Politically connected members of a Mississippi company have fallen out with their Georgia partner in what promised to be a profitable business to snare uninsured motorists with cameras and artificial intelligence. 

A company that the three Mississippians formed, QJR LLC, is suing its partner in the uninsured motorist ticketing venture, Georgia-based Securix LLC. QJR represents the first initials of its members: Quinton Dickerson, Josh Gregory and Robert Wilkinson.

Dickerson and Gregory are Republican political operatives in Jackson who have run numerous state and local campaigns and advise many of the state’s top elected officials. Wilkinson, a Coast attorney, has represented local governments and government agencies.

But Judge Neil Harris has sealed the case, leaving the public in the dark about the specifics. Mississippi Today has filed a motion in the case, arguing that the file should be opened to the public.

An attorney representing the three Mississippians said in a document submitted in federal court, where the case was temporarily moved, “The case involves highly sensitive issues implicating local officials, reputational harm, and ongoing injunctive relief.”

The uninsured motorist program that Securix brought to Mississippi proved contentious from the start. In Ocean Springs, some vehicle owners were angry when they learned artificial intelligence had been used to ticket them for driving without insurance.

The Securix program has resulted in several lawsuits, including one in federal court that accuses Securix of deceiving vehicle owners by essentially posing as a law enforcement agency through its mailed citations in Ocean Springs. By April 2023, the city had canceled its contract with Securix LLC.

And there is the secret Chancery Court file. A January 2025 transcript in federal court hints that politics are involved in the chancery case and also describes what that lawsuit is about.

The transcript says the Mississippians, operating as QJR LLC, are suing Securix in Chancery Court for defamation.

“They (QJR) want to stop the defamation from ruining political careers,” an attorney for Securix said. “That’s their argument.”

The chancery lawsuit, the federal transcript says, also seeks to dissolve Securix Mississippi LLC,  a 50-50 partnership QJR and Securix formed to spread the program to other cities.

Securix attempted to move the Chancery Court case to federal court, but a federal judge ruled in January that he didn’t have jurisdiction and returned it to Chancery Court. 

The federal transcript says Securix Mississippi pulled in $1.3 million in a year through uninsured motorist citations but, at the time of the hearing, had less than $75,000 in assets. The judge also noted that “revenue has fallen off a cliff since August of 2024 for Securix Mississippi LLC.”

August 2024 also happens to be when the Department of Public Safety pulled the plug on the program, DPS records show.

DPS Commissioner Sean Tindell, whose agency oversees uninsured motorist enforcement, had reservations from the start about a private company ticketing motorists. Complaints about how the program was being operated, he said, prompted him to cut off Securix’s access to the data it needed to determine whether a vehicle was insured.

While QJR was successful in getting the chancery case sealed, the company had no such luck when it tried to have the federal transcript closed from public view.

A federal magistrate judge ruled on QJR’s motion to seal the transcript, citing federal court cases that said: “The public’s right of access to judicial proceedings is fundamental,” and, “Judicial records belong to the American people; they are public, not private, documents.”

Uninsured motorist program launches in MS

Securix LLC was incorporated in Delaware in 2018 and signed its first Mississippi contract in May 2021 with Shea Dobson, then the mayor of Ocean Springs, after approval by the Board of Aldermen.

Securix, based in Georgia, uses automatic license plate readers, usually mounted on traffic signals, to capture images of license plates. With the help of artificial intelligence, Securix can extract license plate numbers from the images. 

Jonathan Miller, an owner of Securix LLC, initially came to Mississippi and talked to Ocean Springs Police Chief Mark Dunston about the program, said Dunston, who has since retired. Dunston presented the program to the Board of Aldermen, he said, and was later paid by Securix to present the program in other cities during off hours and after his retirement.

It is unclear when Miller met Josh Gregory and Quinton Dickerson, who did not want to comment for the story because the Chancery Court case is sealed. Miller, the chairman of Securix LLC, is also a named defendant in QJR’s lawsuit. He also declined to comment about matters involving the litigation. 

