An audio capturing the police chief of Lexington, Mississippi, bragging about how many people he fatally shot while on active duty emerged this week and led to an instant backlash for the lawman.
After a watchdog organization shared their findings with government officials and the public at large, including an account of him describing shooting a Black man over a hundred times, the city moved expeditiously to terminate the veteran officer from the force.
Mississippi Delta community stakeholders said they were “appalled and angry” after the 16-minute-long recording was released by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting on July 19.
Spurred by public outrage, the small, predominantly Black town’s leadership terminated its chief, Sam Dobbins, on Wednesday, July 20, the Washington Post reported.
On the April 11 recording captured by a recently resigned Black officer from Lexington Police Department named Robert Lee Hooker, were numerous foully expressed racist thoughts, punctuated by curse words and explosive revelations about his conduct as an officer.
The conversation was a discussion about a couple of arrests made in the town, which ultimately sparked into an argument, and the chief began bragging about his history of violence in uniform.
Dobbins can be heard saying, “I’ve killed 13 men in my career, justified. In my line of duty, I have shot and killed 13 different people.”
Hooker then asked, “You shot that many motherf—ers?”
“Yes, sir, justified, bro,” the chief says. “Ask around.”
In one section of the taping, he details a shootout in a cornfield, where he allegedly said to Hooker he heroically “saved 67 kids in a school” by excessively shooting a Black man.
“I shot that n—– 119 times, OK?” Dobbins recalled. “The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me.”
“I chased this motherf—er across the field. I got him. He was DRT [dead right there] in the field. The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me,” he explained and shared how “he was cleared at the sheriff’s office, where he worked at the time, and received his gun back before he ever sat back down,” according to the report.
The chief talked about using excessive force as a way to get respect, saying he would put a suspect “through the window,” and joking, “It would get your attention real quick.”
He also said on the tape, “I don’t give a f— if you kill a motherf—er in cold blood.”
When Dobbins became aware of the recording, he feigned ignorance, first denying he said any of it.
In reference to the banter about killing people while on the clock, he said, it “is something we don’t discuss, period.” When confronted with the slurs, he contended “I don’t talk like that.”
But the audio is believed to be authentic, despite Hooker quitting his job a week before Dobbins’ termination, stating the department has a toxic work environment.
Lexington, Mississippi, a town of just over 2,000 residents where its African-American citizens make up 67 percent of the population, pressured the board of aldermen to vote on his dismissal.
The vote took almost an hour to make. It was split 3- in favor of firing the man who was made chief just last year.
Cardell Wright, the paralegal for JULIAN and president of the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, said, “Once we heard it, I was just appalled and angry. Just to see the hatred in your own backyard was disturbing. We knew we had to do something immediately.”
Wright said issues with how Dobbins runs the department have been on his radar after Hooker resigned days after being hired at the top of 2022. For Hooker, he was frustrated with the chief and how he ran the department.
He rejoined the department later, hoping he could bring about some sort of accountability.
Wright believes, “He was waiting to see if the chief slipped up anymore and showed his true colors.”
In an interview with WLBT, Hooker said he was just done with the corruption, saying, “I just got to the point where you’re not doing the people right, you’re not doing right, so, therefore, let me expose you for what you are, who you are.”
“And that’s how it happened.”
Although Hooker secretly recorded Dobbins, Mississippi is a one-party consent state for recording conversations.
JULIAN’s founder and president, Jill Collen Jefferson, said “the corruption we’re seeing here is on a scale I haven’t seen since the civil rights movement.”
“This audio is damning,” she continued. “It’s not just a reflection of one officer. It’s a reflection of an entire culture of policing, and it should spur Congress to finally rein in this modern-day slave patrol. A culture like this does not deserve immunity.”
Lexington is not without law enforcement leadership. Investigator Charles Henderson has been named interim chief over the department until a chief is hired.
