MAYOR GETS TOUGH, GOES ON TRIAL

JACKSON, Miss. -- Mayor Frank Melton got elected by wooing
working-class blacks and upper-class whites with a promise to
personally evict the "thugs" and drug dealers who plagued his
crime-bedeviled city's streets. "Get ready," he told residents.
"Because this is going to be different."

On Monday, Mr. Melton is scheduled to go on trial -- for the third
time since taking office -- on felony charges related to his
hard-line, gun-toting tactics. Mr. Melton is battling three counts in
the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Mississippi on
civil-rights and related weapons charges after he and two police
bodyguards, and a group of young acquaintances wielding
sledgehammers, allegedly destroyed a home where the mayor has claimed
occupants used and sold crack cocaine. Mississippi has a long history
of tough-talking local candidates. But the rise and potential fall of
Mr. Melton, an African-American, have exposed a big rift among
blacks, who make up more than 70% of Jackson's population. Some
African-Americans here say the mayor has "talked down" to the black
community and used the same kind of harsh words and tactics once used
by club-wielding whites. In his zeal to fight crime, many add, he has
ignored other city needs and led Jackson government astray.

While some residents still approve of his efforts to combat crime
himself, others complain that his efforts haven't actually lowered
the crime rate. "He means well and has a huge heart, but he's not an
effective mayor," said Brad "Kamikaze" Franklin, a 35-year-old rapper
and Jackson developer who once supported Mr. Melton.

In an interview Friday, Mr. Melton said his 2005 landslide, with over
80% of the vote, was "a mandate to get this place cleaned up." He
declined to discuss the pending charges, but reaffirmed his innocence
and said he plans to run for re-election, despite what he calls his
"frustration" with bureaucracy.

"I'm from the private sector and used to ... having things done," he
said, lamenting his inability, because of his legal problems, to
conduct police activity himself since the incident in which a home
was destroyed. Crime hasn't fallen, he argued, because "I'm not out
there." Mr. Melton, 59 years old, grew up in Texas, where he managed
several local television stations. In 1984, he moved to Jackson and
with a group of investors purchased WLBT, the city's NBC affiliate.
He also began volunteering as a swimming coach at an inner-city YMCA.
The YMCA gave him entree into Jackson's poor neighborhoods, where he
mentored needy kids. He became a surrogate father for some troubled
boys and over the years invited some to live with him.

Troubled by increasing crime, Mr. Melton decided to shed light on the
problem. In the late 1980s, he began purchasing billboard space,
where he put the names and photos of suspected drug dealers. In 1992,
after a teen acquaintance was murdered, Mr. Melton began airing a
personal editorial on WLBT, dubbed "The Bottom Line," in which he
lambasted the city's police force and continued naming suspected dealers.

After merging the television station with another media company, Mr.
Melton in 2002 was appointed the director of the Mississippi Bureau
of Narcotics. There, he employed some of the tactics that would later
make him a controversial mayor. Though the job is a political
appointment, Mr. Melton would don a badge and carry handguns and
conduct raids and random roadblocks, often in black neighborhoods.

"This isn't a black-white thing," he responded to critics then and
now in the interview Friday. "That's where the drugs are openly
sold." When a new governor took office in 2004, a new director was
appointed. The next year Mr. Melton ran for mayor, vowing to clean up
the streets of Mississippi's capital, a city of 178,000 people that
for years, according to government statistics, has ranked as one of
the most crime-ridden in the country. As of his first night in
office, he began leading police searches of homes and vehicles. He
parked the police force's bus-like "mobile command unit" at his house
and kept wearing guns and badges, sometimes putting a badge on his
dog Abby, who also went on some raids.

In a May 2006 letter, Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood warned
Mr. Melton that he had reviewed "allegations that your conduct in
several particulars has exceeded lawful authority." Later that year,
the state charged him with two misdemeanors for carrying a firearm in
a park and a church, and one felony for doing so at a university. In
a deal with prosecutors, he pleaded guilty to the misdemeanors and
"no contest" to a reduced charge instead of the felony.

That August, Mr. Melton conducted the raid that led to his current
charges. According to the indictment, Mr. Melton and the two
policemen invited "several young men into the Mobile Command Unit."
The men drove to a home in north Jackson and one of the policemen
forced the occupants out at gunpoint, according to the indictment.
Mr. Melton then broke several windows of the house, the indictment
adds, and "ordered the young men...to damage and destroy the home."

In September 2006, state prosecutors indicted Mr. Melton and the two
policemen on charges around the raid, but a jury found that it had
been a legitimate effort to fight crime. Defeating the federal
charges could be more difficult. One of the policemen has pleaded
guilty in exchange for a lesser charge and is expected to testify
against Mr. Melton, according to court records.

The indictment, filed last July, charged the men with conspiring and
depriving the landlord and tenant of the house of their
constitutional rights against unreasonable searches and seizures. A
separate count is for using a firearm in connection with those
charges. The civil-rights counts each carry a maximum prison sentence
of 10 years, and the firearm count a sentence of five.

Mr. Melton vows, despite opposition from a majority of the City
Council on most issues, to press ahead. At the moment, he plans to
issue an executive order against baggy, hip-hop-style pants, despite
a rejection last month by the council of a similar initiative.
Council members said at a meeting that they believed such a measure
could violate rights to free expression. Speaking to council members
last month via conference call, the mayor said: "We have some issues
that are much bigger than the Constitution.