Gregory and Dickerson both worked on former Gov. Haley Barbour’s 2003 political campaign, then formed Ridgeland-based Frontier Strategies. Gregory was a top political adviser to former Gov. Phil Bryant. 

Billed as a full-service advertising agency, Frontier landed a lucrative state contract shortly after Barbour took office in 2004, within six months of the company’s formation. The company has gone on to contract with other state agencies and work on state and local political campaigns.

The third member of QJR, Robert Wilkinson, was serving as city attorney for Ocean Springs when Dobson signed its Securix contract. Wilkinson said he met Miller at that time but they did not have a business relationship until six to 10 months after Ocean Springs signed on with Miller’s company.

Wilkinson said he was impressed with the Securix program because it added cameras in the city that could also alert law enforcement officers to crimes, such as kidnappings or wanted suspects on the loose.

“That’s why everyone was fired up,” he said.

Another reason some welcomed the program is because Mississippi has a high rate of uninsured drivers, according to the nonprofit Insurance Research Council. In 2023, the latest year for which statistics were available, the institute reported that Mississippi had the highest rate of uninsured drivers in the nation at 28.2%.

“Unisured motorists in Mississippi is a big problem and I think we need to do more to solve that issue,” DPS Commissioner Tindell said.

“It does create a situation where everybody has to pay more for insurance because there are so many people without it.”

Vehicle owners sue Securix

Securix used its program to identify and ticket the owners of uninsured vehicles, federal court records show. Data on insured motorists was essential to the program.

Under state law, Tindell’s office maintains the Mississippi Vehicle Insurance Verification System — bulk data on the state’s insured motorists that is regularly updated. DPS operates and maintains the system through third-party vendor HDI Solutions Inc.

Law enforcement officers use the system all the time. When they run a license plate, the system lets an officer know if the vehicle is insured. But agencies generally do not have access to HDI’s bulk data.

Initially, Commissioner Tindell was unwilling to commit his agency — and its HDI data — to the Securix program. 

“I don’t know that it’s necessarily the best policy to privatize our court system with diversion programs,” Tindell said. “I think those are government functions.”

Tindell also questioned whether a camera could be used to issue a ticket to an uninsured driver. State law says law enforcement agencies can access the system only during traffic stops and accident investigations. And state law forbids using the system’s insurance information as the only reason for a traffic stop.

He also was unsure whether a city could set up a diversion program through a private company.

For its initial foray into Mississippi with the city of Ocean Springs, Securix reached a data-sharing agreement directly with HDI, a letter from an HDI attorney shows.

“We basically said we’re not going to object to it,” Tindell said, “but that’s something y’all need to work out yourselves.”

With access to insured driver data, Securix began sending out citations from its Ocean Springs cameras.

If a vehicle was not listed as being insured, a ticket went to the owner. The system did not identify the person driving the vehicle.

On their face, the citations claimed to be uniform traffic tickets that, at first glance, appeared to be from the police department. 

Soon enough, Securix faced a federal lawsuit filed by three Mississippi residents ticketed as uninsured motorists. 

They are seeking class-action status to represent thousands of individuals who they believe received citations from Securix. In just a few months, the lawsuit says, 6,000 people were ticketed in Ocean Springs alone.

“Pretending to be law enforcement,” the lawsuit says,”defendant (Securix LLC) has made millions of dollars collecting fees from individuals who allegedly violated state uninsured vehicle laws.”

In a response filed in federal court, Securix denies any wrongdoing, saying the company “at all times acted in good faith” and followed state law.

The Ocean Springs citation offered three options: Call a toll-free number and provide proof of insurance, enter a diversion program that charges a $300 fee and includes a short online course and requires agreement that the vehicle will not be driven uninsured on public roadways, or contest the ticket in court and risk $510 in fines and fees, plus the potential of a one-year driver’s license suspension.

Court fight over uninsured motorist data

After signing the contract in Ocean Springs, Securix LLC began working with Josh Gregory and Robert Wilkinson to sign up other cities.

Company leaders convinced Pearl, Biloxi and Senatobia to join the program.  

Josh Gregory and Robert Wilkinson pitched the program in Senatobia, March 2022 minutes from the Board of Aldermen’s meeting show. Gregory told aldermen that 70% of the public response to the program was positive in Ocean Springs.

