Carjacking Casts Harsh Spotlight on Jackson, Mississippi Crime

A “descent into dystopia” is how one Jackson, Mississippi resident describes the violent crime, carjackings, and shootings that have been plaguing the city in recent years.

Disturbing new video footage caught on a Ring doorbell camera on Friday shows a Jackson family being attacked and carjacked in their driveway. A mom, her kids and her grandkids were held at gunpoint, pulled out of the car,  and even shot at as two suspects — yet to be caught by the police — stole a car and fled. 

Fortunately, no one was seriously injured and the stolen car was later recovered. But the mom in the video, Heather Allen, told WAPT that her family plans to move out of the area after the shocking incident, despite only living there for three months. 

The Jackson Police department has since said they have identified two persons of interest, and released a surveillance image of a man they believe is connected to the crime.

“It shows you the mindset of the individuals here that we are dealing with,” Chief Joseph Wade told WAPT, Jackson’s Hearst-owned ABC affiliate, of the carjacking video. “They are bold and brave and they will do whatever it takes to commit these criminal acts, and we are going to be just as bold and brave to bring them to justice and hold them accountable for their actions.”

Carjackings such as the one on Friday have becoming commonplace in Jackson, the only difference with this one being that it was caught on video.

“Sadly, this is now an everyday occurrence in Jackson,” the president of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, Douglas Carswell, who lives and works in downtown Jackson, tells the Sun. “Just last week, someone was murdered at the park where I play tennis,” he says, adding that shootings are a “regular occurrence” in Mississippi’s capital city. 

Jackson has outsized violent crime numbers for its population of nearly 150,000 residents. In 2023, there were 118 homicides in Jackson, a WLBT analysis found, and though the numbers decreased from the previous year, following a national trend post-Covid, Jackson nonetheless tops other major cities for killings per capita, that report found. 

“Jackson now has one of the highest per capita homicide rates in the country, higher than Memphis, higher than Baltimore, higher than Detroit,” Mr. Carswell says. “Tragically it’s an everyday thing.”

Jackson’s murder rates were “significantly lower” in 2013 but a “dysfunctional city government” has created major crime issues for the city, he adds. 

“In the past 10 or 15 years, Jackson has been a story of a descent into dysfunction,” Mr. Carswell says, adding that more than a policing issue, there is a “prosecution problem” in Hinds County, where Jackson is located. 

The county’s Soros-backed district attorney, Jody Owens, has been rocked by turmoil during his time on the campaign and on the job, including allegations of sexual harassment and accusations that he pulled a gun on a man in an apartment — claims he denied at the time — and most recently, an FBI raid of his cigar bar. His office did not respond to a request from the Sun for comment on the recent Jackson carjacking and whether he intends to prosecute the perpetrators should they be apprehended. 

Over the past several years, Mr. Carswell says criminals took advantage of the justice system not “functioning properly,” but that the crime rates are slowly beginning to decline as the state government steps in.  

The state has been extending the purview of the Capitol Police, who used to stay primarily around the Capitol building, to  police about one-third of the city, he says, adding that the areas they police have seen crime go down “dramatically.” 

“Where crime is under control in the city, the neighborhoods run by the Capitol Police, you’re starting to see people moving back in,” Mr. Carswell says. “ But crime is definitely a big factor in pushing people out of those parts of the city that aren’t run by the Capitol Police.” 

The expansion of the Capitol Police was the subject of pushback last year, as some in the majority-Black city saw the increased state police presence as trampling on local control and unfairly targeting Black residents. The city has largely “moved beyond” those racial tensions, Mr. Carswell says, as “quite a lot of the city lawmakers and representatives who used to criticize expansion of the capital base, are now criticizing them for not policing the whole of the city.”

Earlier this year, Mississippi’s governor, Tate Reeves, announced a “major public safety operation” in Jackson aimed at “surging” local, state, and federal law enforcement into the city in an attempt to tackle the violent crime epidemic. 

The governor’s office and the Jackson Police Department did not immediately return a request from the Sun for comment on how those operations are proceeding so far. 

Even with more state resources and local policing, without more prosecutions, the violent crime will continue to plague Jackson, Mr. Carswell notes. 

“Having a D.A. who’s soft on crime, I think has been a real problem,” he says. “And there’s only so much the police can do until we’ve got an effective D.A. in Jackson.”