DOJ Settlement Forces Reforms in Lexington, Mississippi Police After Civil Rights Findings Against Black Residents
The U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday, October 16, 2026, that it has reached an out-of-court settlement with the City of Lexington, Mississippi, and its police department, requiring sweeping reforms after federal investigators found the department engaged in a pattern of civil rights violations against Black residents.
The settlement follows a scathing September 26, 2024 findings report in which the DOJ concluded that the Lexington Police Department engaged in a “pattern or practice” of violating civil rights — discriminating against Black people, using excessive force, and retaliating against critics. The investigation, run by the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division and the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi, began in March 2023 after residents accused officers of using roadblocks to target Black drivers, engaging in excessive force, committing sexual assault, and making unjustified arrests.
Lexington is a rural, majority-Black city about 65 miles outside Jackson. The 2024 report found that officers routinely singled out Black citizens for low-level arrests — largely to generate revenue for the police department — and jailed people for extended periods when they could not afford to pay fines. Between 2022 and 2024, the department made one arrest for every four people in town, more than ten times the per-capita arrest rate for the state of Mississippi. The city court had issued warrants for more than 650 people — nearly half of Lexington’s population — for unpaid fines.
Under the three-year settlement, the city and police department must dismiss existing unlawful warrants for unpaid fines and fees, move to expunge the records of unlawful fine-based convictions, and are banned from creating quota or incentive systems for stops, warnings, citations, arrests, or related revenue. New fines or fees, including arrest processing fees, may only be imposed after a documented, individual determination of whether the person can pay, or a showing that the person willfully refused to pay. The agreement also requires DOJ-approved training on stops, searches, arrests, and use of force, plus documentation and review systems to ensure such actions are lawful. The agreement lasts three years and can be cut short or extended depending on whether the parties mutually determine compliance.
It is not a court-supervised consent decree; the city agreed to the changes without a court ruling on liability.
“The Department of Justice supports local law enforcement,” said Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Civil Rights Division. “We are very pleased that the City of Lexington and the Lexington Police Department reached an agreement to enhance the lawful and essential activities of the police department and its officers as they continue to protect and serve the citizens of Lexington and its surrounding areas.”
“Through these reforms, we seek not only to address the concerns identified in our investigation, but also to strengthen public trust and promote practices that respect the rights and dignity of every person,” U.S. Attorney J.E. Baxter Kruger for the Southern District of Mississippi said in a news release.
Why it matters
The Lexington findings are a stark example of policing for profit in a majority-Black town — a pattern the DOJ has now committed the city to dismantle, including the end of debtors’-prison-style jailing over unpaid fines. With the agreement lasting three years under DOJ oversight, the reforms give federal weight to what local residents had reported since 2023.
Sources: ABC News report, AP report, settlement details
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