Mississippi
A Navy base put up a wall to ward off stray bullets. Locals say that doesn’t solve gun violence.
![A Navy base put up a wall to ward off stray bullets. Locals say that doesn’t solve gun violence. A Navy base put up a wall to ward off stray bullets. Locals say that doesn’t solve gun violence.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_nbcnews-fp-1200-630,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2023-06/230615-gulfport-ms-naval-base-2x1-gif-jm-1116-7fe7db.gif)
More than 20 shipping containers line the south side of a Navy base in Gulfport, Mississippi. They’re not there to transport goods, but instead stand as a silent marker of the gun violence afflicting the state’s second-largest city.
The hulking boxes were put in place last fall, after gunfire at a subsidized apartment complex across the street damaged five homes inside the Naval Construction Battalion Center; no one was hurt. The base responded by increasing patrols around its perimeter and making one of the most fortified areas of Gulfport even more so.
“The optics of that are very bad,” said John Whitfield, a pastor and the CEO of Climb CDC, a nearby nonprofit focusing on workforce development. “The practicality of it, I understand.”
A spokesperson at the base said the barrier is meant to be a “temporary solution” and that the city had offered assurances that it was addressing the gun violence issue. Still, the Navy is considering building a permanent concrete wall.
“The force protection of our base, personnel, and families is our highest priority,” Becky Shaw, the spokesperson, said in an email.
The shipping containers are just one indicator of the grinding toll of gunfire afflicting parts of Gulfport, a vibrant beach town of about 72,000 on Mississippi’s Gulf Coast.
Residents and workers in the city’s most impoverished areas detailed the recurring snap of gunshots, incidents in which apartments have been struck by stray rounds, and the increasing frustration of the young and old alike having to scramble for cover when someone opens fire. They also described the dual tragedies of teens losing their lives at the hands of their peers, who end up facing lengthy sentences in prison.
A decade ago, Gulfport, where more than half of residents are white and nearly 40% are Black, reported two or three homicides a year. Since 2019, there have been at least 10 killings per year.
In a city where about 26% of residents live in poverty, many see a link between economic hardship and gun violence.
“Some of our children and some of your young people are just helpless and hopeless,” said Sonya Williams Barnes, a former legislator who lives in Gulfport and is the Mississippi state policy director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Gulfport is three hours south of Jackson, the capital, where the homicide rate is more than six times higher than in Gulfport. But while Jackson has had a more visible struggle with public safety, residents and community leaders in this coastal town say they, too, have grappled with gun violence for years.
Late Thursday evening, two people were injured in a shooting at a birthday party a few blocks from the Navy base’s shipping containers, and shortly afterward a 20-year-old man was shot and killed in a separate incident nearby.
On April 30, a pregnant 16-year-old, JaKamori Lake, was shot and killed in another part of Gulfport; police charged a 15-year-old in her death. A few days earlier, Gulfport police arrested a seventh suspect from a New Year’s Eve 2021 shooting that left four people dead.
“It may not be as bad as Jackson, it may not be as bad as Memphis, Tennessee, but we’ve got that problem,” said Louis Gholar, president of the West Gulfport Civic Club, who helped organize an upcoming community meeting about violence prevention. “I think not just in Gulfport — the whole coast has that problem.”
In April, five people were injured in a shooting during the popular Black Spring Break event in Biloxi. Two weeks later, a 19-year-old gunman in Bay St. Louis allegedly shot and killed two teenagers and injured four others at an after-prom party. And in May, a shooting during a Cinco de Mayo party at an Ocean Springs bar left a 19-year-old dead and six others wounded.
Tia Mosley, whose 17-year-old son, Caleb, was killed two years ago in a drive-by shooting in Gulfport, said that every time she opens Facebook and sees more news of local violence, anxiety washes over her.
“It makes me not want my daughter to go outside at all,” she said of her 11-year-old. “All you can do is pray.”
Gholar is troubled that many of the victims and suspects in Gulfport in recent years have been teens. Last October, a Gulfport police officer shot and killed a 15-year-old who officials say was armed; a grand jury declined to indict the officer.
“We’re losing our young people too fast, too quick,” Gholar said. “They don’t even get a chance to live.”
