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U.S. Attorney General Todd Blanche presented Jackson Mayor John Horhn with a symbolic $64 million check Monday, possibly giving Mississippi’s capital city a surge of funding to hire more police officers, rebuild its forensic lab and expand drone surveillance of suspected criminals and abandoned properties.

Under Jackson’s form of government, the city council must now decide if it will accept the money. Council members authorized the Jackson Police Department to apply for the U.S. Department of Justice’s new Model Cities initiative grant earlier this year.

Horhn heralded the potential investment, saying at Monday’s press conference at City Hall that Jackson “is dealing with scarce resources.”

“We are ideas rich and we are money poor,” Horhn said. 

The mayor’s comment drew chuckles from state officials, including Gov. Tate Reeves, whose presence at City Hall is a rare sight. Reeves, a Republican, has sometimes clashed with leaders of the Democratic-led city over policing.

“Today is a good day for the people of Jackson, which means today is a good day for the state of Mississippi,” Reeves said. “And, also, today is a bad day for the criminals who wish to do us harm.” 

Blanche said the widespread support among state officials for Jackson’s application is why the Justice Department selected the city out of 47 applicants. He said the money would become available early next year and that residents would see results “almost right away.”

“You’re going to have more cops on the street, and the cops on the street will be working with better equipment, better technology and better information,” Blanche said. 

In its grant application, JPD wrote that it hoped to use the federal money to expand its network of cameras housed at the Real-Time Command Center and create a database linking 911 calls to abandoned properties in the city. 

Taken together, Police Chief RaShall Brackney said these efforts will reduce violent crime “before it arrives” in Jackson.

“We have to change the conditions” that foster violence, the chief said. “Not simply manage the consequences.” 

Hours before the press conference, the ACLU of Mississippi released a statement saying the partnership could trample civil liberties. 

In an email, Candi Richardson, the ACLU of Mississippi’s communications director, expressed worry that Horhn and other Jackson officials were too trusting of the Trump administration in respecting the rights of Black Jacksonians, low-income communities, immigrant families and unhoused individuals.

“The more likely outcome: The Trump administration will hijack this funding to increase control of Jackson law enforcement agencies and communities and push its ideological obsession, racism, and approach of loyalty over law,” Richardson wrote. 

Horhn previously told Mississippi Today that he had not heard concerns from any constituents about a potential federal takeover of the Jackson Police Department. 

Two residents of the Jackson metro area whose family members had been killed spoke at the press conference in support of the grant.

Violet Horne, who lost two sons to gun violence in 2024, said she hoped the grant would lead Jackson to “a chapter where jurisdiction and boundaries do not become barriers to justice.” 

In addition to Jackson, the Justice Department also awarded grants to Baton Rouge, Louisiana; Jacksonville, Florida; and St. Louis.

Unlike other federal law enforcement grants, the Model Cities Initiative will be administered through a “cooperative agreement,” giving the DOJ an active role in implementation. The grant requires participating cities to comply with certain Trump administration priorities, including immigration enforcement and efforts to ban homeless people from sleeping in public.

That is why the initiative has proved controversial in other Democratic-led cities, including Charlotte and New Orleans. 

During the press conference, Associate Attorney General Stanley Woodward alluded to controversies in cities that ultimately decided against applying for the grant, saying that “public safety is not controversial.”

Another concern from civil liberties advocates: The Justice Department has touted its Memphis Safe Task Force as a prototype for the Model Cities Initiative grant. In one year, officers working under the task force fatally shot four people and made more than 23,000 arrests, mostly for nonviolent offenses following traffic stops conducted on one in three residents. 

In a letter supporting the grant application, Horhn wrote that Jackson had seen “meaningful reductions in homicides and other violent crime” under Brackney. 

However, statistics show otherwise. By Aug. 3, the date on the letter that Horhn submitted to the federal government, 54 homicides occurred in Jackson. During that same period in 2024, the city had 44 homicides in Jackson, according to WLBT’s Homicide Tracker. 

“That’s not what we looked at,” Blanche said. “What we looked at is, do we have motivation and commitment from leadership that we can work together?” 

JPD’s grant application sought $125 million over three years. The department proposed to use most of the money to create a specialized gun-crimes unit focused on “repeat shooters.” 

“We cannot arrest our way into community stability,” Brackney said. “We cannot technology our way into trust.”