Senatobia even took the Department of Public Safety to Circuit Court, filing a lawsuit in Tate County that demanded access to the state agency’s insured driver data.

By the time the city and DPS reached a settlement agreement in August of 2023, HDI had cut off Securix’s access to insured driver data. 

An HDI attorney sent Securix LLC a default notice in December 2022. An HDI review showed Securix personnel issued citations in Ocean Springs without first having a police officer run the license plate information through the insurance verification system, a contract requirement, the notice said. 

The notice required Securix LLC to submit a corrective action plan and document the company’s future contract compliance.

In March 2023, HDI terminated its agreement with Securix LLC. The termination letter said Securix had failed to respond to the notice of termination or submit a corrective action plan. Securix, through chairman Jonathan Miller, later maintained that an Ocean Springs police officer, not the company, authorized each citation.

Months later, the Securix settlement agreement with DPS stipulated that HDI would be authorized to once again provide Securix access to the insurance verification system.

Senatobia came to count on the revenue, board meeting minutes show. But the program would not last — in Senatobia or any other Mississippi city.

Securix program falls apart

In early August 2024, Tindell received a letter from Jonathan Miller of Securix LLC that raised questions about the way the program was operating, Tindell said.

“Based upon his letter, we had concerns that there wasn’t a proper law enforcement control system in place,” he said.

Tindell sent HDI a letter at the end of the same month that mentioned questions had been raised about the Securix program. Tindell asked HDI to “immediately discontinue sharing or providing data relating to any programs involving Securix or QJR.”

QJR filed its lawsuit to dissolve the company less than a month later. In the civil litigation, QJR is also alleging Miller has defamed the Mississippi business partners, which Miller has denied.

Although the chancery case is sealed, Securix and Securix Mississippi have been unable to avoid publicity.  E. Brian Rose, managing editor of the website GCWire and a former congressional candidate, has written numerous pieces about Securix’s business deals. 

But access to the Chancery Court file could give the public more information about the automatic license plate reading business.

In its motion to unseal the file, Mississippi Today attorney Henry Laird asks Harris to hold a hearing that gives the news outlet a chance to argue the file should be opened, as case law has established.

At the hearing, Harris would also need to consider alternatives to closing the file.

“Even if the on-the record-evidence would be so compelling so as to allow the court to redact specific documents or place them under seal,” Laird argues in his motion, quoting a pertinent case, that ‘does not warrant sealing the entire case  from public view’.”

This article was produced in partnership between the Sun Herald and Mississippi Today.

A federal judge is greenlighting the execution of Richard Jordan, limiting options to avoid execution by the death row inmate.

On Friday, U.S. District Court Judge Henry Wingate denied a stay for the 79-year-old Jordan, who is one of the lead plaintiffs in a lawsuit challenging the use of certain lethal injection drugs. Jordan’s execution is set for Wednesday at the Mississippi State Penitentiary at Parchman. 

Jordan was first convicted in 1976 for kidnapping and killing Edwina Marter in Harrison County, and it took four trials until a death sentence stuck in 1998. He is the state’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate.

Jordan’s attorneys argued that Mississippi’s lethal injection protocol might constitute “cruel and unusual punishment,” under the 8th Amendment, arguing the sedative administered doesn’t prevent the inmate from feeling pain, suffocation and cardiac arrest.

“Mr. Jordan and all the other people on death row were sentenced to death to have their lives extinguished,” said Jim Craig of the MacArthur Justice Center at a June 14 hearing for a preliminary injunction to halt the execution. 

“They were not sentenced to be tortured before they die.”

But Wingate ruled that Jordan failed to prove the method of execution was “sure or very likely to cause serious illness and needless suffering.”

He referred to a previous Supreme Court ruling which stated that “the Eighth Amendment does not guarantee the prisoner a painless death.”

READ ALSO: Death row spiritual adviser bears witness in execution chamber

A main point of contention in the hearing was the protocol the state would have to follow if the sedative failed to render Jordan unconscious.

