A civil rights attorney and leader of a human advocacy organization in Mississippi has called for the city’s police force to be completely overhauled in the wake of the Department of Justice launching a wide-ranging investigation into the department’s alleged discriminatory practices.
Jill Collen Jefferson, who founded JULIAN in 2020 and is a former speechwriter for Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign and a staffer for the late Rep. John Lewis, says she has been a consistent target of the Lexington Police Department, which arrested her in June while she was recording a traffic stop by police. That came just two weeks after she filed a lawsuit against the department alleging that residents have been subjected to “targeting and merciless brutality” as well as “harassment, coercion, threatening conduct, and often brutal mistreatment.”
“[JULIAN has] been in conversations with the Department of Justice for a long time now,” Jefferson told The Daily Beast. “This investigation is something that we’ve been asking for specifically from them.”
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In an interview Wednesday, Jefferson said she and her colleagues at JULIAN, named after her mentor and civil rights icon Julian Bond, want Lexington police to be held completely accountable for racial bias and brutality.
“I am expecting the DOJ to find a pattern and practice in every area they’re investigating,” she said. “I expect arrests of corrupt officers, and I expect the community to finally break free from their fear.”
On Nov. 8, the DOJ announced an investigation of the Lexington police force.
“The investigation will focus on the police department’s use of force and its stops, searches and arrests,” the press release stated. “It will assess whether those activities are reasonable, non-discriminatory and respect the right to engage in speech and conduct protected by the First Amendment.”
In July 2022, then-Police Chief Sam Dobbins was fired after a recording caught him using offensive language with a Black officer in the department. The Daily Beast at the time reviewed the audio, which recorded Dobbins using racist and homophobic slurs and bragging about the number of times he shot a Black man.
“I shot that n----- 119 times, OK?” Dobbins was heard saying.
Though Dobbins was booted from the department, Jefferson said there hasn’t been much change with the Lexington police since Charles Henderson became the new police chief.
“The culture that existed when Dobbins was there never stopped. Basically, the police that Dobbins hired are still there. Henderson was one of the police officers that Dobbins brought on and helped train. He was Dobbins’ right-hand man, actually. And so in all of this, it’s like a continuation of terror,” she said.
Jefferson claimed Black people don’t trust white people in the small, segregated city that only holds a population of 1,600. She said some people had been falsely arrested for attending JULIAN meetings and that police officers retaliated against attendees by harassing their families.
“They arrest, and in some instances, [there is] torture that went along with it,” she said.
Jefferson detailed the arrest of an elderly Black man who accidentally put the wrong tag on his truck and Lexington police pulled him over. Jefferson said the cops arrested the man, closed the man’s foot in the door when they put him in the back of the police car, turned the heat up—during an already warm day, and left the man in the car by himself for 45 minutes.
“He had to go to the hospital for heart attack and stroke protocols,” Jefferson told The Daily Beast. “That was just cruel. That was just brutality, right there.”
She mentioned other cases where someone in police custody was beaten so badly that they were begging for their life. Jefferson said officers’ boot prints were still visible on the man’s back weeks after his alleged run-in with Lexington police. She noted that Lexington police were also notorious for arresting women who would not have sex with them. Then, Jefferson said members of JULIAN have been on the phone with other Black residents while police broke into their homes and tased them.
“We heard them screaming out in pain,” Jefferson recalled.
“The brutality has been absolutely horrific.”
Jefferson said during her own arrest in June, police tried to intimidate her after snatching her phone and yanking her out of her car.
“At that point, they took me to the police station. They thought they were going to intimidate me, telling me they were going to take me to jail, and I said, ‘All right. I'm looking forward to it,’” Jefferson told The Daily Beast.
Five months later, Jefferson said she still has not received a court date.
“Basically what happens in Lexington is they'll let somebody know the day before court that they have court. Then, if they don’t show up to court, they get a warrant out for their arrest, or the morning of court they have court. Or they don’t let them know it all,” Jefferson explained. “So, what I’m thinking is that they’re thinking that they’re going to let me know the day before, thinking that I’ll be out of town or something and I won’t be able to make it and they’ll put a warrant out for my arrest.”
The Lexington Police Department declined to provide a comment Wednesday.
