Douglas Wilder, former governor of Richmond, Va. Credit: Courtesy of the National Park Service
Douglas Wilder, who became the first Black American elected governor since Reconstruction, took office in Richmond, Virginia.
Named after both abolitionist Frederick Douglass and poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, he worked his way through Virginia Union University before being drafted into the Korean War. During the Battle of Pork Chop, he and two fellow soldiers were cut off from their unit. When they ran into 19 Chinese soldiers, they bluffed them into surrendering. Wilder was awarded a Bronze Star Medal for his bravery.
Back in the U.S., he became a lawyer, and in 1969 won a seat in the Virginia State Senate, becoming the first African American elected to the body since Reconstruction. In 1985, he was elected lieutenant governor, and four years later won as governor. The winning margin? Less than one-half percent.
The mother of an 11-year-old Indianola boy shot in the chest by a police officer is trying for the second time to hold the officer accountable in a criminal court.
On Friday, Nakala Murry filed a criminal affidavit against Sgt. Greg Capers for misdemeanor simple assault stemming from the May 20, 2023, shooting of her son Aderrien. Misdemeanors don’t require a grand jury indictment and would be heard by a judge in a bench trial, which is without a jury.
“This action underscores Ms. Murry’s unwavering commitment to seeking accountability for the harm inflicted upon her son and her family,” Carlos Moore, Murry’s attorney, said in a Friday statement. “It’s a crucial step in the ongoing effort to hold responsible parties accountable for their actions.”
Last month, a Sunflower County grand jury declined to indict Capers for any felony charges based on evidence presented by the Attorney General’s Office and Mississippi Bureau of Investigation, which handles all investigations for law enforcement shootings.
In the Friday affidavit, Murry accuses Capers of “recklessly shooting” her son Aderrien in the chest when he responded to the Murry home for a domestic disturbance, according to a copy of the affidavit. Aderrien had used his mother’s phone to call for help.
Aderrien Murry
The shooting left the boy with a collapsed lung, fractured ribs and a lacerated liver, and he has been recovering with the help of family and the community.
Murry previously filed a criminal affidavit against Capers for felony aggravated assault in Sunflower County.
Following the grand jury decision, Capers was reinstated with the Indianola Police Department after being on unpaid administrative leave for several months.
Murry is still pursuing a $5 million federal lawsuit against Capers, the Indianola police chief and city relating to her son’s shooting.
This month, MBI released a nearly two-minute long video clip taken from Capers’s body camera. Prior to the release, Murry and her attorney had been calling for the city of Indianola to release it because they had been barred from sharing the video or talking about it.
Footage shows Capers and a colleague approach the Murry home, bang on the front door and ask for permission from the 911 dispatcher to kick it open. Nakala Murry opens the door and Capers shouts twice: “Let me see your hands,” which she raises.
Sgt. Greg Capers of the Indianola Police Department. Credit: Photo courtesy of Carlos Moore
Capers asks twice where Murry’s former partner is, and she nods her head toward the inside of the home. When asked, Murry steps outside.
From the doorway, Capers asks the man to come out, saying “don’t make us come in.” As he steps into the living room, Aderrien walks into view of the body camera with his hands over his head. Capers immediately opens fire.
He shoots the boy in the chest and says “Oh, my god.” The boy starts to scream and runs out of the front door and yells for his mother. At the same time, Capers calls for an ambulance on his dispatch radio.
“‘Why did he shoot me? What did I do?’” Nakala Murry recalled her son saying after the shooting.
The Mississippi State Department of Health first issued the notice Thursday morning after reporting E.coli was in two samples submitted from JXN Water, Jackson’s third-party water manager. The notice was concurrent with a boil water notice MSDH issued for Flowood, which, the agency said, also had E.coli in its water samples.
Just hours later, JXN Water’s Ted Henifin held a press conference disputing the results, arguing that it was highly unlikely for both Jackson and Flowood to have traces of E.coli in the same testing period, and that the results were likely false positives. Henifin also criticized the Health Department for not validating the results before issuing the boil water notice, something allowed under federal guidelines through the Environmental Protection Agency.