Mississippi Department of Corrections lethal injection protocol requires execution staff to ensure inmates are completely unconscious before proceeding. The “proposed consciousness check” is a mandated wait time of three minutes between administering the sedative and the lethal drugs, according to court records. 

But the latest two executions in Mississippi – David Neal Cox on Nov. 17, 2021, and Thomas Loden on Dec. 14, 2022 – did not follow this protocol. Instead, execution staff waited one to two minutes before injecting the other drugs. 

At the June 14 hearing, citing a deposition from Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain, the Attorney General’s Office assured Wingate that protocol would be followed with Jordan. It also promised to perform a “sternum rub” to check Jordan’s reaction to the painful stimuli.

“Ultimately, the record contains no evidence that either David Cox or Thomas Loden needlessly suffered prior to death by the same method of execution at issue here, and the Court finds that to be persuasive evidence against the issuance of a stay,” Wingate wrote on Friday. 

However, he issued a provision: the state has to stop Jordan’s execution if he shows signs of consciousness.

Although the clock is ticking, Jordan is not entirely out of options yet.

READ ALSO: ‘I don’t want him to get what he wants,’ says murder victim’s son of  killer

A petition for clemency was submitted to Gov. Tate Reeves’ counsel on Monday by Frank Rosenblatt, professor at Mississippi College school of Law. The petition highlights Jordan’s diagnosed post-traumatic stress disorder from his two years of combat service in Vietnam. It cited a 2019 Missisisppi statute that asks courts to consider veterans’ PTSD during criminal sentencing.

“Prolonged exposure to machine gun fire is its own contributor to brain trauma in ways that alter brain behavior,” Rosenblatt explained. 

Reeves has never granted a petition for clemency before.

The U.S. Supreme Court also discussed on Wednesday whether to issue an emergency stay of execution, but has not released an opinion. A petition for an emergency stay has also been filed in the U.S. 5th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Today, the U.S. Supreme Court denied a petition for writ of certiorari Jordan filed in March. His attorneys filed another one Friday that is awaiting a decision.

Updated 6/23/24: This story has been updated to reflect the U.S. Supreme Court ruled today on Jordan’s petition.

Eric Marter doesn’t remember much about his mother but her loss is one his family has felt for decades. 

On Jan. 13, 1976, he said it felt like any other day when he left for his Catholic school in Gulfport and his younger brother Kevin stayed home with their mother Edwina. Then he remembers he and his brother staying with family friends and being told his parents had to go out of town. 

Days later, his father and a priest told them their mother was dead. 

When Marter was older, he learned details about his mother’s murder and some about the man responsible for her death: Richard Jordan. 

Jordan, 79, the state’s oldest and longest serving death row inmate, has had multiple trials and execution dates set that have come and gone. He has continued to fight his death sentence through appeals and a lawsuit challenging the state’s use of lethal injection drugs. Each time, Edwina Marter’s family has testified in court and endured hearing about details of her death again. 

Marter said he hasn’t made Jordan’s legal process a major focus in his life. He doesn’t have interest in witnessing his execution set for June 25 at Parchman, and neither does his father or brother. Instead, Marter’s uncle is expected to attend with his family. 

But he still wants to see the sentence carried out and believes it should have happened sooner, not almost 50 years after the fact. He also believes Jordan’s execution would guarantee that he has no chance of leaving prison. 

“I don’t want him to get what he wants,” said Marter, who is 59 and lives in Lafayette, Louisiana. 

“If you want to spend the rest of your life in jail, then I would rather you not get that, and if that means you get executed, you get executed.” 

Edwina Marter grew up in Metairie, Louisiana, with two sisters and a brother. She went to college at Louisiana State University in Baton Rouge, where she met her husband Charles.

They started their family in Louisiana and later relocated to Gulfport, where Charles Marter worked as a banker. Their next son, Kevin, was born on the Coast. 

In 1976, Jordan, a Vietnam veteran whose attorneys say suffers from PTSD, was desperate for money and thought of kidnapping someone and demanding money. He called the bank where Charles Marter was the commercial loan agent, and found the man’s address in the phonebook. Jordan went to their home, impersonating an electric company worker to get 34-year-old Edwina Marter to open the door. 

