these trained police officers ever questioning his tactics, his decisions to randomly search vehicles, his blocking traffic while he paraded along the middle stripes of the street with his pet dog Abby on a leash as my photographer took pictures of him, traffic on either side. I heard no concerns about legality or constitutionality of their actions, making it very easy for me to believe months later that he had ordered the bodyguards to destroy a Ridgeway Street duplex, and they complied.
I don’t recall the officers questioning the safety of his strategies—when he beat on the door of Christopher Walker’s mama’s apartment with the butt of a long rifle, endangering the media he had called in to watch. Or when he left that rifle lying on a counter in the MCC when he wasn’t using it.
Or when the three of them ran into that apartment, flashing their lights around the living room, as the tenants wiped sleep from their eyes and my photographer and I hid behind trees in case someone came out firing at the midnight intruders.
I remember being right behind Recio, who was behind Melton, with Wright covering our rear, as we walked through a crowded Birdland like proud peacocks that night—presumably showing the partiers who were the real bad asses in town.
Earlier that night, after a session of random street searches and orders for young men to pull their pants up on their asses and give their earrings back to their sisters, Melton had turned to me, snickering with childlike awe and delight. “Donna, you know what? I run Jackson.” (More snickers.) “I do it in a weird way, but I run Jackson.” He then turned back to the bodyguards flanking him and said, “We just stopped that car over there, didn’t we?”
Business as usual.
Riding along with Melton and the gang was fun, and it was certainly eye-opening—but not so much about the rogue mayor himself. Sure, I saw enough to know that Melton was egotistical, had no idea how to police Jackson, was determined to do so anyway and liked to celebrate good times, come on.
But I knew all that already.
The most disturbing part was watching so-called police professionals show up for their jobs on behalf of the taxpayers and then let Melton do anything that crossed his mind, regardless of safety, intelligence or legality.
I suppose it’s a good gig if you can get it. Talk big, say what people want to hear, and get elected mayor of a capital city; then use the city’s police force and resources to help you target your enemies and build your ego.
But a police officer who doesn’t bother to question a civilian’s armed antics should be looking for other employment, certainly not promoted to a better-paying enabler position in line to take over the chief-enabler spot when she decides to grow a backbone.
Jackson, our problem just got bigger.
© Jackson Free Press, Inc.
