The police chief of Senatobia, Mississippi handed the town his resignation on September 1. The mayor and board of aldermen refused it — then voted to fire him instead, one week after publicly calling his responses to a racist-text scandal “sincere” and expressing full confidence in him.
Chief Harold Vanderford ran the Senatobia Police Department in Tate County, just south of Memphis, until the board’s vote on September 1 ended it. The termination was effective immediately.
The texts
On August 22, Mississippi Today — co-publishing with Verite News and The New York Times — released a batch of Vanderford’s private messages, sent to a colleague, in which he used a racial slur more than a dozen times. The messages span from the summer of 2025 to after he was sworn in as chief. He was sending them while wearing the badge.
One message stands above the rest: Vanderford wrote that he had almost beaten two people minutes earlier — a Black man and a white woman. The man responsible for policing the town put that in writing.
In another message, he described what he called a racist moment on Goodman Road. In one about a holiday playlist, he used the slur where he might have written “people,” and when the word felt too risky, he leaned on veiled spellings and stand-ins.
Could the messages have been faked? Mississippi Today answered that question on August 31 with a full account of its verification: phone-number records, matched writing patterns, cross-checks on the places and events mentioned. Vanderford has never denied sending any of it. He did not respond to WMC Action News 5’s requests for comment.
The firing
The timeline is the story. August 22, the messages go public. August 25, the mayor and board meet with Vanderford, call his responses “sincere,” and voice full confidence. That same day, attorney Ben Crump — representing the family of one-year-old Kohen Wiley — publicly demands accountability. August 28, community leaders hold a press conference calling for his removal. September 1, he is fired. Ten days, first headline to termination.
What changed in those ten days? Not the facts; they were already public. What changed was the pressure — and the backdrop underneath it. The texts landed while the department was already under national scrutiny over the June 14 incident at the local Walmart, where officers responding to a shoplifting call fired at a vehicle with children inside. Kohen Wiley lost his life. The officers involved were terminated, and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation took over the case. Vanderford was the chief of that department — the man answerable for how his officers handled that response.
So why would a board refuse a chief’s free exit? Because a resignation is the quiet way out — the paperwork stays soft — while a firing goes on the record. Senatobia does not have a former chief who stepped down amid controversy. It has a fired one.
What happens next
Vanderford faces no charges and no arrest. The published record includes a written account of nearly beating two civilians — and as of this writing, no agency has announced any investigation into it. Whether one ever comes may be the true measure of this town’s reckoning.
The Wiley case sits with state investigators, with Crump still demanding answers for a one-year-old boy. Senatobia needs an interim chief for a department that just learned what its leader said about the people he served. And Vanderford’s state certification — the credential that lets him police anywhere in Mississippi — now carries a termination on his record.
This post will be updated as developments land: an interim appointment, any state findings in the Wiley case, and any probe of the messages.
The board called the texts sincere before it called them disqualifying — what did those seven extra days of full confidence cost?
Sources
Mississippi Today · Verite News · The New York Times · WMC Action News 5 · WREG · Atlanta Black Star
☕ Support this desk — buy us a coffee · tips fund records requests and server time
