After failing to notify two men’s families about their deaths this year, the Jackson Police Department has adopted a new death-notification policy requiring officers to make exhaustive efforts to reach a person’s “next of kin” or “significant others” in the event of a death.
The Mississippi Free Press obtained a copy of the new policy through a public-records request after the department’s handling of the deaths of Jackson, Miss., residents Dexter Wade and Marrio Moore drew national outrage in October and November. The department did not previously have a death-notification policy.
In both cases, JPD officers and Hinds County Coroner’s Office investigators failed to notify the men’s families before the county buried their bodies in unmarked graves in a pauper’s field at the Hinds County Penal Farm.
“They just (said), ‘Oh, well, he ain’t got nobody,’” Marquita Moore told NBC News on Nov. 22 while speaking about her brother Marrio Moore’s death and burial. “And they just threw him away.”
Jackson Police Chief Joseph Wade said at a press conference on Nov. 13, 2023, that before that date JPD had no death-notification policy. Read the full policy here.
Unknown assailants beat Marrio Moore to death on Feb. 2, 2023, and left his body wrapped in a tarp on Gunda Street, NBC News reported.
After learning of her brother’s death from a WLBT news report in October, Marquita Moore said she went to the Jackson Police Department for answers but that officials told her—after no city or county official could supposedly make contact with their family—that the county buried his body on July 14.
In November, NBC News reported on documentation showing that authorities said they made attempts to contact Marrio Moore’s family about his death.
“A Hinds County coroner’s office investigator said in a report that she called Marrio’s brother, but the phone number didn’t work. A police commander told the family that a detective left a card at Marrio’s mother’s house. But neither his mother, brother nor two sisters recall being contacted by anyone responsible for reaching his next of kin,” NBC News reported.
The story said that none