The American Civil Liberties Union and local partners are launching a national campaign to fill large gaps in police oversight created by a now-defanged Department of Justice. Two major lawsuits have been dismissed -- and several Civil Rights investigations abruptly ended -- under Trump's second term.
That includes two law enforcement agencies in central Mississippi – the Lexington Police Department and Rankin County Sheriff's Department – only about an hour away from each other along Interstate 55 but otherwise worlds apart.
Both departments found themselves representing one-sixth of the 12 law enforcement agencies investigated for Civil Rights violations under the Biden Administration.
In the case of Lexington, the DOJ found numerous constitutional violations in the department's targeting of African American residents for years. In Rankin County, the federal pattern and practice probe had only just begun before Trump's re-ascension to the White House.
Joshua Tom, with the ACLU of Mississippi, says they want to ensure that oversight continues regardless.
“Once the Trump administration assumed office in 2025, very soon into the administration, the Department of Justice issued a litigation freeze stopping all civil rights work, including civil rights work directed at police departments,” Tom told MPB News.
“The ACLU of Mississippi thought it was important that somebody tried to fill that gap. And so where the Department of Justice may not be doing work to make sure that law enforcement agencies are doing the important work of keeping our community safe, and also respecting people's rights, we will.”
Now just in the first phase of the campaign, the groups are beginning by sending public records requests to law enforcement agencies where the Department of Justice began investigating but had not yet reached a consent decree.
In essence, Tom and the ACLU are doing much of the same work the DOJ was before the change in the presidential administration: gathering as many facts as possible and using them to inform their own pattern and practice investigations.
Partnering with the national office, Mississippi's ACLU is particularly focusing their own investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff's Department, where five former officers – including then fourth in command Brett McAlpin – were sentenced on a slew of federal Civil Rights charges in March 2024.
“That pattern and practice investigation was opened after admitted egregious police misconduct. These are not allegations, to some extent, because the sheriff's deputies who were engaged in the misconduct pled guilty to violating people's rights. They pled guilty to civil rights violations and are now serving prison sentences.”
There are nearly 10 ongoing federal civil rights complaints against the City of Lexington and officers in its police department, including chief Charles Henderson.