6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

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SOCIETY

Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of MississippiMeans for the Rest of UsWritten by Danielle CorcioneJune 08, 2018

The City of Jackson, with the help of the office of the Attorney General of the United States,

thinks it has a solution to ending crime: eject criminals outside of Mississippi.  

During a press conference at the end of last year, United States Attorney for the Southern

District of Mississippi Mike Hurst announced a new partnership—called Project EJECT—

between the Jackson Police Department, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of

Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, and other federal agencies. 

 4 PIECES 

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6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

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Then in late spring, the Department of Justice boasted about a surge-like operation enacted in

Jackson that resulted in “45 individuals, 31 of whom were documented gang members,

including Gangster Disciples, Vice Lords, Simon City Royals, Latin Kings, and the Aryan

Brotherhood, among others.” The identities of those arrested are yet to be publicized, but

some are expected to be prosecuted under Project EJECT. 

 

This isn’t happening just in Jackson. In the past two decades, several cities have adopted similar

measures. But this latest move shows Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ influence on local police

forces can greatly impact people of color for the worse, particularly in a city that is

predominately black. According to data collected by the 2010 Census, Jackson’s population is

approximately 80 percent African-American. 

 

The new initiative stands for “Empower Jackson Expel Crime Together.” Project EJECT “is

designed as an enhanced violent crime reduction program that incorporates decades of

experience in bringing various levels of law enforcement together with stakeholders in the

community, with the overall goal of producing a long-term, meaningful reduction in and

prevention of violent crime as a multi-disciplinary, holistic approach that combines law

enforcement arrests and prosecutions of violent criminals with prevention efforts,

rehabilitation and reentry, educational initiatives, and improved communication.” 

 

At its core, the goal of EJECT is to send community members to prisons outside of the state,

making it difficult for the community left behind (including family members) to keep in touch

with them. Such physical distance—which can often be achieved even with prisons in the same

state, which are hours away—will always be detrimental, because it further isolates someone

from their families and communities. It also makes the re-entry process even more complicated

and difficult. 

Jackson is deliberately depicted as a crime capital due to thelarge African-American population. Mainstream media’s

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6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

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agenda gives the impression that we cannot govern ourselvesand wherever we are, crime and drugs follow. 

Jackson Clarion-Ledger columnist, Rachel James-Terry, coined an op-ed opposing Project

EJECT shortly following the project’s announcement. She says its tactics target black

Americans unfairly. “Jackson is deliberately depicted as a crime capital due to the large African-

American population,” James-Terry tells Playboy. “Mainstream media’s agenda gives the

impression that we cannot govern ourselves and wherever we are, crime and drugs follow.

However, the minority population is often most impacted by socioeconomic factors, lack of

resources and overwhelming racial discrimination, which lead to poverty, which directly

correlates with criminality. That’s never taken into consideration when problem-solving.” 

 

The federal government also calls on “community, faith-based, non-profit, neighborhood

association and business leaders” to be involved as well, although these partnerships haven’t

been publicized yet. The mayor of Jackson—who since hosted a town hall with Bernie Sanders

on the 50th anniversary of Martin Luther King Dr.’s assassination and previously has

emphasized “we will be tough when it comes to crime”—remains silent on the issue. Defense

attorney Adofo Minka called out Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba in an op-ed in January, a

month following the project’s announcement. 

 

“Project EJECT’s plan to address the root of the issue is more ambiguous, i.e., work with

community leaders, create positive programs, deal in the concept of hope, etc,” James-Terry

adds. “It sounds like confetti, cotton candy and filler until they get around to figuring it out.” 

 

In order to be “ejected” to an out-of-state prison, that person needs to be tried in the federal

(rather than state or local) court systems, which will result in a mandatory minimum sentence.

In federal courts, firearms offenses are higher than those in Mississippi. A firearm offense on a

“prohibited person” (such as someone convicted of a felony) can result in a minimum sentence

of 15 years, if the offender has three or more prior convictions. Additionally, parole—or the

early release from prison for demonstrating good behavior—is also not offered by federal4 PIECES 

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6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

https://www.playboy.com/read/project-eject-what-the-police-led-gentrification-of-mississippi-means-for-the-rest-of-us 4/15

courts, since they were eliminated under the Sentencing Reform Act of 1984. 

 

Mandatory minimums for firearms offenses disproportionately affect black Americans. The

United States Sentencing Commission reports that in 2012, 51.7 percent of “U.S.C. § 922”

offenders (possessing firearms, ammunition or explosives) were black while only 27 percent

were white. 

 

The State of Mississippi allows “constitutional carry,” or the ability for anyone 21 years and

older to carry a handgun, open or concealed, without obtaining a government-issued permit of

any kind. However, those who have been convicted of a felony are not allowed to carry a

firearm, according to Mississippi Code 45-9-101. Additionally, those who “chronically and

habitually” drink alcohol and/or use a controlled substance (such as cannabis, heroin or another

scheduled drug under the Controlled Substances Act) are also prohibited from carrying. 

They want this money to �ow into Jackson, they want todevelop Jackson, but they don’t want to develop it for the

people who have always been in Jackson. They don’t want poorblack people in Jackson. 

