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Mississippi Town Sued After Its Former Police Chief Bragged About Killing Black People

By Phillip Jackson

A civ­il rights group is ask­ing for a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into “sys­temic, con­doned racism” in a small town where 86% of the pop­u­la­tion is Black.

A civ­il rights advo­ca­cy orga­ni­za­tion on Tuesday filed a law­suit against the town of Lexington, Mississippi, and called for a fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion into what it described as “sys­temic, con­doned racism” from the town’s gov­ern­ment and police department. 
The law­suit details past exam­ples of police vio­lence and mis­con­duct against Black res­i­dents. JULIAN, the orga­ni­za­tion that filed the suit in the U.S. District Court of Southern Mississippi, said the inci­dents high­light a top-down issue of racism in a town where most res­i­dents are Black and most peo­ple in lead­er­ship posi­tions are white.

“According to data com­piled by JULIAN and ACLU-Mississippi, the LPD has cus­tom­ar­i­ly vio­lat­ed the First, Fourth, and Fourteenth Amendments, the fun­da­men­tal right to trav­el freely, and the Civil Rights Act,” the law­suit alleges. “Over 200 Black cit­i­zens have for­mal­ly or infor­mal­ly com­plained about being harassed, arrest­ed, or fined for base­less rea­sons in the past year or so.”

JULIAN filed the suit after record­ings sur­faced of Sam Dobbins, who was police chief in the town at the time, using racial and homo­pho­bic slurs and brag­ging about killing mul­ti­ple peo­ple as a police offi­cer. The town’s Board of Aldermen vot­ed 3 – 2 to remove Dobbins from his role after the record­ing sur­faced, and he was fired on July 20.

In the record­ing, Dobbins describes shoot­ing a Black man in a corn­field as “jus­ti­fied, bro.”

“I shot that n****r 119 times, OK?” he says in the exple­tive-laden record­ing that also includes the state­ment: “I don’t talk to fuck­ing queers, I don’t talk to fuck­ing f****ts.”

Dobbins also tells an offi­cer in the record­ing that he had killed 13 peo­ple in his career, and that he was proud of the fact that the Lexington com­mu­ni­ty “fears” him, accord­ing to the lawsuit

JULIAN is request­ing that the court issue a tem­po­rary restrain­ing order against the Lexington Police Department to stop offi­cers from “threat­en­ing, coerc­ing, harass­ing, assault­ing or inter­fer­ing” with res­i­dents’ con­sti­tu­tion­al rights. The order would require the depart­ment to over­haul many of its poli­cies relat­ed to polic­ing, includ­ing those per­tain­ing to exces­sive force and traf­fic stops, and the city to estab­lish a civil­ian law enforce­ment review board.

Black res­i­dents make up about 86% of Lexington, a town of less than 1,800 peo­ple. In its law­suit, JULIAN calls the town “tiny and deeply seg­re­gat­ed,” and says it is “con­trolled” by a wealthy white fam­i­ly, as well as a white may­or, for­mer police chief, city judge and city attorney.

“Every sin­gle branch of gov­ern­ment is con­trolled by white peo­ple in a town that is 86% black,” Jill Collen Jefferson, the pres­i­dent and founder of JULIAN, told HuffPost. “This is Jim Crow at its finest. What I want peo­ple to see is that this nev­er ever stopped.”

The law­suit fur­ther alleges Lexington police retal­i­at­ed against Black com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers after a meet­ing where cit­i­zens met to speak about their griev­ances against the depart­ment on April 7. The meeting’s most “out­spo­ken” par­tic­i­pants — Robert Harris and Darius Harris — were arrest­ed after the meet­ing, the law­suit reads.

“The retal­i­a­tion and base­less arrests that Plaintiffs Robert and Darius Harris expe­ri­enced are con­sis­tent with how LPD treats any Black res­i­dent who stands up for them­selves, speaks out, or dares to live their lives in Lexington. In fact, Plaintiffs Robert and Darius Harris had been false­ly arrest­ed in retal­i­a­tion for oppos­ing police harass­ment in the past,” the suit says

The law­suit fur­ther alleges that between 2021 and 2022, many oth­er Black res­i­dents were false­ly arrest­ed, forced to under­go “base­less” search­es and seizures, and were sub­ject­ed to “unrea­son­able” force by Lexington cops if they spoke out against their arrest.

The Lexington Police Department did not respond to requests for com­ment on the lawsuit.