MSDH pushed back, saying in a press release that the agency reviewed its protocol and was “confident in (the test results’) validity.”
The agency’s quick lifting of the boil water notice for Jackson — Flowood’s remains active as of this publishing — is a shift from its usual procedure. MSDH usually requires two consecutive days of clean samples, as well as roughly a day to analyze the results, before it lifts a boil water notice.
In a news release announcing the lifting of the boil water notice, state health officialsdid said they were doing so “in accordance with the Environmental Protection Agency’s Revised Total Coliform Rule.”
But they went on to say that they continue to stand behind the initial test results: “Upon review, all evidence supports that these test results were true positives. Since 2003, there have been 29 instances of E. coli detected in the City of Jackson’s water system. During the same time period, the City of Flowood has had three instances of E. coli in their water system.”
While the citywide notice was lifted, two separate notices due to loss of pressure are still active in Jackson, affecting 351 customers. Visit MSDH’s boil water notice listing to see which areas are affected.
JXN Water preps for cold weather
Throughout the last year, JXN Water has upgraded the city’s largely exposed and vulnerable water treatment facilities to better sustain cold weather. Temperatures in Jackson could reach as low as 15 degrees on Monday, according to the National Weather Service, with a chance of snow, sleet and freezing rain.
The main upgrades, Henifin explained Friday, were covering and insulating the city’s water treatment facilities, hoping to prevent a repeat of the 2021 water shutdown in Jackson when equipment left exposed to the cold prevented the city from putting out enough pressure into the system.
Ted Henifin, interim water manager, for JXN Water, the water system for the city of Jackson, Miss., used his agency’s sink to demonstrate how to run faucet water like a “thin line of spaghetti with intermittent breaks” in order to deal with expected below freezing weather, at a news conference in Jackson, Miss., Friday, Jan. 12, 2024. During the news conference, Henifin also questioned the Mississippi Department of Health’s recent results regarding the quality of the city’s water. (AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis)
Henifin also said the city is more well equipped now to handle water line ruptures. In the past, such as on Christmas in 2022, the cold weather has frequently led to line breaks and subsequent boil water notices. JXN Water, Henifin said, now has 14 crews that will work around the clock to repair any breaks, versus the two crews that the city had a year ago.
Jackson officials are asking residents to let their faucets drip during freezing weather to prevent pipes from freezing, as well as to open their cabinets under the sink to allow heat inside.
Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s office cautioned residents to stay home in the event of snow, sleet, or freezing rain, because of possibly dangerous driving conditions and the city’s limited capacity to clear snow and ice from the roads.
The city will also open a temporary shelter on Monday at 11 A.M. with food and cots, at 1355 Hattiesburg Street in Jackson.
UPDATE 1/12/23: This story has been updated to include the state Health Department’s position.
Speaker Jason White on Friday appointed new people to lead the two House committees with jurisdiction over health policy, signaling a desire to shift the focus of health care debate in a state plagued by dire health outcomes.
“The selections for chairs and vice chairs directly reflect our desire and drive to elevate Mississippi,” White said in a statement. “I am enthusiastic to work with these Republican, Democrat, and independent chairs and vice chairs as we address our state’s challenges and opportunities through a conservative lens to build a better, brighter Mississippi.”
The new speaker appointed Sam Creekmore IV, a Republican from New Albany, to chair the Public Health and Human Services Committee and Missy McGee, a Republican of Hattiesburg, to chair the Medicaid Committee, a notable shift from more conservative respective chairs of the previous four-year term.
Both Creekmore and McGee come from the more moderate wing of the state GOP and have been involved in previous efforts to reform aspects of health care. Both have told Mississippi Today they support Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Care Act.
Creekmore, only a second-term lawmaker, successfully passed legislation last year to provide more mental health services while McGee, a third-term legislator, has been a vocal advocate for increasing postpartum Medicaid benefits for new mothers.
“I was very much surprised,” Creekmore told Mississippi Today of the committee chair assignment. “I was thinking that if I got a chair it would not be Public Health, though that would have been my first choice. I have been passionate about it. I did not ask for it. I wasn’t expecting anything major like Public Health.”
