Recent editorials from Mississippi newspapers:
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Feb. 18
The Daily Leader on the response of churches to sexual abuse accusations:
The news reports out of Texas describing hundreds of Southern Baptist leaders and workers who were accused of sexual misconduct yet allowed to work at churches is disturbing at the very least.
That some churches knowingly let people with a background of sexual misconduct teach children or youth is unbelievable. Yet it happened in churches throughout the country.
It shows that sexual abuse is a problem for all faiths and all denominations. No church is immune to sin. But some of the instances described in the reports by the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News can’t be chalked up to ignorance.
Some churches may have unknowingly employed predators. Others did so with full knowledge of their backgrounds.
The Southern Baptist Convention was the subject of the newspapers’ investigation, but the problem is not constrained only to that denomination. But SBC leaders could have - and should have - done more to prevent these horrors.
Going back at least a decade, SBC leaders were asked to track sexual predators so they could not move from church to church. The convention was also asked to act against congregations that harbored or concealed abusers.
Those policies were not put into place. And the result is what was reported by the newspapers.
The Rev. J.D. Greear, who was elected as the SBC’s president last year, said the abuses described in the news report “are pure evil.”
“I am broken over what was revealed today,” Greear wrote in a series of posts on Twitter. “The voices in this article should be heard as a warning sent from God, calling the church to repent.”
“We leaders in the SBC should have listened to the warnings of those who tried to call attention to this,” Greear tweeted. “I am committed to doing everything possible to ensure we never make these mistakes again.”
SBC churches are autonomous, meaning the convention has little authority over them. But the SBC has the authority to “disassociate” with churches that knowingly hire or protect abusers. The convention can also create a database of abusers to give churches more information about the people they hire or allow to volunteer.
The two newspapers in Texas were able to create an offender database with limited resources. Surely the largest Protestant denomination in the country can do the same. Churches - of any denomination or faith - should be places were people are safe and protected, not victimized and shamed.
Online: https://www.dailyleader.com/
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Feb. 19
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal on shielding the names of law enforcement officers involved in fatalities:
Mississippi lawmakers are considering a bill that would shield the names of law enforcement officers involved in fatalities for up to six months.
House Bill 1289 passed the full House last week by an 86-to-30 margin and now goes on to the Senate for more work. It would prohibit local law enforcement agencies from releasing the names or any identifiable information when one of their officers is involved in a fatality. That information would be kept private until a grand jury decides whether or not to indict the officer or until a six-month time limit has passed.
The bill was authored by Rep. Mark Baker, with Reps. Kathy Sykes and John Hines signing on as additional authors. It comes in response to a new policy by the city of Jackson to release officers’ names within three days of a shooting, as reported by the Associated Press.
We have much respect for the dangerous and often thankless job performed by law enforcement officers who literally put their lives on the line to keep us safe. That said, we believe this bill flies in the face of transparency and open government. Public officials should not be in the game of withholding information from citizens. It is important to note that private citizens involved in shootings to protect their homes and families would not be afforded the same privacy shield. This is not equal justice under the law.
Law-enforcement-involved shootings are often fraught with tension and emotion, and it may be reasonable to allow a short window to shield the names of officers. A 72-hour period would give investigators time to corroborate the basic details and file an initial incident report. After that, the information should be made available to the general public.
For one, it is a matter of public confidence. Officer-involved shootings sow distrust in the community, and honesty and transparency are often the best paths to restoring credibility. Preventing local communities that option, and not allowing them to handle a tense situation as they see best, is counterproductive and potentially harmful.
We also question why law enforcement officers should be granted more privacy than everyday citizens.
We feel it is dangerous for lawmakers to give governments the ability to conceal information, especially information associated with an investigation of a government entity or individual. For all of those reasons, we do not support this bill.
Online: http://djournal.com/
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Feb. 20
McComb Enterprise-Journal on punishing drug suppliers if a user dies or receives serious injuries after consuming heroin or fentanyl:
Should drug peddlers be responsible for murder if the illicit drugs they supply result in the death of the person who took them?
At least for now, the Mississippi Legislature has said no.
Last week, a bill died in the House that would have subjected a supplier to up to life in prison and a $1 million fine if a user dies or receives serious injuries after consuming heroin or fentanyl, a synthetic opioid.
The proposal was being pushed by the mother of a former Mississippi State University student, Parker Rodenbaugh, who died in 2014 from an overdose of another synthetic drug that has since been supplanted by fentanyl as the most worrisome narcotic in the nation’s opioid epidemic.
The person who supplied Rodenbaugh with the fatal drug, a former high school classmate, was convicted of second-degree murder, along with a drug-trafficking count, but the murder charge was later thrown out by the state Court of Appeals, which found that the evidence didn’t support the conviction.
Should the so-called “Parker’s Law” have been enacted, it might have given some satisfaction to those who are grieving and angered about a loved one’s fatal overdose. It could also, though, have had unintended consequences
That is the persuasive warning from another mother of a son who died of an accidental drug overdose.
Lee Malouf, a Ridgeland resident who has family connections to Greenwood, said that Parker’s Law would have gone not just after predatory drug-traffickers. It would have snagged families who are dealing with a child who suffers from addiction, just as hers was.
Malouf lost her son Robert in 2017. In an op-ed column in the Jackson Clarion Ledger, she wrote that she has channeled her grief in part to better understanding the disease of addiction.
One thing she has learned is that drug-sharing is common among friends who do illicit drugs. They will pool their money and send one kid out to buy drugs for the group. Sometimes addicts will sell small amounts to friends to support their own habit. Parker’s Law would make anyone involved in the transaction, including an intermediary or a low-level seller, subject to being put behind bars for life, when what they really need is drug rehabilitation.
More perversely, the law, according to Malouf, could have resulted in more overdose deaths, not fewer. That’s because, when a person is overdosing, those who are around and perhaps doing drugs themselves would be scared to call 911, fearing they could be prosecuted.
“These are the very people who can save (the overdosing person’s) life,” Malouf writes. “When we hold harsher penalties over their heads, they’re more likely to run, not rescue. Not because they don’t want to help, but when you’re potentially facing life in prison, of course that has a chilling effect on being found with the person in crisis.”
Both Robert Malouf’s mother and Parker Rodenbaugh’s mother have endured a loss that no parent wants to endure. But it would be a mistake to let any parent’s pain be translated into laws that reverse what is becoming more and more understood about drug addiction.
There is no punishing society out of this epidemic. It is a mental health crisis that has to be addressed through therapy and getting at the root of what drives a growing number of individuals to medicate themselves.
Malouf says she will always be sad about the addiction that tortured her son and eventually took his life. “However,” she writes, “I believe my son would want me to use the pain of his death to fight for more thriving and love in the world, rather than spreading that pain to others.”
Her words should be heeded.
Online: http://www.enterprise-journal.com/
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