Mississippi police chief fired after leaked audio of slurs, shootings
A Mississippi police chief was fired on Wednesday after a recording was leaked of him allegedly bragging about killings and using racial slurs.
“I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?” the man in the recording states.
Multiple media outlets identified the man as former Lexington, Miss., Police Chief Sam Dobbins. The recording was first released by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting (MCIR).
Dobbins was fired by the Lexington Board of Alderman in a 3-2 vote, leaving the interim police chief spot to Charles Henderson.
The two who voted against firing Dobbins were the former mayor of the town, who is white, and a second alderman, who is Black.
On the tape, the man identified as Dobbins was discussing his view that it is sometimes necessary to kill criminals while policing. He told a colleague about multiple instances where he said he needed to kill those he was trying to arrest.
The Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting said it obtained the recording from a former officer, Robert Lee Hooker, who made the tape.
At one point in the tape, the man talking to Hooker claims to have killed 13 people in his career.
When reporters asked Dobbins whether he had killed 13 people, he said: “That’s something we don’t discuss, period.”
The recording was initially obtained from Hooker by the civil rights organization JULIAN, which shared the comments with the MCIR.
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