Mississippi Police Chief Racist, N-Word-Laced Texts Exposed

Welp, another day, another cop gets exposed for being racist when he thinks only fellow racists are listening, while enforcing the law in communities that include the people he apparently hates. This time, in Mississippi.

According to Mississippi Today, Senatobia Police Chief Harold Vanderford, who became chief of the department last fall, has been exposed as the latest contestant on Bigots With Badges, after an apparent colleague of his shared text messages they received from the police chief that were riddled with racial slurs and expressions of hatred for Black people.

Vanderford reportedly came to the Senatobia Police Department after the city’s elected aldermen had forced out its previous police chief due to a series of public controversies surrounding Senatobia police officers, including the arrest of a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public in 2023, and, more recently, the fatal shooting of 1-year-old Black infant Kohen Wiley in a Walmart parking lot by cops who were responding to a shoplifting call.

Vanderford was reportedly hired as chief for his “firm, fair and focused” leadership style. The 60-year-old Greenville native with 29-years in law enforcement claimed his tenure as chief would focus on “reestablishing and solidifying trust” with the community, but it appears that all the department did was bring on someone else who shouldn’t be patrolling streets full of Black people.

From Mississippi Today:

In one text message, the chief, Harold Vanderford, described having a “racist moment.” In another, he wrote that he “almost beat a nigger and white woman’s ass a few minutes ago.”

Vanderford used the racist slur, spelled various ways, more than a dozen times in a series of 10 text conversations dating back to last summer and continuing after he became chief. The texts were provided to reporters by the person who had received them, who said they came from Chief Vanderford. Three other acquaintances confirmed that the phone number associated with the messages belonged to the chief.

Three months before the Walmart shooting, Vanderford texted a colleague to lament Mississippi State University’s performance in a college sporting event, referring to a player using a racist slur.

In at least two instances in April, Chief Vanderford used the slur to refer to himself or his white friend, text messages show.

On another occasion, he texted that he was drunk and using the word loudly. Another time, he said he had “screamed” the slur 15 times. He texted that he hoped he was loud enough that his neighbors heard him.

So, not only does Vanderford use the N-word just as easily as he breathes free air, but he does so regularly, habitually, and gleefully, with the hopes that his neighbors hear him do it.

So far, he hasn’t addressed the exposure of his text messages, and the department hasn’t made any statements about consequences he might face, so we don’t know what, if anything, is being done about the Klan-ish tendencies of the man who’s currently in charge of the department.

Earlier this month, we reported that a police officer with the Los Angeles Police Department was charged with 16 felony counts of eavesdropping on or recording confidential communications after he filed an internal affairs complaint against his LAPD colleagues containing recordings of them making racist, homophobic, and sexist comments. The charges were downgraded to misdemeanors after much public shaming aimed at the district attorney, who seems to be more interested in prosecuting a whistleblower than he is in holding racist and otherwise bigoted cops accountable in the interest of public safety.

This is yet another reminder that racism in policing is a systemic issue, where so-called “bad apples” can be found at every rank and every level of any given police department.

Stay vigilant, folks — because they will.

SEE ALSO:

Memphis Cop Under Fire For Racist Comments

Racist Houston Cop Relieved Of Duties After Viral N-Word-Laced Rant

Here We Go Again: Mississippi Police Chief’s Racist, N-Word-Laced Texts Exposed [Op-Ed] was originally published on newsone.com