Just over a week ago the Satanic Temple, unwavering disciples of the Prince of Darkness and aspiring adopt-a-highway participants, performed a Pink Mass over the grave of Catherine Idalette Johnston, the mother of Westboro Baptist Church founder Fred Phelps Jr. Westboro has yet to officially comment on the eternal gaying of its leader’s dead mom, but the owner of the cemetery where the ceremony was performed has filed charges with the local police department. The captain of the Meridian PD, Dean Harper, told local news station WTOK-TV that they are “in the process of constructing affidavits” and “will have [the satanists] arrested as soon as [they] can.” He added, "It is an unusual crime that we haven't come across—to my knowledge—in a while." Lol.
If this sort of case was thrown onto the desk of another small town police department, one that, say, was located in a community with few serious crimes, it would be fine for the department to pursue what is, essentially, an exercise in the misuse of police time and energy. People—including police officers—get bored and need something to occupy their time. Meridian, unfortunately, is not one of those sleepy towns.
According to Neighborhood Scout, a website owned by a research and data-mining company that collects crime statistics from around the country, Meridian is—and I’m paraphrasing here—sketchy as fuck. Based on a crime index of 0 to 100—100 being a crime-free utopia and 0 being the inside of one of Trevino Morales' vats of acid—Meridian gets a four. By way of comparison, Brooklyn, New York, clocks in at 40. Detroit, one of the most dangerous cities in America, is a two.
One would think that a town with a population of 41,115 and a crime index rating almost on par with a city that has become a byword for blight and criminal activity would take a pass on devoting time and resources to chasing a few out-of-towners who performed a harmless little Satanic ceremony in a graveyard. After all, the Satanic Temple and its members are based in New York, meaning—as the Huffington Post and the Gauntlet have mentioned—an arrest for charges filed in Mississippi is unlikely.
Image may be NSFW.
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Photos from the gaying of Fred Phelps' mom at Magnolia Cemetery.
Another statistic of interest concerning the Meridian Police Department is the number of officers they employ. If they were understaffed due to city budget issues their stratospheric crime rate might be understandable. As of 2011, however, the department had 109 full-time law enforcement employees, 98 of them officers. Hate to go all stat-nerd over here, but that comes out to 2.37 police officers per 1,000 people. The Mississippi average is two officers per 1,000 residents. Why, then, was the violent crime rate in Meridian in 2010 higher than the Mississippi average by 89.29 percent? Could be because the department spends its time doing stupid shit like chasing Satanists from New York City.
I reached out to Captian Harper for comment, but he has not returned my call.
When I asked Lucien Greaves, the Satanic Temple’s spokesperson, via email whether or not they had to jump a fence or if there were any "no trespassing" signs around, he told me “There were no gates, no ‘no trespassing’ signs, no hours of appropriate visiting times posted at Magnolia Cemetery. Further, at the time we arrived there were other people wandering the grounds, apparently without fear of arrest. The fact is, we were visiting an open cemetery, during the daytime, with no indication that visitors were unwelcomed. We caused no material damage to anything, and the cemetery was left exactly as it was when we entered it.”
It should be mentioned that one of the charges leveled at Lucien and the Temple is indecent exposure (the other two are tresspassing and malicious mischief). That one was brought about from a photo of Lucien teabagging Catherine Johnston's grave, which can be seen here.
Image may be NSFW.
Clik here to view.
On the off chance the Meridian PD extradites Lucien from New York, I asked him if there were any spells he could cast on the officers to turn them gay like the spirit of Fred Phelp’s mom. “I predict that if I were to be arrested and extradited to Mississippi,” he wrote, “my very presence would raise unholy psychological Hell among the sheriff and his colleagues. Just as medieval demon panics gave rise to episodes in which repressed people took the opportunity to act out in mindless abandon—exonerated from their own deeds by the idea of 'possession'—I believe it quite possible that I could find myself in a holding cell witnessing the Meridian Police devolve into a sweaty, grunting, savage orgy of uncaged homosexuality... all influenced by the idea that they were utterly powerless against my sexual conversion magic. Perhaps they are merely looking for such a scapegoat.”
And not for nothing, but Magnolia cemetery seems to have a great deal of respect for the members of our armed services. Their Facebook page isn’t updated very often, but the vast majority of posts are dedicated to their annual “Memorial Day Program,” which, in years past, has involved a dove release and a flag retirement (they buried it and everything). Now obviously you can be sympathetic to our fallen soldiers and dislike Satanists at the same time, but pressing charges against a group of people who were protesting, in their own small way, against the Westboro Baptist Church, an organization notorious for picketing the funerals of dead soldiers, seems like a conflict of interest.
Previously - Satanists Want to Turn the Founder of the Westboro Baptist Church's Dead Mom Gay