Police in a majority-Black Mississippi city discriminate against Black people, use excessive force and retaliate against critics, the Justice Department said Thursday in a scathing report detailing findings of an investigation into civil rights abuses.
The Lexington Police Department “has created a system where officers can relentlessly violate the law” in one of the poorest counties in America, according to the Justice Department. Investigators found police also sexually harassed women and kept people behind bars for minor offenses because they couldn’t afford to pay fines.
“Today’s findings show that the Lexington Police Department abandoned its sacred position of trust in the community by routinely violating the constitutional rights of those it was sworn to protect,” Attorney General Merrick Garland said.
Wow this is really fucked up. Here are some numbers from the article that can sorta quantify how bad it is:
“Lexington — a rural town of about 1,200 people, approximately 76% of whom are Black.”
“Lexington residents owe police $1.7 million in fines, and the city court has issued bench warrants seeking the arrest of more than 650 people — roughly half of the city’s population — because of unpaid fines, Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said.”
And there’s a lot of other horrible stuff in there that they did to people. Too bad the BLM Antifa destruction squads were made up, they could use one there.
This one caught me (emphasis mine):