Lexington Police Department engaged in excessive force, illegal searches and sexual harassment, the Justice Department concluded in a report released Thursday.

 “Lexington is a small, rural community but its police department has had a heavy hand in people’s lives, wreaking havoc through use of excessive force, racially discriminatory policing, retaliation, and more,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division said in a press conference Thursday.

She said these police officers in Lexington “routinely make illegal arrests, use brutal and unnecessary force, and punish people for their poverty — including by jailing people who cannot afford to pay fines or money bail. For too long, the Lexington Police Department has been playing by its own rules and operating with impunity — it’s time for this to end.”

The 47-page report discusses excessive force, searches without legal cause and sexual harassment of women. It also discusses the unlawful jailing of those who owe fines or can’t afford bond.

The Justice Department’s investigation also “uncovered that Lexington police officers have engaged in a pattern or practice of discriminating against the city‘s Black residents, used excessive force, and retaliated against those who criticize them,” said Attorney General Merrick Garland.

He also criticized the town’s approach to fines and fees by arresting and jailing people who can’t pay fines. “Being poor is not a crime, but practices like these amount to punishing people for poverty,” he said. “People in that community deserve better, and the Justice Department is committed to working with them, the City, and the Police Department to make the City safer for all its citizens.”

Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said that “public safety depends on public confidence in our justice system,” and that has been undermined by these civil rights violations.

U.S. Attorney Todd Gee for the Southern District of Mississippi compared the Lexington jail to the debtors’ prison in Charles Dickens’ novels.

Police have the authority to enforce the law, but they shouldn’t “act as debt collectors for the city, extracting payments from the poor with threats of jail,” he said. “No matter how large or small, every police department has an obligation to follow the Constitution.”

For instance, he said, police arrested a local man who was fined $224 for public profanity and had to pay $140 before they would release him from custody.

Another man was jailed for four days because he refilled his coffee without paying for a second cup. Another was jailed for two weeks for stealing packets of sugar from a gas station. His bail? $1,249, which he couldn’t afford.

Police have imposed $1.7 million in fines in one of the nation’s most impoverished areas, he said. “That’s $1,400 for every man, woman and child in town.”

Overall, Black residents, who make up 75% of the population, are 17.6 times more likely to be arrested than white people, he said.

He harkened back to six decades ago when people were arrested in Holmes County for their involvement in the civil rights movement.

In 2022, then-Lexington Police Chief Sam Dobbins was caught on an audio recording using racist and homophobic slurs. He bragged that he had killed 13 people in the line of duty, shooting “one n—- 119 times.”

He was fired the next day, and a Black police chief replaced him.

Despite that, the discriminatory practices that Dobbins initiated “continued unabated,” Clarke said.

Abuses by Lexington police have included using stun guns “like a cattle prod,” she said. One Black man, already being held down by three officers, was Tased eight times, and another was shocked 18 times until he was covered in his own vomit.

Clarke said one in every four Lexington residents have been arrested by police, and some of those are being arrested in retaliation for criticizing police or filming them.

One of those was Jill Collen Jefferson, whose legal nonprofit, JULIAN, has filed two lawsuits on behalf of Black residents accusing the police of mistreating them, was jailed June 10, 2023, after filming a traffic stop from her car on a public street.

The misdemeanor charges against her — resisting arrest, disorderly conduct, failure to comply and blocking a public roadway for filming a traffic stop — were eventually dismissed.

Jefferson applauded the department, praised the survivors’ courage and called the findings an “incredible victory.” She vowed to work with the National Police Accountability Project to help bring reforms to Lexington and other police departments across the nation.

Clarke said both the city and police officials are cooperating with them to make reforms. Lexington police have yet to comment on the report.

Clarke noted that half of America’s police departments have 10 or fewer officers. Lexington has 10.

“No city or town is too large or too small,” she said, for the Justice Department “to safeguard the rights that every American enjoys.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Sept. 26, 1899

William Levi Dawson was born in Anniston, Alabama. He ran away from home when he was 13 to attend Tuskegee Institute. He supported himself through jobs and performed in Tuskegee’s band and orchestra. He continued to study music and graduated in 1927 from the American Conservatory of Music with a master’s degree in composition. 

