Weeks before the city could conclude its “100 Days of Peace” initiative, Jackson ousted the director of its Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery.
Keisha Coleman had led the less than 3-year-old office, a key piece of outgoing Mayor Chokwe Antar Lumumba’s efforts to tamp down on crime, since January 2023.
She was by Lumumba’s side earlier this year when he announced, weeks before losing reelection, that the office had awarded $150,000 to community-based organizations working to prevent violence. The press conference marked the beginning of 100 Days of Peace, also known as 100 Days of Action, an initiative that was to feature events like town halls, trainings and listening sessions and conclude with a sneaker ball to celebrate the Jacksonians working to reduce violence.
But if an event required funding, it did not happen, Coleman said, and she’s doubtful it will. Just a few months later, on May 7, Coleman said she received her termination letter from Lumumba’s chief of staff, Safiya Omari.
The alleged stated reason? The trauma recovery specialist had spoken to the mayor’s electoral opponent at a festival to celebrate south Jackson, Coleman wrote in an email to other city officials obtained by Mississippi Today.
Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba awarded grants from the Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery to three community organizations outside of City Hall Wednesday, Feb. 26, 2025. From left to right: Mayor Lumumba, Terun Moore of Strong Arms of Mississippi, John Knight of Living With Purpose, Bennie Ivey of Strong Arms of Mississippi, and OVPTR Community Outreach Specialist Kuwasi Omari. Credit: Courtesy City of Jackson“The termination, verbally framed as a ‘loyalty’ issue, follows repeated attempts to hold the administration accountable for gross misuse of public funds and nepotism that jeopardized critical community safety programs,” Coleman wrote.
In an interview, Omari said she could not discuss personnel matters but called Coleman’s allegations “false and misleading.” The chief of staff also said she could not discuss how the allegations are misleading, “because then that would involve me talking about her.”
Coleman alleged in a pointed May 7 email to city council members that over her time as director, Omari and the mayor’s executive assistant, Tiffany Murray, blocked her efforts to get the new office up and running by stymying Coleman’s ability to spend city funds. She wrote that they prevented her from using empty office space to host workshops and slowwalked the distribution of city funding meant to create a youth engagement center.
“OVPTR’s mission—to reduce violence and trauma in Jackson—has been crippled by Dr. Omari’s actions,” Coleman alleged.
The office was launched in 2023 with a $700,000 grant from the National League of Cities, a nonprofit. Despite being the office’s director, Coleman wrote that the mayor’s office did not grant her access to spend city funds until the beginning of this year, making it difficult to execute events.
“Most of the work was done from my personal funds and people in the community who supported the work,” Coleman wrote.
Reached at her office line, Murray said she did not have any comment at this time.
Coleman told Mississippi Today that she doesn’t want the termination to overshadow the office’s work. On June 3, Jackson will hold a General Election for mayor, in which Democratic nominee and longtime state senator John Horhn is the expected winner.
“I do want to keep a good standing in the community in the event that John Horhn does come in and I want to advocate for that office,” she said. “I don’t want to diminish what’s going on there and the importance of that work.”
Payne told Mississippi Today that while it had not been long since Coleman left the city, several applicants had already interviewed for the position.
“Her staff is still working, and they’re still doing what they need to do,” Payne said.
But in the email, Coleman alleged that she had recently put one of her two subordinates — Omari’s son, Kuwasi Omari — on a performance improvement plan for “chronic tardiness, absenteeism, incompetence to the role, and failure to complete tasks or submit weekly reports.” Coleman also alleged Omari used her position by “withholding staff hires in order to hire her son.”
Kuwasi Omari, listed online as the office’s community outreach specialist, did not return Mississippi Today’s messages. His 45-day improvement plan was set to end on May 8, Coleman wrote, but the city fired her on May 7.
Responding to this allegation, Omari, whose other son works as a community services coordinator in the city’s department of human and cultural services, said that Kuwasi Omari is responsible for a program the office is running that works with boys at Lanier High School, which involves plans for a community clean-up.