The press conference was scheduled to be held on the steps of City Hall, but officials moved it inside because of an unrelated demonstration by voting rights advocates chanting “count every vote” outside the Hinds County Courthouse.

Mississippi will receive nearly $205 million for the second year of a national program that aims to improve rural healthcare, federal officials announced Monday. 

The state’s total award for the 2027 fiscal year is about $1.2 million less than its first-year award announced last December for the five-year Rural Health Transformation Program, though its amount exceeded the award made to the average state. 

Awards were made to all 50 states as part of the $50 billion federal investment in rural healthcare. Like last year, Texas and Alaska received the largest shares of funding, while Connecticut and New Jersey received the smallest amounts. 

“Rural Americans have life expectancies three years shorter than their urban peers, but President Trump’s Rural Health Transformation Program is funding the historic investments necessary to close that gap,” said Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz. “States have already put these resources to work bringing better care closer to home for their rural communities, and CMS looks forward to helping them build on that progress in the coming year.”

The $50 billion funding program was tacked on to President Donald Trump’s tax-and-spending law passed in July 2025, which is expected to result in significant reductions in federal Medicaid spending in rural areas. Congressional Republicans added the money for rural health to soften the blow associated with those cuts. 

Rural areas are expected to face an estimated $137 billion in cuts to federal Medicaid spending over 10 years, meaning Rural Health Transformation Program funds will offset roughly a third of those cuts, according to analysis from KFF. 

Changes to federal Medicaid payment rules are expected to reduce net payments to Mississippi providers by about $100 million annually beginning in July 2028, according to the Mississippi Division of Medicaid’s strategic plan published in July.

Half of the $50 billion Rural Health Transformation Program funding is to be distributed evenly among all states with approved applications over five years. Awards for the other half of the funding are informed in part by states’ progress implementing their approved plans, according to CMS.

A federal annual report showed that Mississippi had committed over $94 million in program funding as of July 31, including assessments of the state’s rural healthcare and emergency medical services capacity, and grants for technology upgrades, telehealth and facility improvements. Over $10 million was obligated for program operations. 

Gov. Tate Reeves in October announced $32 million in grant awards for healthcare workforce development and psychiatric emergency services.

The state closed applications last week for a statewide health information exchange to allow health care providers to securely share patient information and coordinate care. A vendor has not yet been announced. 

The state is seeking applications for small rural providers to adopt or replace electronic health records, and for innovative pilot programs to improve healthcare.

Hinds County Election officials are on pace to finish counting affidavit ballots in Mississippi’s U.S. Senate race by the end of Monday, and expect to upload results on Wednesday, an attorney for the county told Mississippi Today.

The results in Mississippi’s most populous county and a Democratic stronghold could cement the outcome of the Magnolia State nail-biter between Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. The narrow margin between Hyde-Smith and Colom has already shocked many across the nation, but it has remained too close to call since Election Day. Colom led by nearly 2,600 votes with nearly 1 million votes cast and thousands yet to be reported.

Hinds County early Monday still reported about 7% of the vote outstanding, as officials there and in other counties continue processing affidavit ballots.

Tony Gaylor, an attorney for the Hinds County Board of Supervisors, said counting most affidavits would likely conclude on Monday. But voters who had issues with their IDs have until 5 p.m. Tuesday to “cure” their ballots with the circuit clerk.

Secretary of State Michael Watson on Monday said that 2,732 absentee mail-in ballots remain outstanding statewide, and 14,239 affidavit ballots have been processed, with around 77% of them being accepted.

The commission then will refer the ballots to the Hinds County Resolution Board, which makes determinations on affidavit ballots after initial eligibility checks.

“I think by the end of the day they’ll probably finish counting the affidavits,” Gaylor said. “They won’t be uploaded until Wednesday, when the (Hinds County) Resolution Board has the final count.”

The resolution board will “go over all of the accepted affidavits,” and the accepted ballots will be added to the vote tally. After that happens, Gaylor said, the commission would likely be able to upload results.

READ MORE: DeSoto County, a Republican stronghold, key to Scott Colom’s midterm election performance

READ MORE: Turns out, Mississippi voters were paying attention in the Colom, Hyde-Smith Senate race

Under state law, counties have until Nov. 13 to certify their election results. A legal challenge could then ensue if one of the campaigns challenges accepted ballots, a potentially messy process that could entail filing lawsuits in separate county courts.

