Meridian Police Department Chief Deborah Naylor Young and Mayor Jimmie Smith are pushing back against criticism that the police department is failing to address crime in the city. 

In a city council meeting Tuesday, Smith said MPD was making great progress in hiring new officers as well as restoring some of the special units such as the SWAT and gang units. Getting the police department back where it needs to be will not happen overnight, he said.

“It’s going to take us time to rebuild our police department,” he said.

Despite being severely understaffed, Smith said the police department has managed to solve almost all, if not every murder that has occurred since Young was appointed. With additional arrests made for previous homicides, MPD’s homicide closure rate for that time is above 100%.

In comparison, an analysis from The Marshall Project, a nonprofit media group focused on criminal justice, found nationwide, about 50% of homicide investigations resulted in an arrest in 2020. The analysis put MPD’s homicide closure rate for the same year at 13%.

Since taking over at MPD, Young said the department had made 34 arrests for murder or manslaughter, 31 of which involved firearms. An additional 35 arrests had been made for aggravated assault, 14 for drive by shootings or shooting into a dwelling and the department had ten additional felony warrants outstanding.

In addition to working their own cases, Young said MPD officers are also involved in joint operations through partnerships with the ATF, FBI, U.S. Marshals Mississippi Bureau on Investigation, Mississippi Highway Patrol, Lauderdale County Sheriff’s Department and Marion Police Department.

Just recently, she said, MPD’s special ops unit, which consists of five officers and three K9 officers, arrested several suspected human traffickers as part of a joint task force with the state Attorney General’s office.

Smith and Young’s comments come after a failed motion by Ward 5 City Council member Ty Bell Lindsey to add a item to the agenda setting the police chief’s salary to zero. Lindsey said she no longer felt confident Young was up to the job and called for a change in MPD’s leadership.

“I just don’t have the confidence I had before. I apologize, it is what it is,” she said. “ I tried it out, and I feel moving into 2023 and beyond, it needs to be somebody more active in the community, criminal justice degree, knows how to stand up and speak and be at the meetings. That’s just my personal opinion.

Lindsey said the police department was doing a great job, but she wanted a police chief who would be more visible in the community and more available to listen and respond to citizens’ concerns.