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Justice Department says Mississippi town violates residents’ rights

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-09-26 13:12:53

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.

Civil rights attorney Jill Collen Jefferson Credit: Courtesy of Jill Collen Jefferson

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.

Mississippi Today

An ad supporting Jenifer Branning finds imaginary liberals on the Mississippi Supreme Court

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mississippitoday.org – Bobby Harrison – 2024-11-24 06:00:00

The Improve Mississippi PAC claims in advertising that the state Supreme Court “is in danger of being dominated by liberal justices” unless Jenifer Branning is elected in Tuesday’s runoff.

Improve Mississippi made the almost laughable claim in both radio commercials and mailers that were sent to homes in the court’s central district, where a runoff election will be held on Tuesday.

Improve Mississippi is an independent, third party political action committee created to aid state Sen. Jenifer Branning of Neshoba County in her efforts to defeat longtime Central District Supreme Court Justice Jim Kitchens of Copiah County.

The PAC should receive an award or at least be considered for an honor for best fiction writing.

At least seven current members of the nine-member Supreme Court would be shocked to know anyone considered them liberal.

It is telling that the ads do not offer any examples of “liberal” Supreme Court opinions issued by the current majority. It is even more telling that there have been no ads by Improve Mississippi or any other group citing the liberal dissenting opinions written or joined by Kitchens.

Granted, it is fair and likely accurate to point out that Branning is more conservative than Kitchens. After all, Branning is considered one of the more conservative members of a supermajority Republican Mississippi Senate.

As a member of the Senate, for example, she voted against removing the Confederate battle emblem from the Mississippi state flag, opposed Medicaid expansion and an equal pay bill for women.

And if she is elected to the state Supreme Court in Tuesday’s runoff election, she might be one of the panel’s more conservative members. But she will be surrounded by a Supreme Court bench full of conservatives.

A look at the history of the members of the Supreme Court might be helpful.

Chief Justice Michael Randolph originally was appointed to the court by Republican Gov. Haley Barbour, who is credited with leading the effort to make the Republican Party dominant in Mississippi. Before Randolph was appointed by Barbour, he served a stint on the National Coal Council — appointed to the post by President Ronald Reagan who is considered an icon in the conservative movement.

Justices James Maxwell, Dawn Beam, David Ishee and Kenneth Griffis were appointed by Republican Gov. Phil Bryant.

Only three members of the current court were not initially appointed to the Supreme Court by conservative Republican governors: Kitchens, Josiah Coleman and Robert Chamberlin. All three got their initial posts on the court by winning elections for full eight-year terms.

But Chamberlin, once a Republican state senator from Southaven, was appointed as a circuit court judge by Barbour before winning his Supreme Court post. And Coleman was endorsed in his election effort by both the Republican Party and by current Republican Gov. Tate Reeves, who also contributed to his campaign.

Only Kitchens earned a spot on the court without either being appointed by a Republican governor or being endorsed by the state Republican Party.

The ninth member of the court is Leslie King, who, like Kitchens, is viewed as not as conservative as the other seven justices. King, former chief judge on the Mississippi Court of Appeals, was originally appointed to the Supreme Court by Barbour, who to his credit made the appointment at least in part to ensure that a Black Mississippian remained on the nine-member court.

It should be noted that Beam was defeated on Nov. 5 by David Sullivan, a Gulf Coast municipal judge who has a local reputation for leaning conservative. Even if Sullivan is less conservative when he takes his new post in January, there still be six justices on the Supreme Court with strong conservative bonafides, not counting what happens in the Branning-Kitchens runoff.

Granted, Kitchens is next in line to serve as chief justice should Randolph, who has been on the court since 2004, step down. The longest tenured justice serves as the chief justice.

But to think that Kitchens as chief justice would be able to exert enough influence to force the other longtime conservative members of the court to start voting as liberals is even more fiction.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1968

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-24 07:00:00

Nov. 24, 1968

Credit: Wikipedia

Black Panther leader Eldridge Cleaver fled the U.S. to avoid imprisonment on a parole violation. He wrote in “Soul on Ice”: “If a man like Malcolm X could change and repudiate racism, if I myself and other former Muslims can change, if young whites can change, then there is hope for America.” 

The Arkansas native began to be incarcerated when he was still in junior high and soon read about Malcolm X. He began writing his own essays, drawing the praise of Norman Mailer and others. That work helped him win parole in 1966. His “Soul on Ice” memoir, written from Folsom state prison, described his journey from selling marijuana to following Malcolm X. The book he wrote became a seminal work in Black literature, and he became a national figure. 

Cleaver soon joined the Black Panther Party, serving as the minister of information. After a Panther shootout with police that left him injured, one Panther dead and two officers wounded, he jumped bail and fled the U.S. In 1977, after an unsuccessful suicide attempt, he returned to the U.S. pleaded guilty to a reduced charge of assault and served 1,200 hours of community service. 

From that point forward, “Mr. Cleaver metamorphosed into variously a born-again Christian, a follower of the Rev. Sun Myung Moon, a Mormon, a crack cocaine addict, a designer of men’s trousers featuring a codpiece and even, finally, a Republican,” The New York Times wrote in his 1998 obituary. His wife said he was suffering from mental illness and never recovered.

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

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Mississippi Today

On this day in 1867

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mississippitoday.org – Jerry Mitchell – 2024-11-23 07:00:00

Nov. 23, 1867

Extract from the Reconstructed Constitution of the State of Louisiana, 1868. Credit: Library of Congress

The Louisiana Constitutional Convention, composed of 49 White delegates and 49 Black delegates, met in New Orleans. The new constitution became the first in the state’s history to include a bill of rights. 

The document gave property rights to married women, funded public education without segregated schools, provided full citizenship for Black Americans, and eliminated the Black Codes of 1865 and property qualifications for officeholders. 

The voters ratified the constitution months later. Despite the document, prejudice and corruption continued to reign in Louisiana, and when Reconstruction ended, the constitution was replaced with one that helped restore the rule of white supremacy.

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

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