The fundraising arm of the Senate Republicans has demanded election officials around the state separate and preserve affidavit ballots. Democratic election lawyers and voting rights advocates have said they are confident Colom will win and called for affidavit ballots to be reviewed in public.

Mississippi has a “bottom-up” system of election administration, where 82 county circuit clerks and election commissions are responsible for processing their own affidavit and absentee ballots.

Voters who cast affidavit ballots only need to return to their local circuit clerk’s offices if they experienced voter ID issues at their polling place so that they can present a valid ID.

The outage could impact some voters who are trying to obtain a valid photo ID to cure an affidavit ballot in the election.

Hyde-Smith had not published a statement since Friday and has not done a public event since her election night watch party, in which she all but declared victory. On Friday, she vowed to “see this through to the very end!”

Since election night, Colom has travelled the state thanking supporters and promoting local businesses.

“We’re confident that once every lawful vote is counted, he’ll be Mississippi’s next U.S. senator,” said Gerard Henderson, Colom’s campaign manager, in a statement on Monday. “Thank you to everyone who got us here and believes Mississippi Matters!”

Update, 11/9/2026: This article has been updated with numbers of absentee and affidavit ballots provided by the secretary of state on Monday.

Johnny M. Moore envisions a future where Rust College becomes the heart of Holly Springs. 

It’s one of several ambitions Moore has as president of the historically Black college, which is celebrating its 160th anniversary this month. The celebration also included Moore’s inauguration Friday as Rust’s 13th president. 

But realizing Moore’s vision will require revitalizing the small, private liberal arts college, which has experienced declining enrollment, rising tuition and leadership turnover in recent years. 

A decade ago, Rust enrolled more than 1,000 students. By the 2024-25 academic year, enrollment had fallen to 467 students. Tuition has increased from $9,900 in 2022-23 to more than $13,000 in 2023-24. And just 12% of students who entered Rust in 2018 graduated within six years.

Addressing those challenges will require adapting Rust’s academic programs and providing students with more support to earn a degree, Moore said. 

One of Moore’s priorities is to expand career and workforce opportunities for Rust students, including those who may not need the traditional four-year college degree. 

One example of that effort is a partnership that was launched in 2025 with the Mississippi Center for Innovation and Technology and Cisco Systems to offer a workforce certificate program to prepare students and local residents for cybersecurity jobs. The initiative aims to provide students with more flexible paths to employment while strengthening the college’s academic offerings, Moore said. 

“It’s not enough just to get people here,” he said. “It’s not enough to just retain them and graduate. We have to make sure we get them a job.”

Addressing barriers to a degree

Supporting students through graduation is also another priority for Moore. As a first-generation college student from rural Arkansas, he said he understands the barriers students face when pursuing higher education. 

Black students make up 92% of the college’s enrollment. More than half of students come from outside Mississippi. Many also rely on the federal Pell grant to afford college, Moore said. 

The college offers a one-stop shop on campus where students can receive assistance with class registration, financial aid and other concerns. Other campus resources include a food pantry, career clothing closet, emergency financial assistance, scholarships and work-study opportunities. 

Aubree Dillon, a junior mass communications major, said Moore often walks the campus and talks with students about work opportunities, student life and dormitories. His presence has made a difference in her college experience. 

“A lot of people may not think that it’s a big deal for your college president to make an effort to ask you questions or try to get to know you personally,” Dillon said. “But, that’s the great thing about being at a small school. Your leadership and president care, and that matters.” 

Moore and the college’s leadership are also working with students, faculty, alumni and other stakeholders to develop a strategic plan, which he expects to release next fall. 

The plan comes after several leadership transitions. Ivy Taylor, the institution’s first woman president, served from 2020 to 2023. Two interim presidents led the college before Moore was named in July 2025. 

Moore previously served as chancellor of Arkansas State University-Newport and president of Philander Smith University, a historically Black university in Arkansas. He also led Pierpont Community and Technical College in West Virginia. 

His experience attending and eventually leading an HBCU has shaped his approach to leading Rust. 

“I know the power of these institutions,” said Moore, who is also a Philander Smith alumnus. “So, it’s only fitting that I finish my career at an HBCU.” 

For alumni, the new leadership comes at a significant moment in the college’s history. 

