Police in this small, majority-Black Southern city abuse Black people, Justice Department finds

WASHINGTON —  Police in a majority-Black Mississippi city discriminate against Black people, use excessive force and retaliate against critics, the U.S. Justice Department said in a scathing report detailing a slew of civil rights abuses by law enforcement in one of America’s poorest counties.

The Lexington Police Department “has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law,” according to the Justice Department, which found a stunning pattern of racially disparate policing and harassment in the rural town of about 1,200 people, about 76% of whom are Black.

The report released Thursday paints a picture of a police department that has routinely violated the rights of residents with impunity, using arrests for low-level offenses to generate money for the police force and leaving people to languish behind bars if they couldn’t afford to pay fines. Officers also sexually harassed women and threatened people with force or arrest if they challenged law enforcement, according to the report.

“Today’s findings show that the Lexington Police Department abandoned its sacred position of trust in the community by routinely violating the constitutional rights of those it was sworn to protect,” Atty. Gen. Merrick Garland said.

An employee who answered the phone at the Lexington Police Department, which is in Holmes County, told the Associated Press that Chief Charles Henderson was not immediately available to comment on the report.

Investigators traced a stark uptick in racial disparities back to an intentional change in police tactics overseen by the Police Department’s former chief, who was fired after using racial slurs and talking about how many people he had killed on duty. Under that former chief, Sam Dobbins, who is white, Lexington police officers dramatically increased arrests for low-level offenses.

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Over the last two years, the Lexington Police Department has made nearly one arrest for every four people in town, the Justice Department found. That is more than 10 times the per capita arrest rate for Mississippi as a whole, they added. Many of the arrests were for low-level offenses such as owing outstanding fines and using profanity. And most of those arrested are Black people.

The odds that a person arrested by Lexington police officers was Black would climb by 125%. After routinely arresting people for low-level violations, officers left them behind bars until they could pay a fine, the Justice Department found.

One man was jailed four days because he refilled a cup of coffee at a gas station while paying for only one cup. Another woman was arrested and chained to a bench at a police station for parking in a space reserved for people with disabilities, according to the report.

Police also used excessive force and disproportionately targeted Black people for arrests, investigators also found. Black people committing traffic offenses were arrested while white people committing similar traffic offenses were not, officials said.

Investigators reviewed body-camera video to review racial disparities in the use of force, finding that officers repeatedly use force against Black people but never against a white person.

Lexington residents owe police $1.7 million in fines, and the city court has issued bench warrants authorizing the arrest of more than 650 people — roughly half of the city’s population — because of unpaid fines, Assistant Atty. Gen. Kristen Clarke told reporters.

“In America, being poor is not a crime,” Clarke said. “But in Lexington, their practices punish people for poverty.”

Investigators also found officers used Tasers like a “cattle-prod” to punish people and punched or kicked people who were unarmed and handcuffed. In one case, an officer kicked an unarmed Black man so hard that he wet himself. The officer told the dispatcher: “I didn’t give two f— about his civil rights,” the report says.

The Justice Department’s investigation and report followed the filing of a federal lawsuit in 2022 by residents who accused police of “terrorizing” people through false arrests, intimidation and other abuses.

It also followed the June 2023 arrest of Jill Collen Jefferson, the president of JULIAN, the civil rights organization that filed the lawsuit. The organization had previously obtained an audio recording of Dobbins that led to his firing.

Jefferson said that she has documented police abuses in Lexington for years, but that state officials failed to take action. The prospect of change looked grim until Clarke launched the Justice Department’s investigation, Jefferson said.

“I feel an intense amount of gratitude for Kristen Clarke,” Jefferson said. “We had to go to highest levels of the Department of Justice to get justice for this community. And I’m grateful that they listened.

“It shows that it doesn’t matter how tiny your town is, that your life matters. Finally, the day has come where the truth has come out.”

According to the Justice Department, racial disparities in arrests continued to increase under Henderson, who is Black. In 2019, Black people were 2.5 times more likely to be arrested by Lexington police officers than white people. By 2023, after Dobbins’ departure, Black people were almost 18 times more likely to be arrested.

In June, Jefferson, who is Black, was arrested after recording a traffic stop by Lexington police officers. The arrest came nine days after Clarke had traveled to Lexington to meet with people about alleged police misconduct.

Democratic state Rep. Bryant Clark, whose district includes Lexington, said Thursday that he periodically hears complaints about the Police Department.

The Justice Department has said the inquiry into Lexington is part of a broader effort to crack down on unconstitutional policing at small and midsize police departments and in underserved regions throughout the South.

Last week, it announced it was opening a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi, six of whose officers were convicted in the torture of two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.

“Gone are the days when rural isolation and remoteness could conceal the injustice of unconstitutional policing,” said Todd Gee, the U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi. Addressing other police departments in the country, Gee said: “Make changes now if your agency is policing in these same unlawful ways.”

Richer and Goldberg write for the Associated Press and reported from Washington and Minneapolis, respectively. AP writer Emily Wagster Pettus in Jackson, Miss., contributed to this report.