Mississippi Town Dismisses Police Chief Following Racist Text Scandal and Toddler Shooting

On Tuesday evening, the city of Senatobia, Mississippi terminated Police Chief Harold Vanderford after reports emerged that he routinely used racist slurs in text messages directed at Black residents. The town gained national attention earlier this year when a white officer fatally shot Kohen Wiley, a one‑year‑old Black child, while responding to a shoplifting call at a local Walmart. Officers opened fire on a vehicle, striking the driver and killing the toddler, who was being held by his mother.

Although Vanderford had submitted a resignation letter on September 1, the Senatobia Board of Aldermen unanimously rejected it and voted to dismiss him instead. His termination came just days after the city issued a statement saying, despite the messages, he would “continue to serve the City with the confidence that was placed in him at the time of his appointment as chief.”

Senatobia has faced a series of controversies involving its police department and Black residents, particularly children. In 2023, the town made headlines after an officer arrested and jailed a 10‑year‑old Black boy for urinating in public; the child later received three months of probation.

Approximately a year before Wiley’s death, at the same Walmart, an officer removed a Black woman from her vehicle in front of her children after she parked in a handicapped space while waiting for her grandmother, who was shopping inside. The woman displayed a valid handicapped parking tag.

Last year, the town’s elected aldermen voted to replace the former police chief—who was in office during the arrest of the 10‑year‑old—with Vanderford. Angelica Maze, a Black resident, has since been appointed interim police chief.

Vanderford’s dismissal has renewed demands for transparency in the investigation into Wiley’s shooting. State and local law‑enforcement officials have said they will not release further details until their probe concludes. The toddler’s family has retained civil‑rights attorney Ben Crump, who presented forensic evidence indicating that the officers were not in danger when they fired into the vehicle. An investigation revealed that Sergeant Hunter Foster, identified as the officer who shot the toddler, had made racist and derogatory comments to a Black colleague just two days before the Walmart incident.

“Removing Vanderford was the correct move, and the Senatobia Board of Aldermen deserves recognition for taking action. However, it does not answer the question Kohen’s family has been asking since June 14: what happened to their baby?” Crump said in a statement following the chief’s firing.

“A one‑year‑old was shot and killed by an officer from this department, and nearly three months later his family still has not been allowed to view the footage. The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is precisely why the family cannot simply be told to trust the process. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation holds the video; it should be released, the investigation into Sergeant Foster completed, and the family given the facts they have been owed since Kohen’s death.”

The Mississippi Legislative Black Caucus has urged Attorney General Lynn Fitch and Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell to act swiftly in Wiley’s case, calling for the state to establish “a clear point of contact and provide the family with direct, timely, and ongoing updates about the investigation.”

Source link