State of Emergency

A friend picks up his mother at the Jackson International Airport. As they walk to the car, she glances around nervously. “It’s almost dark. Are you sure we can get to your house safely?”

My friend is stunned by the question. “What?”

“Your sister called before I arrived,” his mother explains. “She told me about the state of emergency. Aren’t you worried about getting shot?”

* * * * *

Last week, Jackson Mayor Frank Melton did, indeed, declare a state of emergency, saying that violent crime was so rampant and so widespread in our city that the National Guard was needed to enforce the law. (Fortunately, the Mayor’s plans to activate the Guard — plans that fell well outside his legal powers, despite his claims that he only needed notify the Governor “as a courtesy” — were quickly and appropriately put to rest by Governor Barbour.)

That phrase, “state of emergency,” paints a dark and desperate picture. After Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, with thousands of people stranded, drowning, and starving, was in a state of emergency. In response to the growing success of the insurgency in Iraq, the government there declared a state of emergency. When flood waters engulf a city — as they are even today, in Maryland — the local officials declare a state of emergency.

So, when people outside the city of Jackson hear our Mayor tell the press he’s declaring a “state of emergency,” they imagine Jackson to be a city under siege: drug lords with machine guns ruling the streets, businesses and residences in flames, and the last of the Good White Residents being dragged off into the underbrush to be raped and murdered by swarthy people of indeterminate ethnicity.

This simply isn’t happening.

Jackson is, for all practical purposes, pretty much what it has always been. Power, water, and gas are freely available. Retail establishments flourish. Restaurants are packed. The perpetual reconstruction of I-55 continues unabated. People are at work, at church, and at school. Frankly? If you could travel back in time to the Jackson of ten years ago, you wouldn’t see much difference between now and then.

Life here in Jackson can be described with many phrases — but “state of emergency” simply isn’t among them.

* * * * *

That said: we do have an emergency on our hands, and it’s one we brought on ourselves when we elected Frank Melton as our Mayor.

In our defense, we can only note that, at first, all that tough talk about “the bottom line” and personal accountability sounded really good. The media’s coverage of Melton the Candidate did not probe deep enough to reveal the man’s paranoid, delusional state of mind. (I do recall at least one person who knew Melton well telling me, prior to the election, that “the man’s crazy … folks in Jackson who haven’t been around him much just don’t know it.”)

Since he has taken office, though, we’ve seen his behavior become increasingly bizarre:

– He likes to play dress-up, donning spare riot gear and (illegally) posing as a policeman.

– He spends an inordinate amount of time breaking down doors of strip clubs, after which he likes to linger in the dressing rooms and lecture the ladies.

– He (illegally) stops school buses to indulge a bizarre whim to “hug the children.”

– He storms private homes in the middle of the night.

– He feels the need to carry a firearm at all times — and insists he should be able to do so, even on commercial airliners, where doing so is illegal.

And now, of course, he’s at the center of our “state of emergency,” calling for a thirty-one day spate of mandatory curfews (despite the fact the length of a mayor-initiated state of emergency for a maximum of five days).

Mayor Melton is increasingly out of touch with reality, and his actions reveal that, while he claims to be keen on enforcing laws, he’s not much interested in obeying them himself.

Like more and more Jacksonians, I’m convinced there’s only one sure way to put an end to our current state of emergency:

Impeach the Mayor.