The US Department of Justice (DOJ) on Thursday published their findings of abuse by the police department of Lexington, Mississippi.

Lexington is a small rural town with a population of around 1,600. The town is located in one of the poorest counties in the country, with a median household income of approximately $39,000–roughly half the national average. People can be found living with ten people in two-bedroom homes.

The DOJ identified one routine abuse as aggressive policing targeting low-level offenses such as public swearing. The investigation revealed that the Lexington Police Department (LPD) has made nearly one arrest for every four residents, a rate more than ten times the per capita arrest rate for Mississippi, over the last two years. The large number of arrests have made Lexington residents easily subject to LPD’s policy of jailing people for outstanding fines. The finding showed that over ninety percent of Lexington convicts are fined, totaling of $1.7 million unpaid fines.

The DOJ concluded the LPD’s practice of jailing people for outstanding fines and setting bonds without considering their ability to pay violated the Due Process Clause of the US Constitution’s Fourteenth Amendment. These practices often turned minor offenses into “days or weeks in jail” and pressured defendants into involuntary guilty pleas, thereby causing another due process violation. The DOJ found that LPD frequently failed to inform detainees that paying a “cash bond” was effectively a guilty plea, leading to many uninformed admissions of guilt.

Additionally, the DOJ found a financial conflict of interest within LPD as another violation of the Due Process Clause, as the department’s funding is directly tied to fines collected. The department’s budget increases as it collects more money from fines, creating an incentive to over-police.

The report also highlighted that LPD often sexually harassed women based on victim reports and testimony from current and former LPD officers. Harassment included conditioning release on sexual favors and repeatedly following women after they denied officers’ sexual requests.

In addition, the DOJ determined that LPD intentionally practiced enforcement against Black people disproportionately even though Police Chief Charles Henderson and most LPD officers are Black residents. A former LPD officer admitted that LPD deliberately targeted Black people because most of them in Lexington “lack resources to challenge the police’s authority.”

Notably, its previous Police Chief Sam Dobbins was fired after “a former LPD officer leaked an audio recording of Dobbins using a racial slur while bragging about shooting someone.”

The DOJ further reported that LPD officers have used or threatened to use force against anyone attempting to expose evidence of their abuse.

Attorney General Merrick B. Garland shared in a DOJ press release, “[The] 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 … [P]ractices like these amount to punishing people for poverty.”

The DOJ’s report also highlighted ongoing civil rights lawsuits against the City of Lexington and LPD, with community members continuing to protest what they describe as a persistent “culture of abuse and harassment.”