Gulfport Mayor Billy Hewes, a Republican who is in his third term, agrees that gun violence is a concern. In some cases, issues arise when apartment complexes lack adequate security, his staff said. The mayor’s office also mentioned boys and girls club programs for at-risk youth and said churches have stepped up to offer support.
But the mayor believes the solution is more a matter of personal responsibility — parents keeping a closer eye on their teenagers and intervening if they discover guns.
“That’s where I think we start having problems, when we rely on government to solve everything,” he said. “Quite frankly, what I’ve seen and experienced and believe is that it starts at home.”
In Gaston Point, a historically Black middle-class neighborhood in Gulfport, some say that’s just part of the picture.
Martha Lockhart-Mais, a retired schoolteacher, said it’s also a question of how parents are supported in caring for their children. Teens need somewhere safe to go after school, she said.
Others in the community mentioned the need for mentors and conflict resolution resources. Some suggested restorative justice, which allows for teens accused of nonviolent crimes to be subjected to an alternative criminal justice system.
Lockhart-Mais, who said one of her former students was shot and killed last year and several others have been involved in shootings, lives not far from the Navy base and the shipping containers.
“I don’t like walls that separate people,” she said. “I feel that people should be able to live together without having a barrier.”
Ahead of last week’s shootings, she and other neighborhood residents said the previously frequent gunshots had tapered off after the wall of containers was put up last fall.
William Bell Apartments, where much of that gunfire originated, has increased its security, local officials said, and the city has banned parking in a nearby zone to prevent loitering.
Several miles away, in another part of West Gulfport, Bettie Ewing, a retired housing rights organizer, is frustrated by how quickly the shipping containers went up to protect the Navy families, when there’s nothing similar to keep her home safe.
She said the barrier sent a message: “We’re going to protect the military, but the civilians, we’re just going to let them be.”
![Bettie Ewing lives at the Emerald Pines apartment complex in Gulfport, Miss.](https://media-cldnry.s-nbcnews.com/image/upload/t_fit-760w,f_auto,q_auto:best/rockcms/2023-06/230615-gulfport-ms-bettie-ewing-jm-1617-c1e5b7.jpg)
Since 2020, three people have been shot and killed at Emerald Pines, the subsidized apartment complex where Ewing lives. This year, the Gulfport Police Department’s online crime map notes seven incidents of shots fired on the blocks around the complex, though Ewing and others said the gunfire is more frequent.
A spokesperson for Emerald Pines’ management company said the company uses security cameras and has requested increased police presence near the complex.
A spokesperson for the Gulfport Police Department said officials meet regularly with the complex’s management, but that having an onsite surveillance system is “not the entire solution.”
“Management must limit access to the complex and hold problem tenants and their guests accountable,” Gulfport Police Sgt. Jason DuCrè said in an email.
Emerald Pines is in a census tract where almost 60% of residents live in poverty, more than twice the rate in Gulfport overall.
Jalisa Jackson, a certified nursing assistant who moved into the complex this year, said one shooting left a bullet hole near her door. On another occasion, while she was hosting a girls’ night, she and her guests scrambled to the floor after hearing gunfire. By the time bullets flew past her window, the mother of four had had enough.
“Just because we’re in a neighborhood like this doesn’t mean we should be subjected to harm,” she said. Jackson added, “We’re in the crossfire and it’s not fair.”
Jackson recently moved her family two hours away to McComb, Mississippi, where she currently works.
When considering how to stop gun violence, few in Gulfport mention gun control. Some said they’d like to see a waiting period for firearm purchases, but the Republican-led state has an open-carry law, and a 2020 attempt to restrict access to guns for those who may be in danger of harming themselves failed in the Legislature.
State Rep. Jeffrey Hulum III, a Democrat from Gulfport, said he wants to see fewer guns “on the street.” The representative, who operates a food assistance nonprofit and also offers firearm training courses, added that he supports a gun buyback program, better mental health services and more funding for the state’s crime lab, which has struggled with a backlog of autopsies.
In some of the most vulnerable blocks in Gulfport, Hulum added, there are aging apartments that should be torn down. People there are already “going through life with life hitting them with generational neglect,” he said.
