Jackson police cracks down on litter violations by installing cameras
Camera installations and stiff fines are beginning to roll out as the city makes an active effort to control illegal dumping and littering across Jackson.
Community clean-up days, the hiring of a designated litter officer, and the installation of cameras in areas popular for illegal trash dumping, all characterize city efforts to curb littering, which recently reached 2,000 pounds of trash on city streets. The anti-litter initiatives taken will aid in beautifying Jackson, officials say.
Litterers dumping over 100 pounds (or over 30 feet) of waste could also face up to a $4,000 fine and imprisonment for "Aggravated Criminal Littering," a Class E Felony, for example, since the city adopted state littering statutes.
Other fines range from $50 to $500 and up, based on the amount of litter.
Partnerships between programs like Love Your Block and Keep Jackson Beautiful are organizing one community clean-up day in each of the city's nine districts to promote collaboration between council members and their respective communities.
City gets a low score in preventing litter
Based on a scale of one through four, with one being the least litter and four representing the most litter, a citywide litter index was conducted in August in which a five-split (northwest, northeast, west, east, south) of city limits determined the overall score. During a Sept. 5 Love Your Block meeting, it was revealed that Jackson received a score of 2.5 out of 4.
Love Your Block Vista Elvia Trejo explained during the meeting that despite spring clean-up initiatives accomplishing the removal of more than 2,000 pounds of trash from Jackson city streets, some areas are just as congested as they were before spring clean-ups.
More: Jackson police hires Litter Enforcement Officer, combatting illegal dumping and littering
Other entities like the Jackson Police Department have also made recent strides in attempting to curb illegal dumping and, in June, hired designated Litter Officer Rick Buttler to lead the effort.
"It's a bigger problem than most people probably realize," Butler said.
Camera installations and anti-litter codes
On its first reading at the Sept. 5 council meeting, the implementation of solid waste cameras to be installed across the city was unanimously approved.
The cameras will be installed on Jackson Energy Authority (JEA) poles and their respective locations are determined by litter data.
"We're not going to hide them, they're going to be in places where we have consistent problems with illegal dumping so we can catch those individuals that are doing that through their license plate," Mayor Scott Conger said following the meeting.
District 4 councilmember Richard Donnell expressed gratitude for the city's push to combat littering with the installation of cameras, citing that "District 4 is not a dumping ground."
"The use of these cameras will be very beneficial to my district as well as to the city of Jackson," he said.
In what Donnell described as a "vicious cycle" of illegal dumping around the city, he believes the cameras will "put a big halt" to the issue.
Also unanimously voted on at the September city council meeting was the amendment of Municipal Code Title 17, which deals with refuse and trash disposal, to now include an anti-litter code.
"We can hold people accountable for littering whether that be if they're caught with someone seeing them or if there's a receipt on the side of the road with their name on it, it just gives that ability for us to hold them more accountable," Conger said.
More information on codes and citations on the city website's new Litter Enforcement page can be found here.
This article originally appeared on Jackson Sun: Jackson police cracks down on litter violations by installing cameras