When asked about possible priorities as chair of Public Health, Creekmore said he wanted to put Medicaid expansion “on the table.”
“Let’s have a conversation,” he said. “I know that is what the speaker wants to do, too. We have not discussed it other than just in passing. But whatever we do has to be what is best for the hospitals, the people and the state.”
Similarly, McGee also said she plans to examine ways to help the number of uninsured working people because “Medicaid can be a tool in helping people and families.”
“With regard to the direction of the committee, I think the sheer number of uninsured working poor is a real concern,” McGee said. “Addressing this issue is a stated priority for the Speaker, and it will be a priority for the Medicaid Committee.”
White had said earlier he wanted to conduct a serious study of expanding Medicaid to provide health care for primarily to working poor as 40 other states have done. In the past, the Republican leadership of the Legislature has refused to even consider Medicaid expansion, which is still opposed by Gov. Tate Reeves.
White also appointed four Democrats to chair less visible committees. During the past term, then-Speaker Philip Gunn, who chose not to run for reelection, did not appoint any Democrats as committee chairs. The four Democratic chairs are Carl Mickens over Housing; Cedric Burnett over Interstate Cooperation; Karl Gibbs on State Library and Otis Anthony over Youth and Family Affairs.
Even though there were four Democrats selected as chairs and 21 as vice chairs, Robert Johnson III of Natchez, the House Democratic leader, said there were few Democrats placed in positions to have major impacts.
“I was hoping for more given the statements the speaker had made,” Johnson said. He added he is still hopeful of cooperation given the conversations he has had with White and new House Pro-Tem Manly Barton.
Johnson also praised White’s appointments of Creekmore as Public Health chair and McGee as Medicaid chair.
While Johnson said he would liked to have seen a Democrat in one of those posts, both Creekmore and McGee have “shown the willingness to work across the aisle to do what is best for the state. I am encouraged by their appointments.”
White opted to keep Republican John Read of Gautier as Appropriations Committee chair and Republican Trey Lamar of Senatobia as Ways and Means chair, the two committees responsible for tax policy and crafting the state budget.
The speaker appointed only four Democrats to lead committees, but those committees, in reality, are not powerful and a majority of Republicans will still make up the majority of the members on those committees.
The speaker will soon begin referring bills to committees for consideration. The deadline for leaders to pass bills out of their committees is March 5.
Gov. Tate Reeves’ office says Mississippi won’t participate in a federal summer food program for children because of his desire to reject “attempts to expand the welfare state.”
But officials at the state’s welfare agency that Reeves oversees, which participated in a similar federal program earlier in the pandemic, offered a different reason for opting out of the program: a lack of state resources to administer it.
The Summer EBT program would provide the families of students who receive free or reduced lunch during the school year with electronic benefit transfer (EBT) cards that can be used to purchase groceries in the summer. For each eligible child, families would receive $40 per month for a total of $120.
Thirty-five states, all five U.S. territories, and four Tribes will be participating in the program for its first year, which the U.S. Department of Agriculture said it expects will benefit nearly 21 million children. The other states that have opted out include Alabama, Alaska, Florida, Georgia, Iowa, Louisiana, Nebraska, Oklahoma, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, Vermont and Wyoming.
Mississippi previously administered the pandemic EBT program, which gave a similar summer benefit and provided assistance during the school year if school was conducted primarily virtually or hybrid for at least one month. The cost of running the pandemic-era program was covered fully by the federal government but the new summer version would require states to cover half of the administrative expenses, something other states have pointed to as a reason not to participate.
“Both (the Mississippi Department of Education) and (the Mississippi Department of Human Services) lack the resources, including workforce capacity and funding, to support a Summer EBT Program,” said Mark Jones, a DHS spokesperson.
Republican governors in some other states have also said they chose not to participate in the program because of their opposition to expanding federal benefits, according to Chalkbeat.
Democratic Congressman Bennie Thompson directly blamed Reeves for the state opting out of the program in a statement his office released Thursday.
