LOCKED IN

The bowels of the George County Mississippi jail are as soul crushing as you might expect them to be.  The small box with 4 or 5 smaller cells, has the stiff smell of urine poorly masked by an equally nauseating hint of bleach.

George County Court House and Jail

I was actually pretty shocked that Sheriff George Miller Sr. was willing to let me check it out in the first place, "Can I go in?" I asked the grey haired, potbellied lawman a few minutes after we'd interviewed him about a local minister arrested for sexually abusing several young parishioners.   Miller, who had  an odd habit of blinking very hard and rapidly when talking. blinked even harder and faster when he was thinking.  "I s'pect," he nodded," and pulled what looked like a skeleton key out of his brown polyester trousers.  As the rusting, heavy metal door labored open, the hinges let out a painful moan, that summoned the handful of prisoners to life, each peering though a small 8 by 12 inch window, slatted with imposing iron bars.  "Don't get too 'cited boys, lunch still an hour off," the Sheriff blinked and twirled his heavy ring of keys on his index finger, looking in corners for contraband

George County Sheriff Miller

The well worn concrete floor, likely laid when the building was construction in 1910, had a slight groove pressed into it, a path that lead from the door of the jail to the cells inside.  I could imagine deputies guiding and wrestling drunken inmates in and out of the sad little boxes, bringing bologna sandwiches on white bread for lunch as the prisoners pleads with his captor, who, in this rural county,  he likely knew from high school,' Daryl, you gonna call my mamma," he might scream, "tell 'er to come get me."

The eyes of the all black jail population, in holdings cells of this predominantly white county, peered out of their sad boxes, "we treat ya'll good in here don't we boys?" the sheriff asked with plantation boss confidence, as he jangled his keys to his side, "yes su," the weary men answered unconvincingly.  

The Moss Point jail was equally as depressing, but lacked the brawny quality of construction of the antebellum George county lock-up.  The exposed PVC pipe dripped dirty water onto the cold crumbling concrete floor.  As you entered the Moss Point jail, the walls were not brick and iron, but simple, cheap Sheetrock, that, were long ago, punctured in places by a rage filled fist or a angrily flung plastic lunch tray.   The old holes in the new walls were there to stay, violent markers in time, never to be patched up.  Oddly the putrid mix of urine and Clorox that I breathed in in George County was ever present inside this jail.  

Moss Point Police Patch

It was in the Moss Point jail that Marcus Malone, a black man, died.  The arresting officers assured everyone; the press, the courts, the Jackson County DA that Malone was alive the muggy night he was arrested on McCall Street for traffic violations and drug charges by 4 white officers.  " "I believe my officers acted appropriately," Chief Butch Gager told me in the parking lot of the Moss Point police department.  Gager never really wanted to be chief, he only took the job because the man who had it before him had to quit when the state pulled his law enforcement licence for incompetence.  Gager, a burly good ol' boy was a street cop, not an administrator, or a leader and his handling of the Malone case would prove.

The cops said Malone died of a drug overdose overnight during his stay at the jail, but 2 inmates told state investigators, that wasn't true, "When they dropped that man on the ground face first, even if he was overdosing, he would of grunted or something," inmate Kenneth Turner said, "He had no reaction at all."

That's how I ended up seeking shade under a Magnolia tree as a monstrous yellow backhoe, began burrowing into the ground at the Moss Point Cemetery.  Ripping the soft, silent Kentucky Bluegrass from the ground and carelessly tossing it to the side.  Malone's body was exhumed at the families request, and another autopsy suggested Malone had been beaten and strangled to death.

After the body was removed from the earth, I found myself standing in the driveway of Malone's mother's home.  The stately woman was exhausted, and weary.  "I just miss my baby," she shook her head, eyes welling up, like they had most every day for the last year.  "I doubt we'll ever get justice." she said as she shifted the strap of her heavy purse from one shoulder to the next, "That's Mississippi," she breathed with sad acceptance.

After federal investigators prodded the state, it appeared, for a moment anyway, that Mrs. Malone may just get that justice.  Three of the 4 officers were indicted and tried.  Officer Steve Strickler who admitted grabbing Malone's chest, "for a second" was acquitted.  The charges against the 2 others dropped.  

