A Mississippi city councilman’s call for citizens to throw dangerous objects at police from outside districts drew condemnation and calls for a criminal investigation Saturday.
“Let’s get rocks, let’s get bricks and let’s get bottles and start throwing them and then they police won’t come in here anymore,” Kenneth Stokes, a councilman in Jackson, the state’s capitol, said this week.
Stokes, who is African-American, was reacting to a ongoing dispute over police officers from outside jurisdictions pursuing suspects into the city, according to local reports.
The nation is grappling with repeated incidents of police officers, often white, shooting unarmed black suspects, as well as violence against police. The racial dispute is especially charged in Jackson, a majority black and Democratic city in a majority white, Republican state with an ugly history of racist violence.
Stokes’ comment angered other public officials in the state.
Randy Tucker, the sheriff of nearby Madison County responded on Facebook post with a personal warning to Stokes.
“Law Enforcement will not be intimidated by you,” Randy Tucker, the sheriff of Madison County said in a Facebook post. “Any Madison county law enforcement that is attacked because of your ignorant statements, I will hold you responsible.”
Miss. Gov. Phil Bryant in a Facebook post called Stokes’ comments “reprehensible, particularly with the attacks we have seen against our men and women in law enforcement.”
“I condemn any such remarks in the strongest possible manner. This is nothing short of an outright assault upon all who wear the badge.”
Bryant said he was asking the state’s attorney general to investigate whether Stokes’ remarks amounted to criminal threats.
Stokes later elaborated, telling a local paper that he meant “when you have these police officers coming from other jurisdictions and they will not respect human life, then I said we should use rocks, bricks or bottles to try to get the message over: stop endangering our children.”
Jackson Mayor Tony Yarber condemned Stokes’ statements, but with qualification.
“While there is a need to demand respect of jurisdictional boundaries, I could never condone violence against officers,” Yarber said in a tweet.