“Shame on Tate Reeves for refusing essential food assistance for eligible children during the summer,” he said. “These federal funds would have provided crucial support for parents and guardians to ensure their child or children are adequately fed throughout the summer. Unfortunately, the repercussions of the governor opting Mississippi out of this new program casts a significant burden on multiple families.”
Reeves’ spokesperson Shelby Wilcher, asked for comment about whether Reeves made the decision to opt out of the federal program, countered by pointing to the existing programs that help feed children in the summer.
“It’s disingenuous for Representative Thompson to insinuate that children won’t get the support they need by not participating in something that was originally intended to be a temporary pandemic-era program,” she said.
The Mississippi Department of Education said it would continue to administer the Summer Food Service Program, which serves meals on-site in low-income communities.
The Mississippi State Department of Health issued a citywide boil water notice for Jackson on Thursday morning after finding E.coli during its monthly sampling, however the city’s water manager quickly questioned the test results, saying they’re likely a false positive.
Each month, the city has to send 120 samples from around Jackson to the Health Department’s lab, which tests the samples for contaminants including E.coli. E.coli is a bacteria that’s commonly found in feces. Most of it are harmless, according to the Environmental Protection Agency, but some can lead to sickness such as vomiting and diarrhea.
JXN Water, the city’s third-party water manager, submitted its monthly samples to MSDH on Wednesday. The state agency responded Thursday morning that two of the samples showed positive results for E.coli.
That afternoon, JXN Water’s Ted Henifin called the results “highly suspect” for a number of reasons. For one, he said, JXN Water has a chlorination and disinfection process to get rid of bacteria like E.coli, and no previous samples have shown E.coli since the third-party manager took over in late 2022.
Another reason for suspicion, Henifin added, was that MSDH also reported finding E.coli in samples from neighboring Flowood, also on Thursday.
“Having positive results from any system, Jackson’s in particular, or any throughout the state, is fairly unusual,” he said during a press conference. “Having two positives from two different water systems on the same day, analyzed at the same time, seems highly suspect.”
Jacobs Solutions, which JXN Water contracts to staff the city’s treatment plants, also collects the samples around Jackson that get sent to MSDH. Yvonne Mazza-Lappi, Jacobs’ director of Drinking Water Compliance, said that there are a number of ways MSDH’s testing could have yielded a false positive.
“How they’re doing their testing and how they’re sterilizing and so forth… if those precautions are not done, we know there’s human error in there,” Mazza-Lappi said, adding that improper equipment handling — such as with control samples that contain E.coli — could lead to cross-contamination.
Jacobs also went to the sample locations where the positive results came from, she said, and found that there was enough residual chlorine at the locations that “we should have never seen a total coliform or E.coli positive.”
The earliest JXN Water could lift the boil water notice is likely Monday, Henifin said. He explained that the city has to have two consecutive days of negative test results from its water samples, and then also allow time for the state lab to analyze the samples. He added that he was confident that the next round of testing will show no levels of E.coli.
Henifin also criticized MSDH as being “overly conservative” for issuing the boil water notice, instead of going back and validating the test results.
In 2016, Mazza-Lippi said, the EPA revised its rules to allow a water system to retest sample locations that show positive results for total coliform or E.coli, and to do so before issuing a boil water notice. JXN Water requested that MSDH allow it to retest the samples before issuing the notice, but the agency declined, Henifin said.
The lab at the MSDH is the only EPA-certified lab in Central Mississippi, he added, and that the next closest one is in Purvis, about two hours away.
Henifin was frustrated with the impact the notice would have on trust among residents, something that has suffered for years with the city’s decades-long water crisis.
“There will be a number of people who will no longer drink tap water as a result of this, and they won’t be just in Mississippi,” he said. “So yeah, this is tragic. We took it very personally and we’re doing everything we can. Our poor restaurants and businesses that depend on water, they were just coming out of this PTSD around regular citywide boil water notices and starting to feel confident.”
Henifin clarified that, despite his belief that the test results were likely false positives, that Jacksonians should follow MSDH’s notice until JXN Water can get it lifted.