His wife, Cornella, died within the first year of their 1928 marriage, and he found solace in music. He composed music in the European tradition before relying on his African roots to write symphonies. 

“I’ve not tried to imitate Beethoven or Brahms, Franck or Ravel, but to just be myself,” he told the Chicago Defender. “To me, the finest compliment that could be paid my symphony when it has its premiere is that is unmistakably is not the work of a white man. I want the audience to say, ‘Only a Black man could have written that.’” 

He wrote what others called spirituals, and he called folk songs. “We have got to know and treat them as folk songs, because they contain the best that’s in us,” he said. “All the nations prize their folks’ songs.” 

He led the 100-voice Tuskegee Choir, which proved so talented that they sang for the grand opening of Radio City Music Hall in 1932. The choir performed for the White House, and in 1946, broke the race barrier at Constitutional Hall, becoming the first Black Americans to perform there. 

In 1952, Dawson visited seven countries in west Africa to study indigenous music there. His symphonies drew worldwide attention, and churches sang his spirituals such as “Ezekiel Saw the Wheel” and “King Jesus Is a-Listening.” Inducted into the Alabama Music Hall of Fame before his death in 1990, his legacy persists through the internationally acclaimed Tuskegee Golden Voices Choir.

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland met Wednesday with law enforcement officials in Mississippi, days after the Justice Department announced it was widening its investigation into a local sheriff’s office where a group of deputies known as the “Goon Squad” has been accused of brutalizing residents for two decades.

He called the Goon Squad’s acts “a betrayal of their community, a betrayal of their profession and a betrayal of their fellow officers.”

Rankin County came to national attention last year after officers from a self-described “Goon Squad” tortured two Black men in their home and shot one of them, nearly killing him. Six officers were sentenced to federal prison in March, and last week, the Justice Department announced a probe into the county’s policing practices.

Garland’s visit was part of a tour he said he is making to each state as attorney general, and  reiterated the Justice Department’s commitment to working with local officials, deputies and the community to conduct a comprehensive investigation into violations of civil rights committed by law enforcement. 

He also discussed various efforts by the Justice Department throughout the state, including their work to reduce violent crime, curb interstate drug trafficking and investigate police departments accused of misconduct. 

He touted the Justice Department’s convictions of drug traffickers funneling narcotics from California to Mississippi and $300,000 in funding to enhance the state’s forensic science capabilities.

He credited the department’s work with helping to reduce homicides by nearly 12% across the U.S.

After addressing the press, he spoke with representatives from federal agencies along with the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, the Jackson Police Department, the Department of Public Safety for the Mississippi Band of Choctaw Indians, as well as sheriffs from Hinds, Warren, Lauderdale, Adams and Harrison counties.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who has denied any knowledge of the Goon Squad’s operations, was not among those present.

Justice Department investigators are seeking to determine if the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional policing through widespread violence, illegal searches and arrests or other discriminatory practices.

This review, known as a pattern or practice investigation, is expected to probe department records and practices to determine whether the agency has allowed routine abuses to occur. The investigation would not seek criminal charges for individual officers, but could result in a lawsuit against the department designed to force reforms and federal monitoring.

An investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today detailed the stories of nearly two dozen residents who said that Rankin deputies had burst into their homes, restrained the residents and brutalized them in search of illegal drugs.

According to dozens of interviews with victims and witnesses, the deputies waterboarded people, beat them and used Tasers to shock them in the groin and face. The accusations are supported by medical records, photographs of injuries and department records tracking deputy Taser use.

At least 20 Rankin County deputies were present during these incidents, reporters found, including the former undersheriff, high-ranking detectives and a deputy who later became a local police chief. 

Five deputies and a local police officer were convicted for their role in torturing Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker last year, but so far, no other deputies have been criminally charged.

In a statement on Facebook last week, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department wrote that it would “fully cooperate with all aspects of this investigation, while also welcoming DOJ’s input into our updated policies and practices.”

The Rankin County NAACP is collecting signatures for a petition calling on the governor to remove Mr. Bailey from the office. Rankin County NAACP chapter president Angela English said they are close to the nearly 30,000 signatures required.

“He has allowed his deputies to carry out criminal activities without any repercussions,” she said. “In any other leadership capacity, someone would have lost their job or accepted responsibility for their actions and resigned. He has done neither.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.