Focusing on a legacy

The college was founded in 1866, just after the Civil War, and counts civil rights activist and journalist Ida B. Wells among its former students. It is one of Mississippi’s oldest private colleges and oldest historically Black one. 

“Our founders understood that freedom was not complete without education,” Moore said. “So we inherited this legacy to build upon it, so other generations can appreciate their worthiness of legacy.” 

Moore is working to preserve that legacy by addressing the college’s challenges. 

He has regularly met with alumni chapter presidents since taking office to seek their input on enrollment, recruitment and ways to strengthen the college’s visibility, said MeShonya Wren-Coleman, president of the Rust College International Alumni Association. Some of that feedback has led to raising the college’s social media profile  and staffing changes, she said.

Wren-Coleman said she appreciates Moore’s willingness to listen to alumni and address longstanding institutional concerns. 

“He’s not putting a Band-Aid on things that need to be fixed,” Wren-Coleman said. Instead, she said, Moore is solving problems.

She also emphasized the importance of Moore’s alumni engagement and how it lends to the financial support and restoration of the future of the HBCU. 

“Our commitment to Rust College alums isn’t limited to financial contributions,” Wren-Coleman said. “We set the example for our students and future generations when we raise money for scholarships, recruit students because we show the transformative  power of education, community and leadership for the school.” 

Moore’s ambitions also extend beyond Rust’s campus to Holly Springs, a city of 6,400 residents about 35 miles southeast of Memphis. His vision for the college town includes more partnerships with local high schools, economic development and projects with local businesses. 

For Moore, strengthening Rust also means strengthening the surrounding community. 

“When Rust grows, our community grows with us,” Moore said. “That is what has sustained this institution for 160 years, and it is what will sustain it for generations to come.”

Mississippi state Auditor Shad White on Monday announced that he will seek the Republican nomination for governor in 2027, calling himself a pro-Trump candidate who will “shut down Jackson’s Good-Old-Boys Club.” 

The announcement comes after White said repeatedly over the past year that he was considering a run for the state’s top job. White was set to kick off his campaign at an in-person announcement in Laurel, and published a video in which he vowed to bring down a network of government insiders. 

“There might be two parties in Jackson, but there’s only one good-old-boys club,” said White. “They tried to ban my office from even looking for government waste. As governor, I’m shutting the whole rotten system down.”

White joins a growing Republican primary field to replace term-limited incumbent Gov. Tate Reeves. That field now includes Attorney General Lynn Fitch, Agriculture Commissioner Andy Gipson and former House Speaker Philip Gunn.

Other Republicans considering entering the race for governor include Lt. Gov. Delbert Hosemann, former U.S. Rep. Gregg Harper, and billionaire businessman Tommy Duff.

On the Democratic side, Priscilla Williams Till, a civil rights advocate and distant cousin of Emmett Till, has entered the race along with Ivana Williams, a former Mississippi Highway Patrol trooper who is suing over her termination.

In an interview with Mississippi Today ahead of his announcement, White said his campaign would focus on addressing household costs by cutting fraud, waste and abuse in state government. And he didn’t back away from his support of President Donald Trump, whose popularity has soured nationally, costing down-ticket Republicans in the midterm elections. 

“As long as you are willing to take on that (good-old-boys) club and do what is best for the people of Mississippi,” White said. “I think that will have broad appeal, and I think you can absolutely both energize the people who voted for President Trump two years ago and win a general election in Mississippi.” 

A native of Sandersville in Jones County, White is a former Rhodes Scholar and graduate of the University of Mississippi and Harvard Law School. 

His career in state government began when he served as director of policy to then-Lt. Gov. Phil Bryant in 2011. In 2018, Bryant appointed him state auditor to replace Stacey Pickering, and White won the office unopposed in 2019 and was re-elected in 2023. He also serves as an attorney in the Mississippi National Guard and was recently deployed to the Middle East for several months. 

White’s tenure as auditor has largely been defined by his role in investigating the state’s TANF welfare scandal, the largest public fraud scheme in state history. That ignited a legal battle with former NFL star Brett Favre, a close friend of Donald Trump Jr., who sued White, alleging defamation over comments White made in a book he wrote about the scandal and in media interviews.

White has filed a countersuit asking a court to require Brett Favre to repay welfare funds, but White’s authority to do so was later contested successfully by Fitch, an issue that could arise on the campaign trail. 

Republican candidates running for governor in Mississippi appear to have been working hard to win over Trump and his supporters, often in strikingly similar terms. 

