The Lexington Board of Aldermen terminated the racist now-former Mississippi police chief Sam Dobbins Wednesday after an audio of his racist rant surfaced to the public, where he can be heard bragging about shooting a “n***er 119 times.”
Modified versions can be found on the internet; however, the audio above is the entire 16-minute explicit conversation between Dobbins and Black officer Robert Lee Hooker. Hooker recorded his conversation with Dobbins back in April, unveiling the chief’s true racist nature.
At the beginning of the audio, Hooker seemed to be upset at something Dobbins said and wanted an apology. But Dobbins claimed he had already apologized for whatever he said and clarified that he wouldn’t do it again. Around the six-minute mark, the supervising officer said, “You’re going to get in some s**t in the streets, and there’s only going to be one man fighting for you, and it’s going to be me, OK? Don’t ever ruin that, all right, because these other n***ers, they’ll let you fry,” Dobbins told Hooker. “I don’t give a f**k if you kill a motherf***er in cold blood. I will articulate to fix the f***ing problem, and I’m the only man in the business here that’s smart enough to do it, I promise you.”
He then proceeded to boast about his past killings.
“I’ve killed 13 men in my career, OK? Justified,” Dobbins proudly claimed, while Hooker asked about who he killed. “In my career, I have shot and killed, in the line of duty, 13 different people.”
“You shot that many motherf***ers, man?” Hooker asked.
“Yes, sir, justified, bro,” the ex-chief bragged. “Ask around.”
He continued by discussing some of the cases, “I’m talking about man had a gun, man had to die.”
He brought up a shootout with one of his suspects, saying he “went hard.”
“Justified, bro,” he claimed. “I shot that n***er 119 times, OK? I saved 67 kids in a school.”
He added, “I chased this motherf***er across the field. Oh, I got him. He was dead. He was DRT [dead right there] in the field, right there. The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me. I couldn’t sleep for two weeks.
He then said the sheriff’s office he was working for at the time cleared him. He received his gun back before having the chance to take a seat.
On the topic of Dobbins talking to someone (it’s unclear who, but he does mention a pedophile), he used homophobic slurs, saying, “I don’t talk to f**king queers, I don’t talk to f**king fa***ts.”
The ex-chief denied it being him on the tape, despite many people like Jill Collen, the founder of JULIAN, a civil rights and international human rights organization, who recognized him in the audio. Hooker left the department because Dobbins made the work environment “toxic.”
The Board of Aldermen voted for Dobbins’ termination, resulting in a 3-2 vote. According to the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting (MCIR), the board members who voted to keep Dobbin were Lexington’s white former mayor Richard Spencer and Black alderman Charles Simmons.
Jefferson called Dobbins’ termination a victory but said it doesn’t change the fact that the board is missing the real issue, the Lexington police department’s history of racism.
In December 2021, residents complained about their police department’s racist ways.
A resident named Shirley Gibson talked about how cops mistreated her and her son during an unauthorized search.
“They bust up in my house,” Gibson said to WLBT. “An officer caught me by my neck, slung me on the ground, they maced me not once but twice, they jumped on my son, they hit him, they stomped on his feet. I’m very terrified because this isn’t the first time they did this. They did not have a search warrant.”
Investigator Charles Henderson was named the interim chief. Henderson also has a history of complaints from Lexington residents, which the board needs to check before hiring anyone else.
