Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood said Wednesday his greatest reward from the job comes from arresting “perverts” who molest children.
“I think I will never be able to do better for my fellow human beings than doing that,” the Democrat from Chickasaw County said.
Hood spoke to the Greenwood Voters League Wednesday night along with state Sen. David Jordan and Annie Conley, the Democratic nominee for Leflore County tax collector.
Hood, a two-term incumbent, will meet Republican Steve Simpson in the Nov. 8 general election.
As the state’s chief prosecutor, Hood spoke about several aspects of law enforcement, including protecting the elderly, child support prosecutions and domestic violence.
But his talk centered on his office’s cyber-crime unit.
There’s no federal agency that polices the Internet, and the job has fallen to state attorneys general, Hood said.
Mississippi’s program — begun by Hood’s predecessor, Mike Moore — has been used as a model for efforts in other states to start similar units, Hood said.
It does “To Catch a Predator”-style stings where men think they’re meeting a young girl but actually find law enforcement officials waiting to arrest them.
Hood said the office also arrests about two per week who look at child pornography and has been able to reduce the number of downloads of such material, which is typically made by stepfathers, according to Hood.
A large majority of those who look at child pornography — 85 percent of those surveyed at a Tennessee prison — actually abuse children, Hood said.
Bullying has also taken on a new face online, he said.
“There was always a bully in every class when we were all in school, but they didn’t really bully the most popular, the most beautiful or the best athlete,” he said. “Now they do, because the cowards can go after them on Facebook or spread rumors through texting or things like that about them. ... So nobody’s immune from it.”
Hood said he’s pushing for Facebook to allow parents to take down their child’s page, but Facebook is fighting that, he said.
“They think that your child’s 13; they’re old enough to handle their own business. Well, they’re not,” Hood said. “Us adults can’t handle this technology. Look at Congressman (Anthony) Weiner up there. You know, our hero, Brett Favre,” he said. “Grownups are messing up with that technology; how do we expect our kids to deal with it?”
But it’s not all bad, he said. If a boy wants to take out his 16-year-old daughter, Hood said his wife goes to Facebook first.
“If they’re smoking dope, if they’re drinking, it doesn’t matter what they’re doing, them knuckleheads will put that stuff on their Facebook,” he said.
Jordan is running for re-election against independent Rogrick Wardell in state Senate District 24. He received endorsements Wednesday from the Mississippi Licensed Providers Association and Greenwood Association of Educators.
Jordan said if he wanted to make money, he’d do nothing because he has 51 years of state service, 33 as a teacher and 18 as a legislator. But Jordan said he feels a drive to correct injustice.
“You can’t be comfortable even though you may have a few resources, but when you look around and see other people without them, when you see injustice mountain high, you have to do something,” he said.
Jordan said he remembers seeing people kicked and beaten while growing up the son of a sharecropper on Whittington plantation south of Greenwood. Those experiences cause him to help all people regardless of color, Jordan said. He recalled an incident where he spoke for white loggers from the Pine Belt on the floor of the Senate.
But he said he’s taken a lot of heat, including having his home shot into twice. He said a Commonwealth editorial placed the blame on him for the second shooting, which took place this June, because it referred to him as a “lightning rod.”
However, that editorial said immediately after that comment that, “Whatever, though, Jordan’s politics or personality, he has a right to speak his mind and carry out his elected duties free of any threat of physical harm to him or his family.”
Jordan said he’s been president of the Voters League for 45 years and been married 57 years with four children, including two doctors. He’s served on the Greenwood City Council for 26 years.
Jordan, 77, used that experience to take a jab at Wardell, who is 26.
“I don’t have anything against anybody running, but you need a man with a plan, not a boy with a toy,” he said.
• Contact Charlie Smith at csmith@gwcommonwealth.com.
