Jackson Free Press

The response to the question that will be posed to the Jackson City Council next Tuesday (Oct. 22) is something many people are asking: Is the Jackson Redevelopment Authority still worth having?

Ward 3 Councilwoman LaRita Cooper-Stokes has put forward item No. 34, an order by the city council unauthorizing the JRA.

Technically, the word should be de-authorizing, but you get the message. This conversation should be interesting in light of recent developments with the Farish Street saga and the unanswered questions surrounding the non-existent convention center hotel.

For a quick history lesson, JRA was created during the 1970 legislative session. It’s a seven-member board that has power, under the Mississippi Code of 1972, to establish and construct municipal parking facilities for motor vehicles belonging to members of the general public, and to rent, lease, purchase, or acquire land and property for public purposes (the historic Farish Street district or the land on which the Jackson Convention and Visitors Bureau now sits, for example).

This may get a bit technical, but it also has the power and authority to rent, sell, convey, transfer, let or lease such facility and related structures or any portion thereof, or any space therein, and to authorize commercial enterprise activities other than the parking of motor vehicles on leased property comprising any part of such parking facilities and related structures, which is what it is doing with the Farish Street Entertainment District and the land on which the new Iron Horse Grill will sit.

Because the JRA board was set up by Mississippi law, it is unclear whether or not the city council even has the authority to do eliminate the quasi-governmental body.

We reached out to all the city council members this morning and, so far, Ward 6 Councilman Tony Yarber is the only one to comment. He said he is not likely to support the motion.

“What I am in support of is a proposal I’m going to bring forward,” Yarber said, “a motion that will require JRA to involve the (city) council in future, and way earlier on in the process.”

Yarber said he could bring his motion as early as next week.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE: Ward 4 Councilman De'Keither Stamps responded with a "no comment."

Jackson Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. introduced two new pieces of technology designed to make the Jackson Police Department more efficient, transparent and accountable.

The first demonstration was technology that will allow the city to track city vehicles in real-time on an online map of the city. Johnson said they have already outfitted 50 city vehicles - including work trucks, police cars and heavy equipment - with trackers and are working out the bugs before they put the technology into all the vehicles.

The Mayor said that technology will make the vehicle operators more accountable, make the police department more efficient in their coverage and reduce the carbon footprint from vehicles in the city by helping them map out the most direct route to their destinations. That project has a $55,000 price tag.

The second piece of technology is an e-ticketing system that will allow traffic stops to easier and more efficient. The handheld devices, already issued to 37 officers, allow them to scan a drivers license using a card-swiper, and enter the information for the citation digitally. If he/she issues a ticket, it will be printed instead of hand-written, and the information will insert itself directly in the county or municipal clerk's office instead of having to be filed manually.

Those devices cost $3,300 per unit.

Mayor Johnson also gave out the COMSTAT trophy for the most-improved precinct to Precinct 1 (Jackson's south side), where crime has dropped nearly 30 percent in the past three months.

The JFP received this release from the mayor's office Wednesday afternoon:

South Jackson has dramatic decrease in property crimes

Recent Jackson Police Department statistics reveal that South Jackson’s Precinct 1 led the entire city in crime reduction for the first Quarter of 2013. The Precinct saw a 28.9% drop in overall crime. Property crime decreased by 28.2% and violent crime decreased by 32.5%.

Each quarter the Jackson Police Department recognizes the precinct with the greatest drop in overall crime. That precinct is then awarded the traveling COMSTAT Trophy.

For Precinct One to win the COMSTAT Trophy represents a “remarkable turnaround” said, Police Chief Rebecca Coleman.

She further stated, “This is a tribute to the hard work, dedication and perseverance of the police officers that are assigned to Precinct One. Working in conjunction with the citizens of South Jackson, and implementing several crime fighting strategies, we have seen great success. Commander Wallace of Precinct 1 and her staff are very deserving of this recognition.”

In recent years, Precinct 1 has routinely led the city in the number of House Burglaries committed. They have averaged as many as fifty a week. Beginning in 2009, Chief Coleman implemented strategies aimed towards reducing these numbers. These included the following:

• Increasing the number of beats from 8 – 10
• Re-assigning support personnel to patrol duty in areas most affected
• Using the D.A.R.T. Unit in these areas as much as possible

“The biggest impact we have seen has been in the individual beat officer’s response time, …

You want to know why people are scared of Chokwe Lumumba? Here's a good place to start.

The headline that appears on a story that the WAPT web site (www.wapt.com) reads, "Lumumba wants to remove Christopher Columbus from history books."

The headline is misleading at best.

I was at the debate last Friday night when Lumumba made the comment that we need to stop teaching our children that Christopher Columbus discovered American in 1492. "Columbus didn't discover America. America wasn't lost, Columbus was," Lumumba is correctly quoted in the story as saying.

What the story doesn't do is put the quote in context. The way it reads, you'd think Lumumba was asked about education and launched into a Christopher Columbus hate-a-thon. He was asked how we can keep students from dropping out of Jackson Public Schools, and he answered that maybe if our black youth was learning a little bit more about black culture and roots, they might be a little more interested in school and have a little bit more self-worth.

Besides, Lumumba is right about Columbus and the wording "Columbus discovered America." You can't be the first person to discover something that someone else has already found. Native Americans lived here before Columbus sailed across the Atlantic Ocean; therefore, he cannot be the first man to "discover" America. Even if you don't believe that African people from the northern part of the continent crossed the Atlantic before Columbus—and some do—you can't deny that Christopher Columbus was not the first man to set foot in the Americas.

But the story on WAPT gets worse. It clumsily tries to explain Lumumba's beliefs, saying that he believes "people from northern Africa had been traveling to the North American continent years before Columbus did in 1492," and my personal favorite line of the story: "In fact, a Google search by 16 WAPT News shows the discovery of America is a widely disputed one."

Well, at least you did your homework.

Reached by phone Thursday afternoon, Lumumba said the headline and the idea that he wants to remove Columbus from the history books is "disappointing."

"I never said that. ... What I was really saying is that we need to add the people who came before ... . I just want the history books to accurately reflect that Columbus opened the Western Hemisphere to Europe," he said. "He did not discover it." Lumumba said he has used that line hundreds of times over the years, and said it was curious that it was just getting publicity now.

The bigger issue is that here we are, two days after Lumumba won the primary runoff, and this is the headline on local news stations. The divisiveness hit Twitter and Facebook as soon as the race was called. It hit comment sections on web sites of the JFP and Clarion-Ledger shortly thereafter. Now it is in a headline on WAPT. Where will it be in a month? A year?

For his part, Lumumba said he's …