Truthout reports that “A flagrantly racist and violent ex-cop is bringing national attention to a small town in Mississippi where Black residents say they were systematically “terrorized” by police and the court system. Civil rights advocates condemn the officer’s actions and say they are a symptom of a larger problem that extends far beyond one rural community and a “bad apple” among the local police.

A lawsuit filed in federal court this week claims white police in the rural, majority-Black town of Lexington, Mississippi, targeted Black residents and subjected them to false arrests, brutality, excessive fines and unreasonable searches. The department’s discriminatory intent was made clear by a leaked recording of Sam Dobbins, the former police chief, hurling racist and homophobic slurs and bragging about killing 13 people as an officer, the lawsuit argues. In the recording, Dobbins relishes the idea that residents “fear” him.

Dobbins made national headlines after a Black officer secretly recorded 17 minutes of audio capturing his former boss repeatedly using words such as “faggot” and “N—–” while boasting about police brutality. Dobbins patrolled the streets of Lexington “with impunity” despite a well-known history of harassment, racist remarks and allegations that he jailed a man on bunk charges while working for a different Mississippi county in 2013 and nearly beat the man to death, according to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting, which first revealed the audio recording. The officer who secretly recorded Dobbins reportedly resigned on July 19.’

Local aldermen voted 3-2 to fire Dobbins on July 20 to applause from Black residents. However, those residents and activists say the problem of racist policing in Lexington and across the South is much bigger than Dobbins. Jill Collen Jefferson, founder and director of JULIAN, the Mississippi-based civil rights group that filed the lawsuit, said it’s time to shine a light on the ongoing racist abuses in Lexington. Representing several local Black plaintiffs, the group is asking a federal judge for a temporary restraining order on Lexington police to protect Black residents.

Civil rights groups and local plaintiffs are also calling on the Justice Department to investigate, as federal officials have done in larger cities with patterns of racist police abuse, a practice that was temporary halted under former President Donald Trump before resuming under President Joe Biden. Allegations included in the lawsuit also come from witnesses working for the Lexington police, who reported that Dobbins and other officers brutally beat residents after handcuffing them or dragging them out of the back of patrol cars. 

“There needs to be a formal, federal investigation, and not just of the one office or two offices or the police department, but of this entire town,” Jefferson said in an interview. “It’s really hard to explain [to outsiders], but every branch of government in Lexington is corrupt, every branch of government is controlled by white supremacy.”

Of Lexington’s roughly 1,800 residents, about 85 percent are Black, but former Police Chief Dobbins, the local prosecutor, the judge, the mayor, and other top officials are all white and politically intertwined with one wealthy white family, according to Jefferson. Katherine Barrett Riley, the city’s attorney and a member of the family Jefferson described, did not respond to a request for comment. 

Despite his checkered past, Dobbins was hired by city officials to “control” the local Black population and boost revenue with fines and legal fees, Jefferson said. Residents reported hundreds of roadblocks set up in the tiny town to target and stop Black drivers. Two plaintiffs, both Black men, say they were targeted and arrested on bogus charges — including for possessing marijuana that was allegedly planted by police — after speaking out about police harassment at a community “know your rights” meeting earlier this year.

Former resident Tasha Walden said she fled Lexington and moved to Memphis, Tennessee, to protect her family from Dobbins, who repeatedly wrote baseless tickets and made “repeated excuses” to arrest her son without a warrant. Walden’s son, who followed her and now lives in Memphis, is one of several plaintiffs in the lawsuit, which lays out a disturbing pattern of racial profiling, excessive force and sexual harassment by Lexington police.

“It’s a nightmare, it’s terrible, people are afraid to even walk down the street to go to the store to pay bills, because every time Black people come out, it’s always a problem,” Walden said over the phone on Thursday. “No matter if you ride or if you’re walking, it’s still a problem, especially the young Blacks, the younger generations, it’s a problem for them.” [MORE]

SYSTEM OF RACISM WHITE SUPREMACY IS A BEHAVIORAL SYSTEM OF SURVIVAL. In reality, persons who classify themselves as Whites make up less than 10% of the world's population. That is, 90% of the world's population of 7 billion people are non-white. [MORE]

Dr. Bobby Wright observed, “although the world is 90% non-white, everywhere one finds whites and blacks in close proximity to each other, whether it is Chicago or Zimbabwe, the whites are in control. Yet Blacks rarely question this extraordinary universal phenomenon which defies every know statistical law of probability.” [MORE]

Dr. Amos Wilson, a true rebel to lionize, similarly stated, "[Blacks] must question how is it that a minority people [whites], a very small percentage of mankind, a people who are essentially resourceless in terms of their natural resources, maintain the power they have. Why is it that the peoples [Afrikans] whose lands contain the wealth of the earth are the poorest people? This implies that there must exist a political, social situation wherein the mental orientation of our people must be so structured that the power and the ability of the Europeans to rule this earth are continually maintained.' [MORE] 

Dr. Blynd explains, "Racism is not individualistic, but institutional, cultural, economic, political, linguistic, self-perpetuating and systematic." White Supremacy is a “power group dynamic” involving the relationship between whites and Blacks in a vast system of unequal power. It is economic discrimination by one group over and against another for the purposes of subjugation and/or maintaining the imbalance of power through cooperative control, misinformation, indoctrination, genocide and oppression. [MORE] 

Fuller states, "in a socio-material system dominated by White Supremacists, all major decisions involving non-white people are made by White Supremacists. The White Supremacists are their bosses, their masters, and their major decision-makers. Whatever a Black person gets, and/or is allowed to keep, is the result of decisions made by White Supremacists. This is the functional meaning of White Supremacy (Racism) that many people — particularly non-white people — prefer not to acknowledge. 

Wilson asks Black people, 

‘Who has control of your food? Who has control of your electricity? Who has control of your water? Of your jobs? Who tells you what to wear when you go to work? Who tells you when to come to work...when to leave...when to go to lunch...how to speak...how to write...how to do this...how to do that...and how are these things taught, and how they are conditioned?"-- It is by reward and punishment. " You do this you get paid; you don't do this you don't get paid; you get a raise, you get docked. What do we have here?’

To live under the power of another people is to be created by that people. To be rewarded or punished by that people is to be created by that people. We are living under them as the result of the exercise of the power of another people over us. Therefore, if we wish to change this situation (i.e., the conditions under which we live), then we must change the power relationships. If we are to prevent ourselves from being created by another people and are to engage in the act of self creation, then we must change the power relations.’ [MORE]