Why the police chief from Mississippi’s capital city visited Mobile

The newly appointed police chief and two of top deputies of Mississippi’s largest city visited Mobile on Thursday to examine how Alabama’s Port city is addressing intelligence level policing and community engagement, among other things.

Joseph Wade, police chief in Jackson, Miss., said his agency is looking for “new and innovative ways” to fight crime at a time when the state’s capitol city is battling a high murder rate, and as Mississippi officials face criticism for expanding a state-run police department within the overwhelmingly majority Black city of 146,000 residents.

Wade praised Mobile police for what he said were new approaches at policing, and cited the Alabama agency as one in which his staff could “benefit from visiting.”

“We looked at several different departments and visited the local agencies in Mississippi we felt we could benefit from,” said Wade, a 28-year veteran of the Jackson Police Department who was officially named its police chief last month. I wanted to reach out to an agency comparable with the Jackson Police Department and we targeted Mobile as somewhere we felt that we could benefit from visiting.”

Said Tyrone Buckley, deputy chief with the Jackson agency, about Mobile, “you have a city that is getting it right. We saw some positive things in this city and are looking to see if we can get some information to help us with some of the things we are going through in our city.”

Recruitment, retention

The visit from the Jackson officials comes at a time when Mobile and Jackson continue to struggle in finding enough police recruits to fill opened positions. The two chiefs said that recruitment and officer retention was also a subject they were discussing during their meeting.

Jackson appears to be struggling more than Mobile. Wade said his city was originally budgeted for 304 officers, but the number dropped to 274, after Wade said his officers were granted a pay raise. The agency currently has 238 officers.

Mobile is budgeted for 488 officers. It currently has 425, and Prine said it’s typical for the agency to be “down 50 to 55 officers.”

“Two years ago, we were averaging 70 officers down on the Police Department,” he said. “Slowly, (efforts) on recruitment and retention are working. We have a lot more work to do. It’s becoming more problematic to find those highly qualified individuals to be in law enforcement today in this political climate.”

Homicides

The visit from Jackson officials also comes as Mobile is experiencing an improvement in violent crime and homicide statistics over the past two years. The improvement comes as Mobile’s population grew by adding 19,789 residents through a July annexation, to a new population of 204,689.

The agency, which saw a spike in violent crime in 2021, was “30 percent down” in the number of homicides so far in 2023, according to Police Chief Paul Prine. So far this year, there have been 23 homicides in Mobile.

Prine said the drop is stark compared to 2021, when there were 51 homicides for the entire year.

“You can see the strategic plan the Mobile Police Department is certainly working,” Prine said.

Related content: Mobile, Birmingham police chiefs blast study showing cities most violent in nation

Comparably, Jackson has 93 homicides during 2023, Wade said.

“We got to work on some type of changing the mindset of the culture of the city and take a strategic approach on addressing crime in the city,” Wade said. “We are looking at a strategic approach in dealing with (gun violence) and collaborative efforts with local, county, state and federal levels. We are looking to see what we can gather (in Mobile) and bring back to Jackson to get our crime situation under control.”

Capitol Police

Policing strategies in Mississippi have come under fire this year, creating a rift between the Capitol City that is over 80% Black, and the majority-white Republican-controlled Mississippi state House and Senate.

Jackson is governed by Democrats and has the largest percentage of Black residents of any major U.S. city. Mobile’s demographics, even after annexation, remains majority Black. It was 52% Black, 42% white before the July vote.

The biggest concern in Jackson, according to media reports, appears to be the addition and jurisdictional expansion of the Capitol Police, a state-run policing agency. Republican Mississippi Gov. Tate Reeves signed legislation in April to expand the agency’s boundaries, urging that Jackson “has to be better.”

The move prompted the NAACP to file a lawsuit arguing that state officials violated the principle of self-government by removing policing and some of the courts of out the hands of residents.

Neither Mobile nor any other city in Alabama is faced with a similar situation.

“I’m more of the mindset that we have to have collaborative efforts,” Wade said. “They are policing in my backyard. We have to share information and have dialogues on how we work together. The criminal element does not have about jurisdictional boundaries.”

He added, “When we are feuding in law enforcement, the criminal element is allowed to prosper. We will work collectively as we move forward with the Capitol Police in Jackson.”