NYTIMES article on Mayor Melton’s trial, campaign
Mayor Frank E. Melton of Jackson enjoys a good showdown.
He carries a police badge, a bulletproof vest and a large stick, although he is not certified as an officer by the Jackson Police Department. He walks the streets of boarded-up bungalows and run-down duplexes in the state’s largest city, dispensing warnings to idling teenagers like, “Don’t make me come to your house.” And one weekday recently, after he lectured 7-year-old Camaurice Davis about skipping class, the boy identified him as “the police.”
But these days, to use a cops-and-robbers term, Mr. Melton, 60, finds himself surrounded. He is running for re-election in a crowded field while facing a criminal trial for taking part in the demolition, without a warrant, in 2006 of a duplex that he believed was a drug den.
New York Times
4/22/9
Magnolia Tribune
