From [HERE] 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 Justice Department’s civil rights division, which found that residents were routinely jailed on illegal “investigative holds” or for unpaid fines, and that they faced excessive force, sexual harassment, retaliation when they criticized the police and racial discrimination.

So intent were officers on collecting fines, said the report released on Thursday, that body camera videos showed them brainstorming additional charges such as “disturbing a business” for a man who ran into the police station to escape a beating. (He was charged with disturbing the peace.)

The report was released after a 10-month investigation, and 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.

In Lexington, the Justice Department said, more than half of the residents had a warrant for unpaid fines and fees, making them subject to arrest. “Going into town for any reason can mean going to jail,” the report said.

Over the past two years, the Lexington police have made one arrest for every four residents, many of them for noncriminal conduct like using profanity, the Justice Department said. After one woman came in to give a witness statement in a murder investigation, the police arrested her for unpaid fines.

Lexington has been called one of the the poorest cities in America’s poorest state. About 80 percent of Lexington’s residents are Black, as are the current police chief and a majority of the town’s aldermen and officers. The mayor, Robin McCrory is white. All of its leaders are liberals. The previous police chief, who was white, was fired two years ago after being recorded uttering a racial slur, the report said. Although massa’ media has implied that Lexington is a Black city - it is actually a jurisdiction controlled by elite white liberals - as Black people probably do not own any banks, industry, utilities, major businesses, hospitals or non-profit organizations in the area. Although BW is not certain, white liberals most likely control the above and own any major real estate and most land in the area, which they control. Racist liberals often deceive by mischaracterizing an area, such as Baltimore, as “black” - yet in reality Blacks own nothing of material value in such places and function as the employees, servants, tenants, customers, etc of elite, white liberals.

“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.”

A receptionist who answered the phone at Lexington’s City Hall said no one was available to comment on the investigation’s findings. The police chief, Charles Henderson, did not return a call for comment, nor did the city’s lawyer.

The report also comes eight years after the Justice Department warned Ville Platte, La., that it could not imprison people on “investigative holds” without probable cause. In Lexington, the report said, one woman was held on an investigative hold for five days while the police lied to obtain a search warrant for her home.

The Justice Department has rarely, if ever, focused on such a small department. But Ms. Clarke has said that rural Americans have the same constitutional rights as city dwellers, and the report notes that nearly half of the nation’s 18,000 police departments have fewer than 10 officers.

The report said that the Lexington police responded to low-level offenses with force and aggression that are usually reserved for serious crimes.