“I don’t know if I can credit [this] to Project Eject per se, but there’s been a number of

checkpoints popping up in the city of Jackson and most of the time, there’s a situation in West

Jackson, which is one of the poorest areas in the city,” Minka adds. 

 

As a defense attorney, Minka is no stranger to how checkpoints can be used to search people’s

cars, especially when they have been convicted of a felony. Checkpoints are part of a strategy

called “hot-spot” policing, which focuses on areas characterized by high rates of crime. 

 

This narrative of “predictive policing” has been recited by Hinds County Supervisor Robert4 PIECES REMAINING BECOME A KEY HOLDERThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully RebelliousThoughtfully Rebellious

6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

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Graham, a former JPD spokesman in an interview with the Jackson Free Press: “I believe that

you have to concentrate on hot spots and hot people. Because what is making this spot hot is

this guy.” 

 

Youth of color have also been subject to targeted harassment by law enforcement, which has

been enabled by recent legislation. According to the Jackson Free Press, anti-gang legislation—

Senate Bill 2868—which was supposed into effect this July but was killed, would have allowed

police to identify youth as gang-affiliated because they’re wearing similar clothing.  

 

“This Project Eject is really just a local variant of Project Safe Neighborhoods, which is being

survived and resuscitated under the Trump administration,” explains Kali Akuno, founder of the

grassroots organization Cooperative Jackson. 

 

Project Safe Neighborhoods dates back to 2001, when President George W. Bush first

announced the initiative at the Pennsylvania Convention Center. Fifty million was proposed

over a two-year budget to “hire new federal and state prosecutors, to support investigators, to

provide training, and develop and promote community outreach effort.” Bush cited a few

programs in that same speech: Philadelphia’s Operation Sunrise, Richmond, Virginia’s Project

Exile and Boston’s Operation Ceasefire. 

 

The Washington Post reported Operation Sunrise targeted 70,000 residents in a 2.5 mile

radius area in North Philadelphia, which was the largest “anti-crime” program since the

bombing and displacement of the MOVE organization. Launched at dawn on June 15, 1998,

cops would roll through the Kensington and Fairhill neighborhoods and round up community

members en masse with the aid of other federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of

Investigation, the Drug Enforcement Agency and the Behavioral Health Care Division of the

Department of Public Health. By August 2, 1998, authorities had a total of 325 drug arrests,

456 cars towed, 268 abandoned houses sealed, 114 empty lots cleaned and 2,157 tons of debris

hauled, which included 92 tons of discarded tires, according to a 2008 Temple University

study by John S. Goldkamp. 

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6/19/2018 Project Eject: What the Police-Led Gentrification of Mississippi Means for the Rest of Us

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This county has a president who is a real estate mogul, andmoving populations has been his business model since he and

his family have been in the businesses of real estate inManhattan. 

Operation Sunrise was later transformed into Operation Safe Streets in 2002, which replaced

mass arrests with constant police surveillance through their constant physical presence of cop

cars and the like. Today, North Philadelphia still faces heavy policing and surveillance as more

storefronts open and abandoned buildings are transformed into new housing developments. 

 

Project Exile—which has a narrative and name closest to Project Eject, which also has been

praised by the National Rifle Association—was launched in 1997 to specifically target “former

and would-be” firearms offenders in order to reduce gun violence. Additionally, Operation

Ceasefire was implemented from 1996 to 2000 in Boston, Massachusetts. The program was

later implemented in Chicago, Cincinnati and Indianapolis as well as Baltimore. 

 

And these programs didn’t halt under the Obama administration. Yet another similar program

implemented in January 2013, Operation Hustle City, failed to reduce violence in St. Louis,

Missouri. And in 2014, the Justice Department launched the Violence Reduction Network to

address crime in urban areas, which Jackson was added to in September 2016. 

 

Project Safe Neighborhoods has since been reinvigorated by Attorney General Jeff

Sessions. The Department of Justice has stated that Project Safe Neighborhoods is “not just

one policy idea among many [but] the center piece of our crime reduction strategy.” 

 

“Jeff Sessions has made it very clear that they’re targeting folks that are ex-felons or folks that

have prior convictions for gun-related crimes, but it seems to be very clear with how Hurst in

Mississippi is going after both a gun-related, but also interstate [crimes], which is very, very

serious,” Akuno adds. 4 PIECES 

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Akuno says it all comes back to the president’s legacy: real estate. 

 

“This county has a president who is a real estate mogul, and moving populations has been his

business model since he and his family have been in the businesses of real estate in

Manhattan,” Akuno stresses. “Moving people to and from [an area] is a core part of what he

does.” 

 

Minka agrees that the program is nothing short of ethnic cleansing through gentrification. As

businesses develop and build in historically poor parts of town, people who have been living in

these neighborhoods for generations are vulnerable to displacement. 

 

“They don’t want poor black people in Jackson, so they’re going to use this Project EJECT

program to try to sweep poor black people out of Jackson.This is a situation that white elite in

Jackson and beyond want to have, and this is also a program that the black political class in

Jackson wants to have,” Minka elaborates. “They want this money to flow into Jackson, they

want to develop Jackson, but they don’t want to develop it for the people who have always

been in Jackson.” 

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