Gulfport native Jeffery Hill had just graduated high school when he was convicted of manslaughter, ultimately spending 22 years in prison.
He believes there needs to be more assistance for people trying to climb out of poverty, including better transportation to get to work. He also wants to see more spaces for teens to hang out, like arcades and community gyms.
Hill, who was released in 2017 and now lives in Laurel, about 100 miles away, still has family in Gulfport. He hopes to return in the coming months to speak with young adults at William Bell Apartments about handling disputes without violence.
“I am the perfect example of what guns can cost you in life,” he said.
![](https://newspub.live/wp-content/uploads/2022/03/np-logo.png)
Mississippi
As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News
![As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News As Climate Threats to Agriculture Mount, Could the Mississippi River Delta Be the Next California? – Inside Climate News](https://insideclimatenews.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/PRODUCE015-1024x683.jpg)
This story was originally published by The Tennessee Lookout.
A smorgasbord of bright red tomatoes and vibrant vegetables line the walls of Michael Katrutsa’s produce shop in rural Camden, Tennessee. What began a decade ago as a roadside farm stand is now an air-conditioned outbuilding packed with crates of watermelon, cantaloupe and his locally renowned sweet corn — all picked fresh by a handful of local employees each morning.
The roughly 20-acre farm west of the Tennessee River sells about half of its produce through his shop, with the rest going to the wholesale market.
Farms like Katrutsa’s make up just a sliver of roughly 10.7 million acres of Tennessee farmland largely dominated by hay, soybeans, corn and cotton. Specialized machines help farmers harvest vast quantities of these commodity “row crops,” but Katrutsa said the startup cost was too steep for him. While specialty crops like produce are more labor-intensive, requiring near-constant attention from early July up until the first frost in October, Katrutsa said he takes pride in feeding his neighbors.
The World Wildlife Fund sees farms in the mid-Mississippi delta as ripe with opportunity to become a new mecca for commercial-scale American produce. California currently grows nearly three-quarters of the nation’s fruits and nuts and more than a third of its vegetables.
Explore the latest news about what’s at stake for the climate during this election season.
But as climate change compounds the threats of water scarcity, extreme weather and wildfires on California’s resources, WWF’s Markets Institute is exploring what it would take for farmers in West Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas to embrace — and equitably profit from — specialty crop production like strawberries, lettuce or walnuts.
Specialty crops make up only 0.19% of the region’s farm acreage, but their higher sale value allows them to generate 1.08% of the region’s agriculture revenue, according to WWF’s May report, called The Next California, spearheaded by Markets Institute Senior Director Julia Kurnik. She argues that there’s an opportunity to proactively create more inclusive, higher-yield business models on existing farms, preventing natural ecosystems from being unnecessarily transformed into farmland.
But shifting produce growth to the Mid-Delta comes with hurdles: it requires buyers willing to try new markets, understanding of new crops’ diseases and needs, specialized equipment like cold storage and lots of expensive hands-on labor.
“It is not as simple as a farmer simply putting new crops in the ground,” Kurnik said.
Early Adopters Put Idea to the Test
Sixth-generation Arkansas farmer Hallie Shoffner is putting WWF’s models to the test through a nonprofit called the Delta Harvest Food Hub. The hub works with Black and women farmers to pilot the scalability of growing specialty crops in the Delta region, starting with specialty rice.
Shoffner grows basmati, jasmine, sushi rice, sake rice seeds and more on her 2,000-acre, century-old farm located in an unincorporated town outside Newport, Arkansas. She’s skeptical about a full switch to produce, but sees specialty rice products as “low-hanging fruit” easily adopted in the mid-Delta, where commodity rice is already widely grown.
The United States is the fifth-largest rice exporter in the world, and Arkansas is the country’s top producer, with other Mississippi River valley states not far behind. But the majority of specialty rice is grown in California or imported from East Asian countries.
“We are forward-thinking farmers who want to change, who want to do something different,” Shoffner said. “We want to make more money, because we know we cannot make as much money as small farms in the current agricultural economy.”