Once she did, Jordan took her and left her younger son unarmed. He had her drive to the DeSoto National Forest where he shot her in the head when she tried to run away. Afterward, Jordan called Edwina’s husband to demand $25,000 in ransom money. He was not successful in getting it and was arrested. 

Marter said his family moved back to Louisiana after his mother’s death and did not live in Mississippi again. His father did not mention his mother’s death.

“He did the best he could and the way he knew how to raise two boys by himself was to make sure we didn’t get in trouble,” Marter said. 

Milestones like graduations, marriage and children came along. Marter became a banker like his father, and his brother joined the Army. Somewhere along the way, Marter said he wondered what it would be like if his mother were around for them. 

“I don’t really try to dwell on it too much,” he said. 

In 1976, Jordan went to trial and received a death sentence, only for it to be overturned multiple times due to questions about the legality of Mississippi’s death penalty law. It wasn’t until 1998 and four trials later that the sentence stuck. 

Charles Marter, who is now 88, testified in several of the trials. Neither of the Marter sons attended the early trials, and the adults didn’t share much details with them. Once Eric Marter was older, he said he asked for more information about his mother’s death from his aunts and uncle. 

With his own sons, Marter told them that their grandmother died when he was young. When they had questions as they were older, Marter shared some basics about what happened.  

Over the years, Mississippi and Louisiana reporters have spoken with Edwina’s family members about Jordan’s multiple trials and death sentences, appeals and executions that have not been carried out. 

In reflecting after Jordan’s 1998 conviction, Charles Marter told the Sun Herald that his family was elated about the first conviction, only to become less confident after multiple trials.

Mary deGruy, Edwina’s older sister, praised the work of then-special prosecutor Joe Sam Owen, who worked on Jordan’s case for over 25 years. 

“This is just something that stays on your mind forever,” she told the Sun Herald in 2001.  “We just hope and pray that one day (Jordan) will die in prison. They just need to follow through with the death penalty.” 

DeGruy, a distant relation to Andre deGruy, director of Capital Defense Counsel, died in 2022 at the age of 86. 

Jackson-Medgar Wiley Evers International Airport is set to receive much-needed upgrades and improvements after receiving more than $4.1 million in Airport Infrastructure Grant and Airport Improvement Program funding from the Federal Aviation Administration. 

The grants, announced this week by Sen. Roger Wicker, are part of a larger $21 million award for infrastructure improvements for airports across the state. 

“Upgrading local air travel is an investment in the future of Mississippi. This funding will bring necessary advancements to our airport systems and provide more business opportunities for Mississippians. I look forward to these improvements being made to spur economic development in our great state,” Wicker said in the announcement. 

Last week, U.S. Congressman Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., announced some of the federal grants, including $158,334 for Hawkins Field, the smaller joint civil-military public airport under the Jackson Municipal Airport Authority and located in northwest Jackson.

The Jackson airport also received an $8 million Airport Terminal Program grant from the FAA last year, Wicker announced in February of 2024. That money was slated for terminal rehabilitation, including placing escalators, elevators, HVAC systems, generators, passenger boarding bridges and baggage belts.

In previous legislative sessions, Rep. Earle Banks, D-Jackson, has authored legislation requesting millions of dollars for upgrades to the Jackson International airport, though the bills died in committee. The legislation that he introduced, he said, was for urgent repairs to the airport’s elevators, escalators and cooling towers. 

“Parts are not easy to find for that. That system for the escalators is about 50 years old, and they aren’t easily available,” Banks said. “That’s why for the elevators at the airports, we cannot get those parts. Some of those parts are not readily available.”

Banks said that the airport is a major driver for Mississippi’s economy, and it’s important to invest into the services that keep travellers moving forward. 

“One of the things you have to realize Mississippi, about the Jackson Airport, known as Medgar Evers, is we have got to have an airport that is first class to bring in first class businesses and first class tourism. We’ve got to keep our airport up,” he said. 

Banks points to the state’s attempts to gain control of the airport as one reason why the legislation failed. In 2016, then-Governor Phil Bryant signed Senate Bill 2162, which aimed to wrest control from the five member Jackson Municipal Airport Authority, which is appointed by Jackson’s mayor, to a nine member board appointed by the state. 

