Late Tuesday, the city of Senatobia, Mississippi, fired its police chief, Harold Vanderford, after it was reported that Vanderford regularly used racist slurs against Black people in his text messages. The town, which is about 40% Black, made national news earlier this year after a white officer fatally shot Kohen Wiley, a one-year-old Black baby, while responding to a shoplifting call at Walmart. Officers fired into a vehicle, shooting the driver and killing the toddler, who was being held in his mother’s arms.
Resignation rejected, termination approved
Though Vanderford submitted a resignation letter earlier on 1 September, the city’s board of aldermen unanimously voted to reject it and to terminate the officer instead. Vanderford’s firing came just under a week after the city wrote in a statement that, despite the messages, he would “continue to serve the City with the confidence that was placed in him at the time that he was appointed as Chief”.
Recent controversies involving police and Black residents
Senatobia has been embroiled in recent controversies involving police and Black residents, specifically children. In 2023, Senatobia made national news after an officer arrested and placed in a cell a 10-year-old Black boy who had urinated in public. The child was later sentenced to three months on probation.
A year before Wiley was killed, at the same Walmart, an officer forced a Black woman from her car in front of her children after she parked in a handicap space to wait for her grandmother, who was shopping in the store. The woman was driving a vehicle with a handicap parking tag.
Last year, the town’s elected alderman moved to replace the previous police chief who was serving at the time of the arrest of the 10-year-old with Vanderford. Angelica Maze, who is Black, has been named interim police chief.
Calls for transparency in Wiley case
Vanderford’s firing has prompted renewed calls for transparency with Wiley’s case. State and local law enforcement have said that they will not provide updates until their investigation is complete. The toddler’s family retained the civil-rights attorney Ben Crump, who presented forensic evidence indicating that the officers had not been in harm’s way when they fired into the vehicle. An investigation found that Sgt Hunter Foster, who was identified in reports as the officer who shot the toddler, had made racist and derogatory remarks to a Black colleague just two days before the Walmart shooting.
“Removing [Vanderford] was the right decision, and the Senatobia Board of Aldermen deserves credit for acting. But 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 Vanderford’s firing.
“A 1-year-old was shot and killed by an officer of this department, and nearly three months later his family still has not been allowed to see the footage. The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process. MBI has the footage. Release it, finish the investigation into Sgt Foster, and give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died.”
The Mississippi legislative Black caucus called on attorney general Lynn Fitch and public safety commissioner Sean Tindell to take immediate action in Wiley’s death, demanding that the state establish “a clear point of contact and provide the family with direct, timely and ongoing updates about the investigation”.