The commodity farming that dominates Delta agriculture makes the economic success of farmers largely dependent on the market prices of rice, corn, soybeans, wheat and other crops, Shoffner said. This incentivizes farms to grow larger to ensure they turn a profit even when prices are low, like they are now. But smaller farms struggle to stay afloat.
Shoffner said her vision for developing specialty crop markets in Arkansas will be through more collaboration between many smaller farms to diversify crop production and produce for large contracts together. She’s also exploring possibilities for expanding chickpea, sunflower, sesame and pea production in Arkansas.
And while she’s at it, Shoffner is working to make agriculture more equitable.
“As a white farmer who is a sixth generation farmer, I realize that I have inherited a large amount of land that systematically disenfranchised Black farmers,” Shoffner said. “And it is my responsibility to acknowledge that, and leverage what I’ve been given to help others.”
Her project, Delta Harvest, has a contract to grow specialty rice with a large company and she’s working with several Black farmers. She was too small to do it by herself, so they are doing it cooperatively.
Finding the Right Markets
In Mississippi, efforts to shift some of California’s sprawling specialty crop industry to the Mid-Delta drew skepticism from some farmers—even those with established specialty crop operations.
For the past 20 years, Don van de Werken has co-owned a 120-acre blueberry and tea farm in Poplarville, Mississippi, distributing much of its crops to buyers in his county and nearby cities.
Van de Werken questioned whether there would be enough regional demand to sustain a scaled-up specialty crop industry in Mississippi, noting that the success of his own enterprise hinges on targeting hyper-local markets like New Orleans. Shipping vegetables, fruits and other produce to buyers outside the Delta region would quickly become cost prohibitive for local farmers, van de Werken said.
“The problem we have, not just in Mississippi but the mid South in general, is we just don’t have the population base,” said van de Werken, who is also president of the Gulf South Blueberry Growers Association. “We don’t want our blueberries to go to Maine or Seattle. We want to focus our produce in a regional market.”
To make growing specialty crops worthwhile, Mississippi farmers would need to identify nearby buyers willing to purchase the new products on a consistent basis, van de Werken said. While selling goods directly to retail grocery chains like Kroger is often difficult, farmers could reduce financial risks by signing purchasing agreements with regional brokers like Louisiana-based Capitol City Produce.
“Anybody that puts anything in the ground is already taking a risk, but you want to minimize that risk,” he explained. “If you can prove to the brokers and the buyers that they can make money doing this, then the farming will come.”
The WWF report investigates ways to distribute risk across the supply chain to make selling to new markets easier on farmers, and works to connect buyers with Mid-Delta farmers.
AgLaunch, a Memphis-based nonprofit that guides farmers in innovation, estimates that adding specialty crops to the Mid-Delta region could spur $4.6 billion in added revenue and 33,000 jobs. But while commodity crop prices are readily available on the Chicago Board of Trade, the specialty crop market is generally not so transparent. Large, vertically integrated companies usually dictate contract terms, AgLaunch President and farmer Pete Nelson said.
AgLaunch helps build “smart contracts” that allow multiple farmers to produce on a contract, helping them secure higher quantity deals with proper compensation as a collective.
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Purdue College of Agriculture professor Fred Whitford said the idea of farming cooperatives that help smaller farmers carve out space in a large-quantity market is more than 100 years old. Whitford compared commodity producers to retail giants like Walmart, which make money by selling in bulk. Small producers are more like Ace Hardware, he said.
“Maybe the smaller folks have an ability to make more off their land by going to a specialty crop,” he said.
New Challenges Need New Solutions
Farmers who embrace specialty crops will face hurdles before they make it to the market.
Growing produce can be more profitable but “easier said than done,” Whitford said. “It’s nice on paper … but boy, in reality, you’re going to have to keep an eye on this crop, whatever you’re growing, because one slip up … then you have lost a lot of money.”
In Tennessee, Katrutsa grew strawberries in addition to his other crops for 10 years, but last April, a hail storm pulverized his entire field, leaving him with nothing. He’s not growing strawberries this year, and he might not plant them again — he’s not sure if he can find enough labor to make it work.
He grows many types of produce so if one fails, it’s less catastrophic. He sources seedlings from a neighboring state (it’s cheaper than growing from seed) and plants five times each season to maximize yield.