The fight over the airport has been wrapped up in legal proceedings since then, with the city of Jackson alleging that this law is racially discriminatory and violates the Mississippi and the U.S. Constitution. In May of this year, U.S. District Judge Carlton Reeves denied the state’s motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

“JMAA might in fact continue to operate the airport for years to come. That is becauseafter the case wraps up here, there will likely be another appeal to the Fifth Circuit and perhaps a petition for U.S. Supreme Court review,” Reeves said in the decision. “And if all that litigation ends with a victory for the defendants, there will be an administrative process in Washington, D.C., in which the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) decides whether to approve a transfer from JMAA to the new, state-controlled authority. … For now, though, the status quo has been maintained.”

The man in a Dallas Cowboys baseball hat would rather be home sleeping, but instead he was sitting in a car in the parking lot of the plasma donation center, eating Cheetos and waiting on his brother and friend inside. 

His family members regularly give their plasma – the liquid component of blood used in a variety of medical applications – for extra cash, but he said he never will. 

“That’s not too much my style,” he said just before 10 a.m. Tuesday, wiping the sweat from his face with a gray washcloth. “I just like to go to work and go back home.” 

The 37-year-old man said he’s happy with his job at a car wash, which he’s held for most of his adult life after dropping out of school in the ninth grade. He wished not to give his name, but described the freedom offered through his occupation as “music to me.”

“I can just work the way I want to work,” he said. 

Many of the others who visited the Jackson ImmunoTek Plasma Donation Center on a recent weekday morning haven’t struck the same when it comes to earning a living in this part of the city. 

The plasma donation center, located at the intersection of McDowell and Raymond roads on the cusp of west and south Jackson, is one of the few signs of life in an otherwise neglected zone. Family members and friends pick up and drop off their loved ones; people walk to the center from nearby neighborhoods. 

It’s almost as busy as the Cash Savers, a discount grocery store catty-cornered from the biotech center, where people often take the pre-paid debit cards they receive in exchange for their blood to buy groceries. The intersection also includes a gas station, a Rally’s fast food restaurant, an empty store that locals say used to sell car parts and an AutoZone. 

“They put it in the right spot of town,” said the man waiting for his brother outside the center. The hours are 7 a.m. to 2 p.m.

He was describing the plasma center’s convenient location on two main thoroughfares, but he’s right for another reason: This area of Jackson has a high concentration of poverty, few economic opportunities and is rapidly depopulating. 

The dire economic situation is top of mind for the city’s new leadership, as incoming Mayor John Horhn has pledged to reverse these trends, telling attendees at the South Jackson Parade and Festival earlier this year that it would be the first thing on his to-do list. 

Similar promises came with the center’s opening in 2022 inside a former pharmacy that closed during the Great Recession. That year, ImmunoTek boasted that it could bring an estimated economic boost of $5 million a year for a “part of Jackson that is undergoing revitalization,” according to the Mississippi Free Press. 

The company did not respond to inquiries from Mississippi Today, so the center’s exact economic impact in the years since is unknown. For now, ImmunoTek remains one of the newest establishments operating in this part of Jackson and was likely drawn by the same data points that make other investors look elsewhere. 

“It’s amazing how the blood of a group of people was used as a commodity at the beginning of this country and how the blood of this same group of people is still being a commodity today by them having to sell it in order to survive,” said Fredrick Womack, founder of Operation Good, a violence prevention organization. 

Womack said when his group has encountered people walking to ImmunoTek from the surrounding neighborhoods, he’s attempted to intercept them and help them find stable, long term employment.

Studies have shown that plasma donation centers are more likely to be located in areas with higher rates of poverty. In Jackson, the ImmunoTek center is located in a census tract where the median household income was $29,500 in 2020, according to data compiled by the city of Jackson. And CSL Plasma, another plasma donation company, has facilities in south and northwest Jackson. 

“Regardless of how you feel about the community, businesses – for lack of a better word – match with the outputs of the demographic,” said Jhai Keeton, the director of Jackson’s planning and development department. 

