‘Relentlessly Violate the Law’: Mississippi Police Department Where Chief Bragged About Killing a ‘N—-r 119 Times’ Has Arrested a Fourth of Its Mostly Black Population, DOJ Says

A Mississippi town that made headlines when a recording of its police chief bragging about shooting a Black man 119 times went viral is now the subject of a damning new report from the U.S. Department of Justice alleging widespread civil rights violations. Lexington police have arrested roughly a fourth of the town’s population since 2021 and levied fines of more than $1.7 million over that period, the& the DOJ revealed Thursday following a nearly one-year investigation.& That accounts to about $1,400 for every man, woman and child in the Delta town of 1,200 residents located in one of the poorest counties in the nation. The money was used to fund the police department. From 2021 to 2023, Lexington increased spending on police from $662,925 to $965,130. A Lexington Police Department patrol car. (Facebook/Lexington Police Department) “Lexington has turned the jail into the kinds of debtors’ prisons Charles Dickens described in his novels written in the 1800s,” U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Todd Gee said. Black residents, who make up 76 percent of the town’s population, were specifically targeted, the DOJ said, and arrested for minor offenses such as profanity. That comes as no surprise, considering Lexington’s...