A civil-rights organization is suing the police department in Lexington, Mississippi, for allegedly bullying and harassing the town’s majority-Black residents. The group, Julian, said that for years, officers violated residents’ constitutional rights by engaging in a pattern of racist policing, including routinely harassing them with traffic stops, false arrests and excessive fees.

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The lawsuit names former police chief Sam Dobbins, who was fired in July after a recording of him using racist and homophobic slurs, and bragging about brutalizing citizens, was made public. The civil-rights group is also calling for an investigation by the Department of Justice, and while federal intervention in small-town police departments is uncommon, it’s also not unprecedented, Fola Akinnibi reports. Today on CityLab: After Police Chief’s Racist Tirade, Mississippi City Lands in Court

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