Keeton has been working to bring more development to west and south Jackson, but he said recruiting businesses to the area has proven difficult due in part to the concentration of poverty, by which he means lower median household incomes, less spending power and declining property values. 

“What I would love for the greater community to understand is that economics is all about data,” he said. “Every individual needs to look at themselves as a dataset, and when you have 100 individuals in one neighborhood, they need to look at themselves as a collective dataset.” 

When it opened, the center offered a larger payout for a plasma donation than it does now, said Darian Little, a cook at Buffalo Wild Wings who had donated blood Tuesday to get money for groceries. He said he used to get $100 per session, but that now the center offers him $40 for the first and $70 for the second. 

Nonetheless, the facility remained consistently busy throughout the morning. In the 45 or so minutes it takes, and even with the lower going rate, a donor can still earn 10 times the state’s minimum wage of $7.25-an-hour. 

Several people had stopped in to ImmunoTek on their way to work. One woman wore a blue Waffle House shirt. Another left the facility wearing nursing scrubs and a blue bandage on her arm. 

Others came because it was their only source of income. As the morning wore on, the center’s parking lot started to fill up with people.

Anderson Wallace was sitting on the curb, waiting for his pulse to fall below 100 so he could make a donation. He has visited ImmunoTek four times a month since he arrived in Jackson from Brooklyn, New York, earlier this year to visit his mom. 

If Wallace had been able to find employment, he wouldn’t be here, he said. But he’s applied everywhere – Amazon, UPS, and various jobs through Indeed.com – with no luck. 

“It’s too tough down here,” he said. “I gotta go back to New York.” 

Two sisters whose electricity had gone out this morning after they were late paying the bill had also tried to donate, but their iron was too low, so the center turned them away. One of them shrugged when asked what they were going to do instead. 

Deonte Woodson’s iron was also too low, so while his partner was inside giving a donation, he sat on the hood of his car and soothed their baby. The 30-year-old said he has a couple of businesses, though he didn’t give specifics, and his partner aspires to be a TV reporter. But for now, they need to donate plasma to make ends meet.

“She ain’t doing nothing now, just being a housewife,” he said. “For right now, I try to handle all the bills and take care of the kids.” 

Ella Moore, a former Dillard’s employee, was waiting in her father’s car to pick up her 32-year-old son who was inside. Moore said her son is in between construction jobs. A few years ago, the young man tried to gain steady employment by starting his own mobile car wash, but he got into an accident, Moore said, leaving him without a car.

Moore grew up in Jackson and has raised her kids here, but she can’t make sense of the city. She said she used to shop at a corner store by her house, but a few months ago, a man came in holding a rifle, and the shopkeeper did nothing. She doesn’t shop there anymore.

“I think people just don’t care no more, because ain’t nobody really listening to them,” she said. “It’s like they ask you a question and they say they’re gonna do this, they’re gonna do that, but in reality, they really don’t do it. You’re voicing your opinions on things, and there’s nothing happening.” 

When was the last time she felt Jackson’s leaders were listening? Moore pursed her lips. 

“Probably in the early 90s,” she said, citing an example of a skating rink on Terry Road that closed, then reopened after community uproar.

But a few years later, Moore went by the rink, and it was closed again. Now she feels like there’s nothing for her grandkids to do in south Jackson, she said, except for a small park up Raymond Road from the plasma donation center. 

She voted for Horhn, because she wanted to see change in Jackson, but she is skeptical that any will come. When she heard on the news that part of the Metrocenter Mall had a new owner, it just made her think about the last time people promised to redevelop the shopping center. 

“We shall see, we shall see, we shall see,” she said. “Cause that would’ve been a nice thing to have a skating rink right there, a water park for the kids. Another era.” 

MAYHEW, Miss. – A summer camp for girls in northeast Mississippi is designed to help produce the next generation of skilled construction workers.

FORGE’s Girls Construction Camp brought together 12- to 15-year-old girls last week for mentorship, interactive workshops and hands-on experience in the traditionally male-dominated field of construction. 

