The city of Lexington, Miss., has fewer than 1,500 residents and only 10 police officers. But it prompted a 47-page report by the U.S. Justice Department’s civil rights division, which found that residents are routinely jailed on illegal “investigative holds” or for unpaid fines, and that they face excessive force, retaliation when they criticize the police, and racial discrimination.
The report, released on Thursday after a 10-month investigation, said that the Lexington police act as debt collectors for the city, and in the past two years have made one arrest for every four residents. Many of those arrests were for noncriminal conduct like owing fines or using profanity, the department said.
“After an extensive review, we found that 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,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who leads the civil rights division. “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 report comes nine years after the Justice Department placed the police department in Ferguson, Mo., under federal oversight, in part because of a similar focus on raising revenue at the expense of respecting constitutional rights. And it comes eight years after the department warned Ville Platte, La., that it could not imprison people on “investigative holds” without probable cause.
About 75 percent of Lexington’s residents are Black, as are the current police chief and a majority of the town’s aldermen. The previous police chief, who was white, was fired two years ago after being recorded uttering a racial slur, the report said.
The report said that the Lexington police respond to low-level offenses with force and aggression that are usually reserved for serious crimes. It cited examples including breaking down the door of a 63-year-old man to arrest him for calling a woman a “bitch” in a public place; slamming a man with an open container of alcohol against a car; forcing their way into a man’s home and shocking him with a Taser after trying to pull him over for having tinted windows on his vehicle; and using a Taser nine times on a different man who had a behavioral health disability and was accused of disturbing a business.
A receptionist who answered the phone at Lexington City Hall said no one was available to comment on the investigation’s findings.
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