Some political observers and conservative commentators have wondered whether White’s battles with Favre could cost him Trump’s endorsement, but White has said his relationship with the administration remains strong.

Alex Meyer, a former White House official for President Donald Trump, is set to host a fundraiser in Oxford for White on Wednesday. 

While many polls indicate Trump’s approval rating has cratered, his endorsement is still considered a powerful factor in Mississippi Republican primaries. 

White has earned a reputation for a brand of pugilistic politics, whether it was trading barbs with a Democratic lawmaker at a public hearing or threatening to sue a former Republican lawmaker at another. 

Meyer previously told Mississippi Today he thinks that style could help White win over Trump’s base.

“Shad has a lot of the energy that I see in the Republican primary electorate in Mississippi, and across the country. They’re looking for someone who will go to war and will fight for them,” Meyer said.

White has over $3.8 million in cash on hand, leading a fundraising battle that is sure to accelerate before the Aug. 3 primary.

White’s announcement comes as Mississippians are waiting to see who won the nail-biter U.S. Senate race between incumbent Republican Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith and Democratic challenger Scott Colom. Colom has been leading as final votes are counted, and his potential victory has been a political earthquake in ruby red Mississippi, which hasn’t sent a Democrat to the U.S. Senate since 1982. 

The results have stunned the nation, and could result in more investment and attention from national Democrats. White said it shows candidates must be focused on reigning in consumer costs. His pitch will be to target fraud in state government and use savings for tax relief, including lower car tag fees and grocery taxes, continued phase-out of the state income tax and property tax freezes.

“I think if you’re running for governor or really any other state office, it is clear that it’s incumbent on you to have a very clear plan about how to help normal working families,” White said. “That’s the stuff that we have to start talking about and execute to give voters faith that we understand what they are going through every single day.”

For closing in on a decade, all a Mississippi Republican candidate needed was an endorsement from Donald Trump and to run ’round parroting the red-meat social phobias he peddled.

No need to propose any real policy. 

No need to push back against anything Trump did or didn’t do –  even if it hurt Mississippi – or anything he said, no matter how awful. 

Heck, no need to really campaign very hard. A blessing from Trump and pledge to blindly follow him was a Willy Wonka golden ticket for a Mississippi Republican politician.

Until it wasn’t.

On Tuesday, Nov. 3, the law of political gravity reasserted itself in Mississippi, for Republican U.S. Sen. Cindy Hyde-Smith.

As final votes trickle in, she’s still trailing Democratic challenger Scott Colom, and her defeat looks likely, although, in true Trump fashion, Mississippi GOP leadership has vowed to “fight like hell” as final vote counting is done, whatever that means. Hyde-Smith herself, as she is wont to do, has gone to ground, not been seen in person since election night.

Win or lose, Mississippi voters sent Hyde-Smith and state Republican leaders some messages:

Turns out you can’t just go along without a peep with tariffs, trade wars, shooting wars and big beautiful bills that hammer Mississippians in their pocketbooks and take away access to health care.

Turns out you can’t hide from constituents and back-home media, going for years without holding town halls, granting only the rare, curated interview with friendly media and making a few social media posts. An occasional breakfast at Mama Hamil’s with local Republican leaders and politicians is not constituent outreach.

Turns out saying Mississippians have “so many proteins to choose from” when asked about the exorbitant price of beef you helped bring about is not good messaging. (See also, Marie Antoinette.)

Turns out heavy-handed purges of voter rolls expected to thwart the other side can come back and bite Republicans in the butt.

Turns out threats of Trump-led redistricting, a thinly veiled attempt to suppress Democratic voters, can drive turnout of the very voters you plan to suppress. (Note to state Legislature: RAFO, redistrict and find out. You really sure you want to make districts a little more competitive right now in an attempt to gerrymander the maps overall for Republicans? See also, Texas.)

Turns out complacency, and abandoning the principles your party once espoused about government spending, national debt and free markets, will eventually turn off some of your Republican base, even in Mississippi. 

Turns out a last-minute Trump rally, held in an area you already have sewn up, doesn’t do much good. It might even drive turnout for your opponent.

Turns out you might have to actually campaign, even if you’re a Republican incumbent, to get reelected in Mississippi. (See also, Thad Cochran, 2014.)