I had left Mississippi for my new job at a another TV station here in Utah. by the time the case played out, but when I  read the reports out of my old stomping grounds, I thought about those sad inmates in the George county jail nodding wearily and frightfully when asked by the sheriff, if they "were treated alright." and I could only imagine Malone's mother the day the officer was cleared, burying her face into her hands and mumbling "That's Mississippi."

Mississippi Lessons

(Reporter's Note: My time as a reporter in Mississippi was a great learning experience for me and many of the people I met abhorred racism, this is about the ones who didn't)

"Mayor Polk can't be here this morning, apparently he ate too many watermelons," joked the owner of one of Jackson County's largest auto dealerships, as he held a microphone announcing the beginning the Pascagoula kids parade.  The car salesman was talking about Ira Polk, the recently hospitalized black mayor of Moss Point, Mississippi, a rugged little gulf coast town with a population that is about 70 percent African American.

Mayor Ira Polk

I stood under the towering oak tree, enveloped in the oppressive humidity, saddled with my heavy TV camera, and trapped by a web of black cables.  The armpits and neckline of my buttoned down shirt filled, every second with a measurable saturation of ever increasing sweat lines.  My eyes floated from one white face to another as each peach colored mouth in this upper middle class neighborhood, chuckled carelessly at the racist (and frankly stupid) joke.  I watched as the car huckster, started the parade, "OK Kids, let's get going!" he shouted into the mic and waved as he handed the black cylinder to someone and shuffled out from under the Magnolia tree, as little kids in cardboard boxes decorated as battleships and cars, began their slow shuffle around this well manicured neighborhood.

I awkwardly gathered up my camera, microphone, tripod and light stand, like a vacationer on the beach, trying to usher his cooler, lawn chair and umbrella off the sand before a midday rain shower floods his day.  "Can I talk to you?" I wheezed as I poked my sweaty finger at the wealthy car dealer, "Of course!" he chirped in the slow, friendly drawl I had grown to love during my time as a reporter in Mississippi during the early 90's  "Did you think that watermelon joke was funny?" I asked pointedly as I thrust my mic into his face, "uh, I..." he said caught off guard, expecting me to inquire about the how long the kids floats took to make, or if the heat would ruin the fun of the yearly  Mardi Gras tradition, "I was just pokin' fun?" he reply in a question, as I coiled up my mic cable, and headed back to my tiny office on Market street to broadcast a story about  racism in Mississippi.

As I slammed the trunk closed on the news car, and slid onto the scalding red interior of my 4 door Ford Tempo, within seconds the bag stuffed between the seats of the vehicle began to chip loudly, it was my boss on a new fangled cell phone, "Chris, I just talked to (can't remember the car dealer's name) and he says he made some off color jokes, that you might be putting on the air tonight," News Director Dave Vincent announced into the phone, "Now Chris," he continued  in his grandfatherly monotone, "I think it's pretty clear that these kind of comments happen down here, and although we can't condone them, I think broadcasting them, doesn't do any good for anyone."

Confederate Veteran's Cemetery (Beauvoir)

I'd only been in Pascagoula for a few months when I got a taste of how race and racism was treated in the South.

In Mississippi, as in much of the south, "The War Of Northern Aggression," is quietly revered around every corner.  Just 45 minutes West of Pascagoula, on Highway 90 is Beauvoir, the home of Confederate president Jefferson Davis.  The pristine shrine to the former head of the insurrection is a a museum honoring Davis and Confederate veterans.  The regal, plantation is dotted  with statues of Davis, a presidential library and a Confederate cemetery, often emblazoned, like a field of flowing raspberries, with blood red rebel flags.

