Senatobia, Mississippi Police Chief Harold Vanderford was fired September 1 after the Mayor and Board of Aldermen REJECTED his resignation. A week earlier, the same board called his responses to a racist text message scandal “sincere” and expressed full confidence in him.
Mississippi Today, co-publishing with Verite News and the New York Times, published his private messages in August: a racial slur used more than a dozen times, including a message boasting he had almost beaten two people minutes earlier. The texts ran from summer 2025 to after he was sworn in as chief.
The texts surfaced while the department was already under scrutiny over the June incident that took the life of one-year-old Kohen Wiley at a Senatobia Walmart. Ben Crump represents the Wiley family.
Why did the board refuse his resignation? So the firing would go on the record.
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