‘Aware of our history’: Tiny Mississippi town faces its abusive police

LEXINGTON, Miss. – Justice Department attorneys from Washington and the state capital pulled into a church parking lot in this small town on Thursday, showing hints of smiles beneath stern expressions. The marquee displayed a passage from the Gospel of Luke: “For with God, nothing shall be impossible.”

In the same church banquet hall where Justice officials met with residents last year to announce an investigation into the town’s police department, they passed out the fruits of more than 10 months of their labor: copies of a 45-page document that spelled out, in chilling detail, the civil rights abuses allegedly committed by the people who had been sworn to protect the town.

On another sheet of paper, the Justice Department boiled down its findings.

The police department, the document read, “arrests, jails, and detains people who cannot pay fines or fees, without assessing their ability to pay,” uses excessive force, subjects residents to “stops, searches, and arrests without probable cause,” fails to provide arrestees with “prompt access to court,” retaliates against free speech, sexually harasses women and discriminates against Black people, among other accusations.

More than 40 Lexington residents sat at tables and listened to Todd Gee, the United States Attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, present the findings. Many of those in attendance were the first to blow the whistle on the police department’s alleged abuses. They clapped modestly after he finished presenting, aware the process of reforming the Lexington Police was only beginning.

Getting here was an act of faith on the part of the dozens of people who interviewed with investigators or encouraged others to do so, residents and their advocates said. Locals in this town of about 1,200 people were afraid police would learn about them talking to the federal investigators – a situation far less common in the much larger jurisdictions in which the Justice Department more typically investigates police.

If Lexington’s officers saw residents speaking with investigators in public places, or caught wind of their involvement, they would retaliate by pulling them over and arresting them, victims told advocates and investigators. The Justice Department found that in 2023, “Black people were 17.6 times more likely to be arrested by LPD than white people were.”

“It’s sobering,” Gee, who was born in Vicksburg, Mississippi, said of residents’ reluctance to talk. “In Mississippi, all of us are aware of our history. And that history involves law enforcement corruption and abuse. It makes a lot of people afraid to come forward and tell their stories. We had to do a lot of work to make sure that folks felt comfortable talking to us.”

Some people refused to meet in public, preferring that federal investigators sit down with them in homes situated deep in Lexington’s woods, down winding dirt roads, or in neighboring towns around Holmes County. Others declined to meet in person, preferring phone interviews with an advocate also on the line. Many declined to meet at all.

Attorney Jill Collen Jefferson, whose civil rights organization, JULIAN, has twice filed suit against the city and the police department on behalf of alleged victims, said about 10 former Lexington officers who shared information with her later spoke with Justice Department investigators. Some had left the department after being accused of civil rights abuses.

Cardell Wright, president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, said he started trying to help the investigation in November, working his way down a list of more than 40 names of potential witnesses. Wright said 17 of the people he spoke with agreed to cooperate with investigators, including a war veteran who said Lexington Police detained him in the back of a patrol vehicle on a warm day and turned up the heat in the vehicle, inducing chest pains and PTSD.

Wright told the man: “I’m working on something big that’s going to change everything in Lexington.”

“First, we had to convince a number of people that the DOJ was not here to hurt us. Then people didn’t want to be seen talking to them,” said Wright, 33, of Durant, Miss. “And beyond that, there was this feeling that nothing the DOJ could do would make a difference to begin with.”

The Justice Department announced the results of its investigation on Thursday. After Gee summarized the findings that night at the church, investigators hosted small-group discussions with residents to hear their immediate concerns and discuss next steps.

Women in nursing scrubs, men in worn leather boots and high school students still in their crimson school uniforms complained that the city’s official meetings remain largely closed to the public and citizen input is restricted. They told of dysfunction in the local courts and biased judges. They said written complaints to the police department regarding officer misconduct remained unanswered.

Most Justice Department investigations into police departments result in court-binding consent decrees that require broad changes to police training, accountability and policies under the oversight of a federal monitor.

The future of the Lexington department’s police reform efforts, however, could hinge on the outcome of the upcoming presidential election. The administration of former president Donald Trump, the Republican nominee, sought to end the use of consent decrees and reduce federal intervention into local policing.

Consent decrees have typically lasted between five and 10 years, sometimes longer, in larger jurisdictions, at a cost to the cities of up to several million dollars a year. The small size of Lexington’s police department will mitigate some of those costs.

Willie J. Granderson, 66, said Thursday night that the Lexington department is not the only one in Holmes County with problematic policing. Officers in nearby Tchula arrested him recently for public profanity and loitering, he said. He said he spent a night in jail and has paid more than $1,100 in fees and fines.

“It’s not just here in Lexington,” Granderson said. “It’s a shame it wasn’t the whole county.”

Investigators, speaking more candidly after the release of the findings report, shared with residents their incredulity at the behavior of the Lexington department during the investigation. They said they witnessed civil rights abuses firsthand, and concluded that Lexington’s officers either didn’t know the law, or didn’t mind federal investigators seeing them break it.

Lexington City Attorney Katherine Barrett Riley said in a statement Thursday that the city plans “to work diligently with the DOJ to cure any deficiencies or make any necessary changes.”

In February, Gee and Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s civil rights division, sent Riley a letter asking the city to immediately remedy abuses including the practice of “jailing people for outstanding fines without assessing their ability to pay.” Justice officials said city leaders responded by making changes to police department policies and practices, but more are needed.

Residents told federal officials Thursday that the abuses are so commonplace, and the city’s leadership so entrenched, they worry that nothing will change.

Zelpha Whatley, a great grandmother who hosts a popular radio show in town, warned Gee the findings would not sway the community’s wealthy, White power brokers.

“If every Black person in Holmes County rises up and says, ‘We’re not gonna live like this anymore,’ we will have an agreement,” Whatley said in an interview. “But it’s not that simple here. We refuse to leave the Jim Crow era. Black folk are afraid to come out and stand up to this.

“And I just wanted the DOJ to know that you’re going to have to pull out the big guns.”

Three hours after the meeting began, residents and attorneys said goodbyes, hugged, stepped into cars and drove Lexington roads that appeared to be absent of police. At the police station, a lone staff member was at the front desk.

Behind him, written in black marker on a homemade poster, read a passage from The Epistle to the Ephesians: “Be strong in the Lord and in his mighty power. Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes.”

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David Nakamura in Washington contributed to this report.