Support Your Local Police

The Department of Justice has determined that police in Lexington, Mississippi systematically target black people for arrest and fines.

Basically, they were a heavily armed criminal enterprise running a shake-down racket:

A tiny police department in Lexington, Miss., whose chief was fired two years ago for using a racial epithet, has engaged in the systemic use of excessive force, jailed suspects improperly and targeted Black people, the Justice Department said in a report released Thursday.

The results of a nearly 11-month federal civil rights investigation found that the Lexington police force, which has fewer than 10 officers, pursued overly aggressive tactics in response to relatively minor infractions, in part as a strategy to drive up revenue through fines and processing fees.

During the past several years, the police department’s revenue grew sevenfold in a jurisdiction in one of the poorest counties in the nation, as officers routinely violated suspects’ civil rights, federal authorities said.

Among the findings of the federal probe was that the Lexington police jailed people who were unable to pay fines, conducted stops and searches without probable cause, and violated free speech rights of residents who criticized the police department.

………

“In America, being poor is not a crime, but in Lexington, their practices punish people for poverty,” [assistant attorney general for the civil rights division Kristen] Clarke said at a news conference. She added: “For too long, this department has been playing by its own rules and operating with impunity. It’s time for this to end.”

………

All told, fines and fees have supported more than one-quarter of the police department’s budget, amounting to an average of $1,400 for every one of the town’s 1,200 residents, federal officials said. There are a total of $1.7 million in outstanding fines that have yet to be paid.

The police “turned the jail into the kind of debtor’s prison that Charles Dickens wrote about in his novels written in the 1800s — only this happened in Mississippi in 2024,” [U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi Todd] Gee said.

If this ends with nothing more than a requirement to, "Go forth and sin no more," then this will be a failure.

The officers must be tried as the criminals that they are.