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.