A Thursday community meeting about the progress of the Meridian Police Department under a U.S. Department of Justice consent decree raised questions about whether the agreement has benefited or harmed the students of the Meridian Public School District. 

Meridian Police Chief Benny Dubose repeatedly said he believed the trainings required by the agreement had helped his department become better law enforcement officers.

“I’m pleased to say that I think our department has come a long way,” Dubose said, highlighting the bias trainings that he said many officers appreciated. “We want to do right from now on.”

But some said they felt that the consent decree had hurt the community at large.  

“Whatever the intent of the DOJ, the effect has been disastrous for our community,” said Todd Kiefer, whose daughter is a teacher in Meridian.

In particular, Kiefer raised concerns about setting the stage for another school shooting with poor discipline, drawing comparisons with Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, where 17 students and staff died in a 2018 shooting. 

“It’s driving the whole disciplinary process in the classrooms,” Keifer said. “What if someone disturbed makes it through that system? I’m worried about what’s happening in our schools.”

Kiefer brought a folder full of statistics, pointing out declining enrollment, loss of student diversity and failing school grades. He said his daughter received threats from students and had difficulty getting administrative approval to discipline students. 

“The motivation (for me) is the 90 percent of students in the school who deserve an education and their rights,” Kiefer said. “For some, school is a refuge from whatever they have going on at home. But if a teacher’s time is dominated by a few misbehaving, (those students) have lost that refuge.”

Many seemed to agree with Kiefer at the meeting, nodding as he spoke.

“I don’t think that compliance is the right step,” Kiefer said, describing teacher frustrations. “I think the commitment has to be discipline… just this week a 25-year-old veteran teacher quit in the middle of the week (at Meridian).”

Gary Houston, a local minister who serves on the district’s school board, confirmed that the district had lost 123 teachers in the last three years and struggled to recruit certified teachers. 

“These (discipline guidelines) are not guidelines from the school board, they’re from the (NAACP Legal Defense Fund),” Houston said. “There are policies that the department of justice has mandated… that’s why we’ve asked for this release. So there can be discipline again.”

Houston described the thick discipline handbook distributed to teachers and high standards for disciplining a student.

“When we try to recruit teachers to Meridian, they tell us, ‘Meridian? I’m not coming there. Y’all can’t discipline y’all children,’ ” Houston said. “LDF has held this district hostage for the last several years.”

Houston pointed out the thousands LDF demanded the school spend on consultants, rather than investing in teachers or education.

“There’s only so much we can do but the community says enough is enough,” Houston said. 

When an audience member asked about changes in youth crime following the consent decree, Dubose carefully said, “In the community, I have no seen a decrease in youth crime.”

Dubose twice asked the crowd to focus on issues specifically with the police department, saying much of the discussion was necessary and important but not for this meeting.

“The damage has been done. I wish there was something that we could do – there probably is/ might/ can be something we can do – but that’s another discussion,” Dubose said. “I am proud of where we are. I am not proud of where we were.”

Kent Malone, a teacher at Northeast High School in the Lauderdale County School District, said he attended the meeting because he wanted to learn more, especially since the activities of the city affect the county schools.

“We work in a hostile environment because if a young woman or man is upset they threaten us or say, ‘I’m going to kill you tomorrow,’ ” Malone said. “I hear about all of these school shootings and I have to take these threats seriously.”

Malone described the difficulty of enforcing even a dress code on students.  

“If the youth are our future we’re going to have to discipline them,” Malone said. “We’ll never have good order in that school until we have good discipline. 

As for police relations with the community, Malone said he wanted to do his part to improve it.

“If you’re talking to a police officer in the street, he’s not explaining things to you because he’s in his job mode,” Malone said. “And most African-American kids are afraid of police officers… and if everyone on the east side of Meridian is afraid then you’re not going to get (people applying to be police) from the east side. Maybe you’re going to get it from the north, where things are safer or different.”

Malone specifically pressed Dubose about fostering a conversation, so children would know what to expect from police officers, repeating an earlier concern about the lack of stakeholders from after-school youth organizations at the City Hall meeting. 

“The only way Meridian can become safe is if all stakeholders… are on the same page,” Malone said. 

History 

In 2011, the DOJ investigated the City of Meridian and Lauderdale County, later adding the Mississippi Division of Youth Services (DYS), a part of the Mississippi Department of Human Services, for an alleged “pipeline” from the Meridian Public School District to the Lauderdale County Juvenile Detention Center.

A DOJ complaint, filed in 2012, alleged the defendants neglected the constitutional rights of children by incarcerating them for minor school rule infractions, denying their court rights of due process and fairness and, for the DYS, their role in probation services provided.

As part of the consent decree, the city must hold meetings every six months to update the community on its progress. The decree focused on several areas, including updating policies and procedures, new training, providing civilian complaint forms online (at the city website) and at the police station, collecting and publishing reports to the website and establishing a memorandum of understanding with the Meridian Public School District.

Once the department reaches compliance with the DOJ consent decree, the department moves to self evaluation and can leave the consent decree. Thursday’s meeting provided no update on when the City of Meridian could expect to leave the consent decree despite the department’s “substantial compliance” across all graded categories.