Picture taken by MSSC, numbers indicate people on whom they spied

I remember meeting a group of black candidates for Pascagoula's city council at a small restaurant in town.  The place was actually a converted 2 bedroom house  which I don't think was properly licensed to serve food, but they did.  I remember the candidates, sitting in white plastic chairs, that you would typically find on the porch, and laughing and talking about their times marching with Martin Luther King, as the black owner of the makeshift restaurant would joke, and dish out plates of "slick'um" or boiled okra, to the candidates.  The half dozen or so men and women reminisced about their civil rights work and recent news about The Mississippi State Sovereignty Committee, a state agency founded in 1956, to counter a mounting federal push for civil rights.   The MSSC became a de facto spy agency with the purpose of keeping tabs on people in the movement for black rights, and keeping the state's anti-black Jim Crow laws in place. When the records of the agency were finally opened in 1998 it was revealed the covert agency had spied on as many as 87,000 people.  One of the agency's spies actually passed information about three civil rights workers in Philadephia, MS along to the Neshoba County Sheriff, who was later implicated in the murders of the three people.  The agency wasn't shuttered until 1977.  I was 7 years old at the time.  It still stuns me, just a few years before I turned 10 years old, the state of Mississippi was actively working to thwart racial progress.  Slavery ended 115 years ago, but efforts to keep some vestige of the institution in place, lasted into my lifetime.

Mississippi state flag

The candidates, also lamented about the Mississippi's state flag which to this day is still emblazoned with the rebel insignia.  "My great, grandpa was a slave AND he was forced to cook for rebel soldiers to defend that flag," one of the candidates, said in a ministerial baritone as he ate his pork sandwich, and ran his hand across the grey whiskers on his chin, "Every time I see it wave at the state capitol in Jackson," he said looking at his Styrofoam plate, "it hurts a little bit." he trails off as he pushes a hunk of escaped pork across his plate with a white plastic spoon.

As I sat in the small, hot converted restaurant, with a ceiling fan struggling to push the humid air around the small room, I watched the graying black man think about injustice.  I thought about the story about the racist car dealer that I never aired, and the regret I felt, but also the sad realization that in a state with a profound history of racism, my little story likely wouldn't have made much difference.

  

Wrong Place, Wrong Time

As the tires lock, the friction of the road against the rubber kicks a dense, blue smoke, and bits of gravel spewing, richocheting and skipping off the pavement.  The lanky middle-aged man with wispy grey hair and awkward glasses, leaps like a Jack-in-the Box from his driver's side door of his late model mini-van, and bounds towards me.  His gate is wide, his arms swinging as if he is a competitive speed walker. "Hmm," I wonder aloud, "why's he in such a hurry?" When he grabs the sleeve of my shirt and wheels me off the porch like a discus thrower, I realize he is in a hurry to assault me.

I was standing on the porch of an historic home in downtown Moss Point, Mississippi.  This antebellum estate, in 1995, was at the center of much debate for this waterfront town nuzzled in the boot heel of the south.  Moss Point town father's wanted to buy it and preserve it, but the owner, who was letting the property rot, was asking for a lot of money.  My job on this lazy, sweltering Sunday was to take a few pictures of the majestic mess for our early news cast.

With my camera in tow, I decide to grab a few pictures from up close, and that meant, on the property, which, of course is a no-no.  This is private property, and I was technically trespassing.  As a young journalist, I was still learning and for some reason had forgotten, one of the most important rules of journalism, "thou shalt not trespass."

When the owner of the home, passing by noticed a gawky young man in a shirt and tie with a camera on his porch, he was not happy.

After he flings me off the weary, drooping wooden stoop, I land firmly on my feet.  The man in his early 60's is spry, he bounds himself from the rotting wooden steps ninja style, and lands on the crumbling sidewalk, knees bent, fists clinched and held high in front of his face, knuckles up, backs of his hands facing me.  Both hands move in circular motion in front of me, like a turn of the century pugilist preparing for a bare knuckle showdown, in a long closed meat packing plant in the Bowery district of New York.  I can almost hear the old timey radio announcer calling the battle, "Jack O'Leary, ready to pummel his opponent with the ol' Harlem Hay maker!"

He lunges towards me as his wife shrieks, "Harvey, No!  Your heart!"  He latches onto my sleeve again, ripping it cleanly at the seam exposing my entire arm from the shoulder down.  If he'd managed to tear off the other sleeve I would have looked like a "Greaser," from the movie "The Outsiders."

I'm shocked that I find myself in a full-fledged showdown, I haven't been in a fight since I was 10, when I got into a grapple with another kid named Chris at Summer camp over the top bunk.  I remember popping him three times in the face, and when he started crying in pain, I began crying, pumped full of fear, adrenaline and shame.

