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."

"I'm a Hooker."

Seeing her rush into my small office was perplexing, like glancing out a car window only to see an SUV resting on the roof of a house after a hurricane.   I'd seen her before, walking sadly and suggestively down Jackson Avenue in Pascagoula, Ms. late at night.  She was among a small cadre of prostitutes who prowl the 2 lane road,  book ended on either side, by a long-closed auto parts store to the north, and a questionable massage parlor to the south.

"I'm a hooker," she announces without fear of judgement as tears flow from her eyes, her thick, wet steams marbled with black mascara.  Inside the small office, she glances frantically, at the door she had just entered.  "I Just got out a jail," she roots nervously through her fatigued, faux-leather bag, I assume for a tissue, or a cigarette.   

Her dress is pretty, and modest.  It is blue with splashes of red and white flowers.  I can envision her sitting comfortably in a church pew in that ensemble,  but this is her work uniform, and she likely wears it most every day.  The blue and red, less brilliant than the day she received it, worn by the hot, Mississippi sun and faded by rainstorms that pepper the summer afternoons.  The shoes are even more telling.  The Dr. Scholl's are streaked with deep black scuff marks, and the flat wooden sole are rounded at the toe in heel, overworked grooves pressed away by hours and miles of endless walking. 

As I've mentioned in previous blogs, my time in Pascagoula is my first job in television news, and everyday, it seems is a new, mind blowing experience.  Like a man, blind at birth, given his vision well into old age, and this day in 1995, is no exception.

"The police just let me go," she cries dragging the back of her hand across her wet, runny nose, "but they spent all night raping me."  She quickly grabs at her bra strap placing it firmly on her shoulder, as if the memory alone had forced it to leap back to her bicep.  "What?  What happened?"  I'm  trying to comprehend what I'm hearing, "I gotta go," she digs both thumbs into each of her eyes, then pirouettes and bolt out the glass office door, "hold on!" I follow her a few feet, as she darts down an alley, jogs around a corner, and is gone. 

"I honestly don't even know if we arrested anyone for prostitution last night Chris," the shift captain will announce to me in his friendly, easy southern drawl, "and if we did Chris, man, I don't know how much stock you can put in them claims," he says as he tries to dismantle her charge, "ya say she said she was a prostitute huh?" he chimes trying to reinforce her credibility issues, as he tugs at his jowly chin,  "It seemed like she wasn't lying," I insist, "I wonder why she would make a charge like that and just run off?" he lifts his beefy paw from his chin and stroking the back of his head.  "I'll look into it for ya, OK?"  But I can't promise anything."  I will never hear another word from the captain on the allegation.  

On my way home from work, I will take the long way past Jackson Avenue, trying to locate her again.  I never do.

Several months later, my beeper buzzes alive, as I am summoned to a broken part of Pascagoula, populated by listing wooden fences, packs of meandering feral dogs, and houses topped with corrugated steel instead of shingles.  

Police have found the murdered remains of a prostitute inside one of the exhausted shacks.  I don't know if it is the woman who pleads with me for help that blazing August afternoon, but the description is similar. Either way, I think often about that day she charged into my office, how broken and helpless she seemed, and how futile my efforts were to do anything about it.