He works with a consultant to help identify diseases and how to treat them. Tomatoes are the most challenging, Katrutsa said. Some of his tomato plants withered this year due to bacterial wilt that flourishes in wet soil and high temperatures and has few effective chemical remedies.
Carolyn Preble helps out farmer Michael Katrutsa at the farm shop, which stocks the more than 20 acres of produce Katrutsa grows in rural Camden, Tennessee. Credit: John Partipilo/Tennessee Lookout
Chemical treatments pose other challenges. In Shaw, Mississippi, Michael Muzzi relies on a range of herbicides to grow soybeans and other feed grains on his 2,000-acre farm. Once sprayed, herbicides like Liberty and Dicamba remain in the ground and can drift in the air, which is hazardous to specialty crops, like tomatoes, that aren’t resistant.
“You’re not going to be able to spray [those herbicides] on specialty crops,” Muzzi said. “You’d have to have something that’s chemically tolerant.”
Growing fruits and vegetables on a farm with previous heavy herbicide use would require insulating those crops from chemical runoff — a feat that could only be reliably achieved by leaving whole acres of land unused for years, he said.
AgLaunch is exploring innovative ways to address these problems. For some farmers, this means helping make their existing row crops more efficient using farmer-incubated technology, adding local value by growing specialty crops or taking on processing, Nelson said.
Then there’s disruption with higher risk: farmers can partner with agriculture automation technology startups, allowing them to field test their products and collect data in exchange for farmer equity in the startup companies. If the startup succeeds, the farmer shares in the benefits.
“It’s not as simple as, ‘Hey, we should grow tomatoes,’” Nelson said. “It’s how you think about the whole value chain and make sure the farmer is protected. Make sure it’s not an opportunity just to grow a crop, but it’s an opportunity to own part of the processing or to build new products.”
Kurnik said WWF isn’t trying to recruit farmers to start growing specialty crops – they just want Mid-Delta farmers to have the information they need to make informed decisions. In terms of acreage, row crops “dwarf” specialty crops in the United States. A small percentage shift would mean a significant change in the level of specialty crops in the Delta.
“We don’t need everyone to want to jump on board tomorrow,” she said. “They would flood the market if they did.”
This story is a product of the Mississippi River Basin Ag & Water Desk, an independent reporting network based at the University of Missouri in partnership with Report for America, with major funding from the Walton Family Foundation. Disclosure: The Next California report was also funded by Walton.
About This Story
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Mississippi
Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County
![Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County Mississippi man dies of an apparent overdose in MDOC custody in Rankin County](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/-mm-/62f03215fa8f49a1bd8baf9d444d47064169505c/c=0-21-533-322/local/-/media/2015/08/01/JacksonMS/JacksonMS/635740391618225482-jail-bars-prison-bars-.jpg?auto=webp&format=pjpg&width=1200)
A 41-year-old man incarcerated at Central Mississippi Correctional Facility in Rankin County died Thursday of an apparent overdose.
Mississippi Department of Corrections Commissioner Burl Cain confirmed the death in a news release.
The man was identified as Juan Gonzalez. According to prison records, he was serving a four-year sentence on multiple convictions in Hinds County and was tentatively scheduled for release in May 2025.
“Because of the unknown nature of the substance, the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency and the Mississippi Department of Health were notified,” MDOC reported.
The investigation into Gonzalez’s death remains ongoing.
This is a developing story and may be updated.
Mississippi
Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2
![Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2 Mississippi high school football scores for 2024 MHSAA Week 2](https://www.gannett-cdn.com/authoring/authoring-images/2024/08/31/PJAM/75024172007-tcl-clinton-vs-warren-central-21.jpg?auto=webp&crop=2099,1181,x0,y0&format=pjpg&width=1200)
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Here is our Mississippi high school football scoreboard, including the second week of the season for MHSAA programs.
THURSDAY
Heidelberg 14, Quitman 8
Independence 20, Byhalia 6
Myrtle 47, Potts Camp 18
North Pontotoc 41, Water Valley 19
Okolona 40, Calhoun City 0
Provine 16, Lanier 6
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