This most recent dust up is quickly breaking down into a farce.  The man, with my blue dress shirt sleeve in his hand begins frantically slapping me with it, then darts his left hand towards my tie and violently jerks it from left to right, dragging my head along with it.  I grasp his wrist, with both hands, and vice grip my palm around the fingers on his left hand, bending his wrist back towards his body, the  leverage forcing him him to his knees, then I reel back with my right fist ready to take what is clearly a clean shot to his nose, when I hear, "Freeze! Police!" as I crane my neck behind me, I see a portly, white haired, Moss Point police officer, lumbering towards the skinny, sweaty mass of testosterone grappling in the blazing, humid, Mississippi sun.  His gun belt is loosely buckled to make room for his ample belly, and as he trips up the curb, he desperately jerks at the leather belt flopping around his waist. As he reaches us, he has both hands on his belt to keep it, gun, cuffs and all,  from dropping with a thud around his knees.

"What IN THE HELL, are you boys doin'?" he blurts in his heavy southern drawl.  "Harvey, Lord, man are you outta yer mind," he scowls at the man,  "and you Chris Jones, gettin' ready to punch an ol' man?  are you fellas crazy." he admonishes both of us.

"He's breaking into my house! He's trying to break into my house!" the man wheezes as his wife cries frantically from behind the couples mini-van, "Bull*&t!" I scream, "this wild beast just jumped on me like a chimpanzee from a tree!"  "God*&^m it boys, retreat!"  I un-cock my fist and let go of his hand, as I feel a warm, slim stream of blood slowly roll down my cheek.  Sometime during our ridiculous rag doll melee he must have nicked me with a fingernail causing a minor injury.

I know this officer.  Let's just say if you put him in a lineup with other officers and asked, "which of these guys likely spends the most time sleeping in his patrol cruiser?" Nine out of 10 people would finger him.
"OK, OK," he runs his fingers through his thick mane of grey hair.  Searching for a way NOT to have to make two arrests and fill out reams of paperwork at the end of his 12 hour shift.

"Chris, you was just knockin' on the door right?" the officer points at me, clarifying the story he just made up, "and Harvey, you was just confused, thought he was gonna burglarize the place right?" He thrusts his finger at my opponent, "It was just a misunderstanding, right fellas?  No harm no foul."  Both of us panting deeply, and dragging the back of our hands across our foreheads, agree, spending the night in jail, would not be a good way to end the weekend.

"Yeah," I say as I dab the blood on my cheek with my index finger "he just got confused."
"Right," Harvey adds, as he wrenches his wrist back and forth, trying to force out the pain, "He's just comin' for a visit, he didnt' mean nothing."

As we shake hands, Harvey hands me my shirt sleeve, "sorry" he says awkwardly as he stuffs the fabric into my hand, and turns towards his bawling wife.  I dab the blood on my cheek with the sleeve then jam it into my back pocket, "Damn, Chris, It's Sunday, I ain't got time for this," the round officer says as he loosens his gun belt and throws it over his shoulder, I'm going fishin' with my cousin in 20 minutes." He shakes his head as he looks at me with a scowl, then his eyes light up, as he remembers, "He's bringing brats!"





 

It's a Dirty Job

"Well, ya best tuck them jeans into ya socks if ya don't want vermin to get up them pants," the Moss Point Police detective rolls out in his long southern drawl,  as he adjusted his breathing apparatus over his mouth.  For me, a cub reporter, with maybe six months worth of experience, it is the most daunting piece of instruction I have ever received, and I quickly and nervously do the same as my teacher.

It is my first job in television, at WLOX-TV in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1995.  I am technically the bureau chief, of the station's Jackson County office.  I am in charge (by default) of the two-man operation, that includes myself and another, just as green, photographer/reporter.  Together we are eager, but not very experienced.  The two of us are stationed in a tiny little office in Pascagoula, the space is about the size of the guest room in your home.

Shipbuilding in Pascagoula.

Pascagoula/Moss Point/Gautier.  Those are the primary towns we cover.  It is a tough little community, weathered and shaped by the muggy summers, and perched on the rock of the Mississippi Gulf Coast.  At one point the stubborn, blue collar towns prospered, because of a strong shipbuilding culture, that helped families build homes, buy modest boats, and make weekend trips to Bozo's Fish Market for a bag of Crawfish, seasoned in a secret Cajun concoction, but those boom days are over, and Jackson County is forced to limp along.

