Lawsuit: Mississippi police ‘terrorized’ a small town

JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Police have “terrorized” black residents in a small Mississippi town by subjecting them to false arrests, excessive force and intimidation, according to a federal lawsuit filed Tuesday by a civil rights organization.

The organization, JULIAN, is seeking a temporary restraining order against the Lexington Police Department to demand protection for the city’s majority black population. Lexington is about 63 miles (100 kilometers) north of the capital city of Jackson.

“It is unconscionable and illegal for Lexington residents to be terrified and live in fear of the police department whose job it is to protect them,” said Jill Collen Jefferson, president and founder of JULIAN. “We need both the courts and the Justice Department to intervene immediately.”

The city’s city attorney did not immediately respond to a request for comment. The city’s interim police chief, Charles Henderson, disputed many of the allegations in response to an email request for comment from The Associated Press.

“I am working to move the Lexington Police Department forward,” Henderson said. “I will say, don’t buy everything you hear. This is defamation of character.”

The lawsuit comes after JULIAN said he obtained an audio recording in July of then-Lexington Police Chief Sam Dobbins using racial slurs and talking about how many people he had killed in the line of duty. News organizations and a lawmaker who said he knows both the former boss and the interim boss said Dobbins is white and Henderson is black.

Dobbins denied making the insults, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which first reported the recording. The AP was unable to find Dobbins’ contact information.

Robert Lee Hooker, a black police officer who later resigned from the department, told JULIAN and later the AP that he made the recording.

Willie March, the sheriff of the county where Lexington is located, told the AP that he worked with Dobbins for about two years and “had no doubt” that Dobbins is the person on the recording.

The Lexington Board of Aldermen voted 3-2 to expel Dobbins days after the recording surfaced. Henderson was named acting boss.

The suit seeks unspecified compensatory damages and asks the court to require Lexington to establish an independent civil complaints review board that would investigate complaints from the public against the police department for abuse of authority.

“The Lexington Police Department operates within a culture of corruption and lawlessness, routinely and daily subjecting Black citizens to assault, harassment, and brutality, including violence, in violation of their constitutional rights,” the lawsuit reads.

Lexington’s population of 1,602 is approximately 80% black, according to the US Census Bureau. The lawsuit calls Lexington “a small, deeply segregated town” in one of the poorest counties in the nation.

On the recording, Dobbins says that he has killed 13 people during his career and repeatedly uses insults to describe people. At one point, he uses the n-word when referring to someone he said he shot 119 times.

Citing specific confrontations last year and this year, the lawsuit alleges that members of the police department made false arrests, used excessive force, and conducted unreasonable searches and seizures. JULIAN said that more than 200 black citizens have formally or informally complained of being harassed, arrested or fined for unfounded reasons in the last year or so.

Allegations from within the department are also cited in the lawsuit. An officer reported seeing Dobbins kick a handcuffed suspect in the head. Others reported seeing officers pull civilians out of the back of patrol cars and “viciously beat them,” the lawsuit says.

The lawsuit also alleges that police retaliated against members of the black community who spoke out at a meeting to discuss complaints with the department.

While most of the incidents occurred when Dobbins was chief, the plaintiffs said interim chief Henderson is also unfit to lead the force. According to the lawsuit, Henderson assaulted a tow truck driver who had been called to take the car of Peter Reeves, a man Henderson had arrested and charged with a misdemeanor for not having auto insurance and illegally tinting his car windows. .

70-year-old tow truck driver Jerry Farmer told the AP that Henderson rammed him into Reeves’ car twice after the men argued about whether the car could be immediately taken to Reeves’ home.

Reeves said that from his vantage point sitting in the back of a patrol car, he could see Henderson pressing Farmer against the car and suffocating him.

“I mean, this guy is crazy. I saw it with my own eyes,” she said.

The lawsuit also alleges that residents had to pay excessive fines. Reeves’ mother, Sherri Reeves, told the AP on Monday that she ended up paying more than $600 in fines.

“We are a poor county, one of the poorest in the nation. These exorbitant fines take over people,” he said.

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Michael Goldberg is a staff member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercover issues. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/mikergoldberg.

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