How Not to Govern

On June 20, I reacted to Louisiana Governor Blanco's calling up of the National Guard to stem crime in New Orleans in this way.

The inept governor of Louisiana now knows how to call out the National Guard. Too bad she still doesn't understand when she should do so, or have a grasp of the proper use of a couple of other parts of her government: the police and the criminal justice system. [Why not] act to fix the revolving-door court system in New Orleans[?] Thanks for taking Louisiana one step closer to becoming a garrison state, moron! Showboating, and temporary measures will not make the Big Easy's crime problems disappear. [Indeed it hasn't. -ed] Worse still, this sets a very bad precedent. It is not the job of the military to perform law enforcement on a daily basis.

Little did I know how right I was on the score of precedence. Although Louisiana's neighbor hasn't stooped so low as to call in the National Guard, it seems that two days after Governor Blanco's grandstanding, the mayor of Jackson, Mississippi's declining and crime-plagued capitol, decided to declare a state of emergency of his own.

I learned of this in today's Drudge Report, which breathlessly proclaimed "unrest" in Jackson due to its mayor's decision to extend the declared "state of emergency" indefinitely.

Under the proclamation, minors are subject to a 9 p.m. curfew on weeknights and 10 p.m. on weekends.

Melton said it will continue until people in the community let him know they are "safe and secure."

When asked when that will be, Lewis answered, "until he (the mayor) is comfortable that the community is comfortable. He will make that decision."

Melton, who was out of town on vacation, could not be reached for comment on Sunday.

Lewis said Melton is receiving feedback from beat officers who are talking to people in the community and observing activities and juveniles in the neighborhoods.

Setting curfews for juveniles may not seem like much, but as it turns out, Mayor Melton initially imposed the curfews based on incidents not involving juveniles and was also ready to call in the guard until Governor Haley Barbour nixed the idea. The initial declaration and the appeal for the National Guard he did before he even bothered to consult with the Sheriff of Hinds County, which contains most of his city!

Melton would not comment on his earlier plans to use the Mississippi National Guard, Hinds County Sheriff's Department or the Mississippi Highway Patrol. Last week, Melton spoke of using National Guard helicopters and military intelligence units to fight crime.

There was no such talk following a brief meeting with Gov. Haley Barbour on Thursday afternoon.

Only, "It was a very wonderful meeting. It was a wonderful meeting," Melton said. "I got a lot of good information, a lot of good insight."

Sheriff Malcolm McMillin said the mayor has not asked for any special assistance from his department. The sheriff also said he has not spoken to the mayor "in weeks" and has not read the proclamation.

"The time to discuss that with me is prior to taking action," McMillin said. "It is inappropriate to announce that and then tell me about it."

Melton said he still intended to use JPD's SWAT unit but would not say when or how it would be used.

The mayor cited two incidents of violent crime - a shooting Wednesday afternoon of a man who was driving in west Jackson and a police chase during which a man rammed two city police cars and allegedly shot at an officer - as reasons for signing the emergency order. However, police do not believe either incident involved minors.

Although I am inclined to stick with my earlier lambasting of Governor Blanco, one could somewhat plausibly argue that New Orleans remains so devastated by Katrina that the use of troops is not wholly out of line there. (Even so, Katrina threatens to become the sort of protracted "emergency" that the most power-lusting politician could only dream of....)

But this is not the case at all with Jackson, which suffered little from Katrina. Consider Mayor Melton's attempted actions again. He was willing, based on a couple of violent crimes (in a city that has had way more than its share for quite some time), to impose elements of martial law! So because the government -- by failing to punish criminals adequately and thus creating an "emergency" -- has proven unable or unwilling to protect individual rights, it is thus entitled to run over individual rights and install military troops? For what other pedestrian reasons will we have government officials declaring "emergencies" and what will they capriciously decide to do about them? This trigger-happy willingness to declare "emergencies" seems like the real emergency to me.

I do not know whether Frank Melton -- who unseated an incumbent by running as an "anti-crime" candidate -- is taking or calling for other, legitimate, steps towards fighting crime, but his actions (and the incompetent way he carried them out) suggest to me that he does not know or does not care how to fight crime.

This is not to minimize the formidable problems he faces. Jackson, like New Orleans, has a large underclass and a revolving-door criminal justice system, which result in a huge crime problem. Last year, both cities were among the ten most dangerous American cities of their size. Two quotes from the first story, about Melton's continuation of the juvenile curfew accidentally sheds more light on other dimensions of the problem he faces.

(1) [Bobbie] Ramsey, whose eldest child is 14 years old, said she didn't have to worry about her children missing curfew, because they were at home.

"If you have a 14-year-old, you should know where they are at 10 p.m.," she said.

(2) Geneva Tillman, 72, who was doing yardwork on Campbell Street, said she used to sit out on her porch, but is afraid to because of the crime she hears about in the area.

Although her street is "pretty quiet," she said it doesn't seem like crime is being reduced in the city because of the curfew. "You can't tell," she said. "There are things going on every night." But, Tillman said, the curfew has only been in effect for 10 days, and it's too early to tell if it's working. "We have to give it time," she said.

In the first quote, Bobbie Ramsey makes an excellent point. I would suspect that too many parents in Jackson don't give a hoot about where their children are at night. Setting aside its propriety, I doubt that a government curfew would affect that problem very much. In the second, our intrepid reporter is interviewing someone about citywide crime trends -- who lives on a "quiet" street and apparently hides indoors at night. I'm not making light Miss Tillman's situation as it mirrors my parents' before they left town a decade ago, but collecting anecdotal evidence from her isn't exactly the work of a bloodhound. High crime is a big story, but a bigger one lurks in City Hall. Go there.

Parents who don't discipline their children are making Mayor Melton's job more difficult. And reporters who don't make the voting public more aware of what could be done are making it harder for the voters to see that he likely isn't the man for the job anyway.

Now that I think of it, the actions of Governor Kathleen Blanco and Mayor Frank Melton, both Democrats, are not unique examples of poor government -- of declaring an "emergency" as a means of wielding greater authority when better solutions already exist. Nor is the problem confined to the South or the Democratic Party. Our President and Congress set the stage for just this in 2001 when they began the undeclared "War on Terror" rather than conducting anti-terrorism operations as part of a larger, declared war against the states that sponsor terrorism. Among the many problems this approach has caused has been the various emergency surveillance measures which, though legitimate for a war, do not currently have appropriate limits set by war.

If we declare war, some emergency domestic security measures will be required. But we will have no legitimate reason to fear them, as long as they do not violate fundamental rights and as long as we know when the emergency will come to an end. Congressional critics of the president should realize that our Constitution gives them the power to rein in the president through a war declaration. Thus, if we are to protect our liberty from an unlimited, ever-encroaching police-state--and from foreign enemies who would impose their own police state on us--nothing short of a clear, confident declaration of war will suffice.

We have enough emergencies without our government "declaring" them, only to eventually, through the ensuing lack of normal checks and balances, become an emergency itself, as it did in Ayn Rand's famous novel, Atlas Shrugged

-- CAV