The police chief of a small city in Mississippi is out of a job after an audio recording leaked in which he boasted of killing 13 people on the job and used racist and homophobic slurs, reports USA Today and the Washington Post. The board of aldermen in Lexington voted 3-2 to fire chief Sam Dobbins last week, reports WLBT, after the audio was made public by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. Dobbins is white, while an estimated 80% of Lexington's 1,600 residents are Black. Among the lines in the recording causing controversy:
- “I’ve killed 13 men in my career, justified,” he said. “In my line of duty, I have shot and killed 13 different people.”
- “I shot that n----- 119 times, OK? ... The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me.” Dobbins suggested he "saved 67 kids in a school" with this shooting in a cornfield, though the Post notes it's unclear what he is referring to.
- “I don’t talk to f---ing queers, I don’t talk to f---ing fa----s."
- “You’re going to get some s--- 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-----s, they’re [unintelligible]. I don’t give a f--- 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.”
The recording was secretly made in April by Robert Lee Hooker, a Black officer who resigned last week. Regarding his claims of killing 13 people, Dobbins (before being fired) told the MCIR, "that's something we don't discuss, period." Of the slurs, he said, "I don't talk like that." (More Mississippi stories.)
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