“Let me just say this: It was certainly her right as his director to do that, but contextually I will say that the only real work that has taken place in the office,” Omari said before pausing. “Okay, no, I won’t say that.”
The office will be without a director until at least July 1, when a new mayor comes in, after the city council instituted a hiring freeze Tuesday. Omari said this means that events like the sneaker ball probably won’t happen.
“Having an idea and making statements doesn’t mean that the work to make those things happen has taken place,” Omari said.
The council’s decision to freeze hiring came after WLBT reported the city had hired Lumumba’s former election opponent-turned-campaign supporter in the 2025 Democratic primary, David Archie, a former county supervisor, as a staff assistant to the mayor.
The city also recently brought on Tariq Abdul-Tawwab, a former employee of the third party manager over the city’s water utility, JXN Water, which reportedly fired him in 2023, as a deputy director in the city’s public works department. He was recently described as a director at one JXN Water’s staunchest critics, the nonprofit People’s Advocacy Institute founded by the mayor’s sister and where Abdul-Tawwab’s wife works.
The Office of Violence Prevention and Trauma Recovery was established as an office under the mayor’s executive branch. In response to a recent public records request, the City Clerk told Mississippi Today that the city does not have an overall organizational chart, but provided several departmental organization charts.
The mayor’s office was not among them.
One of the violence prevention office’s goals is to quantify the impact of violence prevention work in Jackson through data. In the press conference earlier this year, Lumumba cited data showing that efforts by local organizations, including credible messenger groups, have ushered in long periods without violence in some of the most troubled areas of the city.
“I don’t have access to that data, as you know Keisha is no longer with us,” Omari said, “so we’re trying to figure out how we’re gonna move forward with the data that has come in, as well as a lot of the data I’m sure is coming directly from JPD, and everybody has access to that.”
Coleman had told Mississippi Today earlier this year that her office was developing a public-facing data dashboard making it easier to examine crime trends and patterns in the city.
The office’s work has been supported by local advocacy organizations, and Horhn previously told Mississippi Today that he did not have plans to close the office.
But under the current administration, Coleman wrote her efforts were not receiving adequate support.
In one example, she alleged that she had repeatedly asked to use empty office space in a city building on North State Street to host events like youth workshops. But in front of the mayor, Omari and Murray told her “no,” Coleman alleged, because that space was going to become Lumumba’s second office.
“This directly denies community of service, support, and resources that would assist in the goal of the OVPTR,” Coleman wrote. “As of today, the space has yet to be used.”
The $50,000 grants that Lumumba announced earlier this year, the first transfers from the office to outside organizations, represent some of its largest expenditures, according to public records obtained by Mississippi Today. As of March, the office had reported spending nearly $430,000 since its inception, the bulk of it categorized under wages and benefits and the credible messenger grants. Coleman alleged that part of the money was used to pay Murray’s salary, “despite providing no operational support.”
The records show it has spent $1,200 on office supplies, $12,000 on travel and nearly $4,000 on data processing equipment, though if the office has conducted crime stats analysis to inform evidenced-based approaches to violence interruption, it has not publicized any such reports.
Coleman urged in her email that the office has remaining sources of funds that are at risk: A little over $200,000 the city council allocated to the office for a youth engagement center, and about $270,000 left from the National League of Cities.
“This is not an attempt to smear this administration,” Coleman wrote in the email. “This is me being proactive because there is over $470,000 of funds out there that someone will have to answer for and I will NOT be thrown under the bus because I’m no longer there to speak for myself.”
Omari said the youth engagement center will open sometime this summer at the currently defunct Mary C. Jones Center that is being rehabilitated with funds from the facilities department. The $202,000, Omari added, will be used for programming.
“I know when I looked a couple months ago, the money hadn’t even been set up in our budget,” Omari said.
The city did provide Coleman with one bit of support, she wrote. But it was apparently fleeting.
“Outside of the one time in March 2024 (that) Tiffany gave me a realm (sic) of copy paper, I’ve purchased, on my own, copy paper, office supplies, flyers, rack cards, brochures, etc. just to have an operational office,” Coleman wrote.
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