In response to JXN Water, the Health Department said in a statement Thursday afternoon that it didn’t believe the results were false positives.
“Officials in the (MSDH Public Health Laboratory) do not believe there was any contamination of the samples while in the lab and the results are not false positives,” the agency said. “MPHL leadership staff has done a preliminary review of the lab protocols related to these results and are confident in their validity.”
The last citywide boil water notice was issued a little over a year ago on Christmas day in 2022, after cold weather again impaired Jackson’s distribution system. JXN Water said it will hold a press conference on Friday to show steps of how to prepare for the expected cold temperatures early next week.
The Jackson boil water notice affects 188,723 customers, according to MSDH. The Flowood notice affects 27,997 customers. On Wednesday, MSDH also issued boil water notices to 713 customers in Jackson County, and 742 customers in Amite County, both of which were due to a loss of pressure in the systems. Visit MSDH’s website for instructions on what to do during a notice.
Most of the key chairs from the past four years will remain in place under the committee assignments announced Thursday by Republican Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann.
Hosemann had his committee assignments read to the members, as is the custom, Thursday before the Senate adjourned for the weekend.
“We have spent hundreds of hours working on these assignments,” Hosemann told the senators. “My decision in these appointments is to place senators in the best position to serve the state of Mississippi and the citizens who sent us here.”
Republican Briggs Hopson of Vicksburg will remain as Appropriations chair, and Republican Josh Harkins of Flowood will continue as Finance chair, two powerful committees with jurisdiction over budget and tax policy.
Despite criticism from former state Sen. Chris McDaniel, who unsuccessfully challenged him in last year’s Republican primary election, Hosemann, as is the custom of past Republican lieutenant governors, continued to appoint some Democratic committee chairs — most notably Hob Bryan of Amory as the influential Public Health chair.
Bryan, the longest-serving state senator in the chamber, told Mississippi Today that he had not thoroughly analyzed the full list of committee chairs, but he believed Hosemann appointed qualified people to lead the committees.
“I have great confidence in the presiding officer of the Senate,” Bryan said of Hosemann.
In 2020, Hosemann named 13 Democrats as chairs. On Thursday, he named 10. The 52-member Senate has 41 committees.
Jennifer Branning, R-Philadelphia, who maintained her post as chair of the Transportation Committee, said, “Certainly diversity is not a bad thing. I do think the lieutenant governor recognizes the talent in this chamber. He has made a good effort to capitalize on the talent we have here.”
Jeremy England, R-Vancleave, who will chair Elections Committee, replacing Jeff Tate, R-Merdian, who will chair Veterans and Military Affairs Committee, said he believes Hosemann appointed hard workers as chairs.
“Mississippi is so much different than what they have in Washington,” England said. “… We have some great talent to offer regardless of party.”
Most, if not all, of the committees are comprised of a majority Republican membership that limits a Democratic chair’s power.
Officials from the Mississippi State Department of Health have confirmed the state’s second pediatric flu death of the 2023-2024 flu season on Thursday.
A pediatric death is defined as the death of an individual under the age of 18.
There have been a total of 26 pediatric flu deaths, including this one, in the state since pediatric flu deaths were first reported during the 2008-2009 flu season. Flu season in Mississippi usually peaks between January and March, and the vaccine can take up to two weeks to provide immunity.
The patient in this case had not received a flu vaccine this season, according to the health department.
“We highly encourage people to get a flu shot. A vaccination won’t necessarily keep you from getting the flu, although it can reduce your risk of infection and is the best protection to keep you from a severe outcome,” interim State Epidemiologist Dr. Kathryn Taylor said in a press release. “With a few months left in this season, we recommend everyone six months of age and older consider a flu and COVID-19 vaccination.”
For individuals 18 and under, flu shots are covered by insurance, Medicaid and Children’s Health Insurance Program. Some children may be eligible for free vaccination under the Vaccines for Children Program at qualifying locations.
Uninsured and underinsured adults who meet certain high-risk criteria qualify for an adult influenza vaccination at county health department clinics. The vaccine is available for insured adults through pharmacies, retailers and private physicians throughout the state.