Pascagoula is built for functionality, not beauty.  The city has weathered too many hurricanes in the past to waste time building expensive, ornate structures.  The tallest building in town in a bank, it is five stories tall, of which the top two floors are utilized for storage. The Gulf Coast economy, is usually at the mercy of government spending of warships and aircraft carriers, making this a boom or bust environment.

The place is run, literally, by tough, good ol' boys.  The Sheriff, DB, "Pete," Pope, was a portly power broker, and he was more politician than lawman.

Former Jackson County Sheriff Pete Pope

 His piercing, blue reptilian eyes framed by his stark mop of white hair, and his checkered sports coat accented with a pair of hand-made cowboy boots was terrifying for me, as he would summon me into his office-lair, either schmooze me or more likely, excoriate me for a story I wrote that angered, a man whose soul was born mad.  He was one part southern gent, 2 parts Boss Hogg.

He once warned me that he had a machine in his office, that alerted him whenever a recording device was operating in his presence, his ominous pronouncement told the kid reporter, that I better never think of trying to tape any of his rangy rants.  It wasn't until later that I learned that, "machine," never existed.

He was sheriff  but his political power was immense because, to borrow a cliche, he knew where all the bodies were buried and so did the body buriers, and that made him more like the king of his own tiny sovereign, southern nation, than the bureaucrat in a county department.

County Commissioner Tommy Brodnax, wasn't a power broker,  he was more like the people he represented, a former shipyard worker and a stout fireplug of a man, with stubby limbs punctuated by thick, brawny forearms, and round, beefy fingers, weather worn and streaked with scratches, scars, and finernails caked with soil from his garden, and grease from his tractor.  He was quick to pick a verbal fight with fellow commissioners, and physical ones with just about anyone else.  He was once arrested for punching a man in the face during a dispute over fallen tree branches.

Jackson County Commissioner, Tommy Brodnax

He relished in harassing me about my green reporting skills and unseasoned on-air presence, that included a terrified face accented by no expression, what-so-ever.   Whenever I'd fumble into a county meeting, awkwardly juggling a camera and tri-pod, he'd interrupt the proceedings, no matter how important, to announce, in his high pitched southern accent, reminiscent of billionaire and former presidential candidate Ross Perot, "hey everyone, here comes stone face!"

As a young reporter you do as you're told, and that means you are on call, 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.   On this muggy August night, my station issued beeper buzzes abruptly alive at 1 am, waking me starkly with a gasp back to consciousness.

I am ordered to the end of a desolate  dead end street, in Moss Point, a small town just north of Pascagoula.

Moss Point isn't exactly the best run town in Mississippi, in fact it's the opposite. At one point the Moss Point Chief of Police, out of sheer incompetence, had his permit to carry a gun revoked by the state's top police agency.

One cost saving measure enacted by the city council, led to a state of utter calamity.   In an effort to save money on the restoration of weathered, dulling street signs, the city concocted a scheme that may have literally lead to houses burning to the ground, and residents dying while waiting for an ambulance.

The town leaders decided NOT to buy new street signs, but rather to pull all the old signs down, then repaint them. Unfortunately , instead of repainting, for example the "Oak Street" sign with the words "Oak street," the parks and rec. department  stenciled, without much thought, over that sign, with the words , "Main Street." instead of Oak.   They did this all over town, all the signs. That was fine for a while, but  after a few months battered by the blazing Southern Mississippi sun, the cheap store bought paint faded, and the signs began to read a mish-mashed combination of the two, think "OaMakin Street."

The fire department, and ambulance service found themselves racing around the city searching in vain for a burning house or man in cardiac arrest, only to get garbled, maddening guidance from the disastrous Scrabble-like street grid.

Somehow, no thanks to Moss Points, illegible signs, I fumbled my way to a modest home surrounded by Moss Point officers, blazing flood lights, and a cacophony of critter wranglers.