This is the program’s second year, and  24 campers participated, double last year’s number. The camp took place at East Mississippi Community College’s Golden Triangle campus.

FORGE is a nonprofit organization dedicated to increasing awareness of skilled trades among young people.

“We start out young, work with them as they grow, hoping to get more and more interested in construction and the skilled trades,” said Melinda Lowe, FORGE’s executive director.

Demand for workers in construction and other skilled trades is growing. The Bureau of Labor Statistics projects the U.S. will have an average of 663,500 job openings per year in construction and extraction until 2033. This field has a median annual wage of $58,360.

Christee Roberson is owner and founder of West Point-based Graham Roofing. She is also a founding member of FORGE and a trade partner for the camp. She and her team taught the girls about roofing. 

Roberson said it’s important to introduce construction and other trades to young people, especially girls.

“I think, being a female in the industry and never knew that this was something I could do, it’s important for sure to show other females that they can be in the trades, too,” she said. 

Aveline Webb, 12, of Starkville was a first-time camper. 

“We have been building our boxes,” Webb said. “We put up drywall. We’ve done roofing, electrical, plumbing, all the stuff that you would need to build a building.”

In addition to the lessons, the campers heard from guest speakers and worked in groups on a central project – building and decorating food pantry boxes. 

Jada Brown, 15 from Lowndes County, attended the camp last year and came back as student mentor.

“What I hope they take away is knowing how to build and wanting to want to do it in the future, and see themselves doing it,” she said. 

Lowe said the camp provides useful information even for those who don’t enter construction.

“We already have one young lady who has been helping her family replace some shingles that were damaged in a recent storm,” Lowe said. “We’ve had others who have fixed the stoppers in their sink, because they learned here how to fix that.”

The food pantry boxes will be placed in and around Lowndes County in the coming weeks.

Gov. Tate Reeves on Thursday signed the vast majority of the state’s budget bills into law but vetoed a handful of the measures, which finalizes the state’s $7.1 billion budget for the next fiscal year, which starts July 1. 

The governor wrote on social media that the budget is fiscally conservative and “essentially halts the growth of government.”

“In short, the $7.135 billion budget will help us get the job done on your behalf, and it will help us break new ground all across our state,” Reeves said. 

The budget for the next fiscal year is typically completed in the spring, but the Legislature adjourned its 2025 session earlier this year without agreeing on a budget due to Republican political infighting. The governor called lawmakers into a special session in May to pass a budget. 

The measures the governor vetoed were portions of the Department of Finance and Administration’s budget, parts of the Mississippi Development Authority’s budget, a portion of the State Health Department’s budget and a bill that attempted to give the Attorney General’s Office $2.5 million to combat human trafficking. 

The only bill the governor completely vetoed was a House bill that sought to allocate $2.5 million in excess revenues for the Attorney General’s Office to help victims of human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation  

The state constitution gives the governor the power to set the parameters for what legislators can consider during a special session, not legislators. Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann and several senators argued that the legislation was outside of the governor’s special session parameters, but they passed it anyway. 

“All state action, including legislative power, must be exercised within the strict boundaries established by the Constitution,” Reeves wrote in his veto message. “Failure to recognize such limitations on power threatened to undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law — the very foundation of our Constitutional Republic.” 

The Mississippi Constitution also gives the governor the power to issue partial vetoes, or line-item vetoes, of appropriation bills, which the governor did for three other measures. 

One of those measures was a provision in the Mississippi State Department of Health’s budget that directed the state agency to send around $1.9 million to the Methodist Rehabilitation Center. 

After House members passed the bill, legislative staffers realized that the money could be a violation of federal law and regulations, placing Mississippi’s multi-billion-dollar Medicaid funding at risk. 

When the bill arrived in the Senate for consideration, senators were faced with the option of forcing the House back to the Capitol or sending a flawed bill to the governor for him to veto. They chose the latter. 

In the Department of Finance and Administration’s budget, the governor vetoed money for a project at the Mississippi Children’s Museum and LeFleur’s Bluff State Park. In the Mississippi Development Authority’s budget, Reeves vetoed $6.9 million for the Mississippi Main Street Revitalization Grant Program.