After a welfare call from a resident of a house nearby, concerned for the safety of an ailing, immobile woman inside, police force open the door, only to find it barricaded by rotting garbage, cat feces, and carelessly discarded soda bottles.  It was a clean freaks nightmare, and a hoarders dream.

after rescuing the sick woman, and arresting her daughter for neglect, police had the unenviable task of removing dozens of feral cats from the home, collected over years by the two women.  The pair only took in a third of that, but the wild animals spent the next few years breeding with each other, creating a inbred cat version of "Lord of The Flies."

The cops, totally unaware, or unconcerned with protocol or the law, invite me to come in , "Hey there Jonesy, ya wanna check this out, brother, git yur camera and follow us in!"  The boys outfit me with a breathing apparatus and duck tape to strap my loose clothing to my body.  "Why am I doing this?" I ask as I peel long strips of tape off the giant, metal roll, "Roaches, boy!" one officer belts out with a laugh as he blows a wet, brown mouthful of spitting tobacco onto the city sidewalk, "roaches!"

As he scoot the rotting door open, I recall the sucking in and out of air through our masks belting out a Darth Vader-like pant.  The house doesn't have electricity, hasn't for months I'm told, and is lighted by flashlights and a flood light only.

The putrid stench of ammonia is overpowering, and I take it all in despite the protective gear over my face.  disintegrating garbage is 2 feet high and blankets the entire ground below me, I crunch and crack over the foul flooring, shuffling through waste, as tin cans crush, and tumble away as I push, like a canal boat icebreaker through the ocean of cardboard, food, and animal waste.

The garbage is everywhere, the floor, the shelves, inexplicable even the ceilings.  It is stacked in structurally defying mountains that line the halls.

The black insides of the house are revealed only in pieces when the darkness is broken by the faint flashlights, fumbled by disgusted police officers.

The flood lights reveal a tired, pea-green sofa, that appears to be made of wax, as the left side breaks down into what looks  like a melted mess of mushy fabric.  The sight defies my eyes, "what the hell?" I say with mouth agape.  "The cats have been peeing there for years," chirps the lead investigator  "Looks like they just went and melted the thing."

A dirty farm hand, in overalls, and a dingy CAT Diesel hat, called by police to help with the wild felines, stops the army of police officers and reporters, and warns, "Ok, this is where it gets bad," "Oh," I belt, "now it gets bad."

He wrestles the bedroom door open, and 4 or 5 of us shoe-horn ourselves into the back living space, someone closes the door behind us, and I find myself, squeezed on all sides, mountains of muck to my back, sweaty cops to my left, and the low guttural hum, of hidden cats echoing throughout pitch black room.

"Yall, ready?" he screams as he slaps his gloved hand to the left side of a stained mattress laying on the floor, "NO!" I yelp in pleading tones.  I remember the word just jump out of me, unprovoked, like a frog off a lily-pad, startled by a rock tumbling into his pond.

"Too late!" he hollers, as he overturns the bed, jerking it up on its side, revealing the wooden underbelly of the box springs. In the chaos, I see something, but the darkness makes it hard to make out.  It appears to be a sea of life is pulsating inside the box springs, and as the lights are directed to the bed, I see a wall of undulating cock-roaches, thousands of them, crawling and racing for safety as they are shocked into movement by the first light they have experienced in months, maybe years.

I have little time to catch my breath, because a dozen wild cats, who also inhabited the darkness under that bed are springing from their black, musty home.  They hiss and shriek as they bound up the walls, their claws scraping and propelling them higher up the grimy surfaces towards the ceiling of the room.  As they hit the acoustical tile, they rebound, like mangy, infected, overfilled basketballs towards our heads.

I feel like I am storming Utah Beach, as German soldiers try to repel me with gunfire and cannon fodder.

The farm boy, and police trip and stumble over one another, half of them desperately dodging the airborne cats, the other half trying in vane to catch them, clawing at the frightened, feral animals.  The chaos is more than my mind can handle, I jab at the door knob, my hands slipping and fumbling with it as I try to escape.  I finally jerk the door open, and fall out the portal, I'm darting my way out of the surreal disaster, when I notice the flood lights cast a sickly light on the homes living room, and catches a roach perched proudly on that melted couch, he appears to have his head lifted high, and smugly watches me as I scamper, terrified out of his home, the light casts his shadow against the dirty wall, and his dark outline makes him appear 3 feet tall, and for a young reporter struggling to learn the ropes, that roach and that job seems to be just a little to big for me.