And it turns out, you might have to actually do your job in Congress, particularly the part about being a check on executive power and corruption.

It appears it will take a few more days, and counting a few more votes to determine whether the big blue national wave also engulfed Mississippi. But it certainly lapped at its shores at a minimum.

Turns out, Mississippi voters have been paying attention.

Mukta Joshi is a reporter at Mississippi Today. She is spending a year as a New York Times Local Investigations fellow. Joseph Cranney is a reporter at Verite News. Both report for the Deep South Today Investigative Reporting Center in collaboration with The Times.

SENATOBIA – The Mississippi police officer who fatally shot a Black toddler in a Walmart parking lot this summer had a history of aggressive behavior and escalating traffic stops into violent confrontations, an examination of more than a dozen incidents captured on video reveals.

The videos show the officer, Hunter Foster, quickly ramping up encounters that began over minor infractions: resorting to physical force without warning, cursing at people and sometimes pointing his gun at them.

Foster came under scrutiny in June when he and four other officers ran out of the Walmart in Senatobia and surrounded a car as two young women tried to flee. Foster ran and stood in front of the car and then opened fire as it drove toward him, video shows, and continued to fire as it passed him. One of the bullets struck and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, who was sitting in his mother’s lap in the passenger seat.

Foster was the first officer to point his gun at the car, and the only one to open fire. In October, Attorney General Lynn Fitch declined to bring charges against Foster, 33, saying in a press release that the officer’s actions had been justified. He resigned from the police department later that week.

The death of a Black toddler at the hands of Foster, a white police officer, was another episode in what many residents describe as a painful history of policing in the state.

It also raised questions about the proportionality of the police officers’ response. The women had been accused by employees of shoplifting a box of Pampers Easy Ups and baby clothes.

Reporters for The New York Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News interviewed Foster’s former colleagues and reviewed lawsuits, court records and police reports to catalog other incidents in which he used force over his seven-year career in law enforcement.

The examination included video from 12 incidents from his time at the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, the only agency among Foster’s former employers that provided detailed records in response to a public records request. Reporters also reviewed video footage included in two federal lawsuits Foster was named in, and from an incident flagged by community members in which Foster shouted profanities at a group of women when responding to a report of domestic violence.

Foster was patient and polite at the beginning of most of the encounters, even when the motorists he had pulled over were unruly or intoxicated. But several incidents quickly devolved into violence, with Foster tackling, punching or drawing his Taser or firearm in response to minor provocations.

The encounters reviewed by the news organizations represent a small sample of Foster’s interactions with the public. But three policing experts who separately examined the videos at our request said they raised questions about Foster’s aggression,  temperament and professionalism.

Foster’s behavior displayed “an orientation toward going to force almost without warning,” said Michael Gennaco, a former federal civil rights prosecutor who now operates a police oversight consultancy in California. In several of the videos, Gennaco said, Foster appeared “out of control.”

In one case, Foster tackled a man after he didn’t immediately put his hands behind his back, then punched him at least 14 times while he was pinned to the ground.

In another, Foster continued to yank on a man’s arm while he screamed in pain. Foster was attempting to detain him after detecting a discrepancy with his vehicle tags.

After reporters shared a detailed summary of this article’s findings, Foster’s lawyer, Martin Zummach, briefly replied that some of the characterizations of his client’s behavior was slanderous, though he didn’t respond to a list of questions, or follow-up phone and email messages.

Zummach has described the Walmart shooting as “unfortunate,” but maintained that Foster did not know there was a child in the car, and that he had acted in defense of himself and other officers.

In most of the cases reviewed by the news organizations, Foster filed reports to explain why he felt physical force was necessary. Those descriptions did not always line up with what video evidence showed.

And the Walmart parking lot incident was not the first time that Foster said a vehicle had posed a threat. He was one of several officers named in a lawsuit accusing them of falsifying incident reports to say that a driver, who officers later beat, had accelerated his car, “almost running” one of them over. But video shows the car never drove toward, or nearly hit, any of the officers. 

In court papers, Foster, who did not participate in the beating, denied knowing that any part of his report was inaccurate. The lawsuit was settled in 2022 for an undisclosed amount.

‘Traumatic, traumatic experience’

Foster grew up in northeastern Mississippi, the son of a longtime law enforcement officer. He went to high school about an hour east of Starkville, in Caledonia, where he was a lineman on the football team.

He spent several years in the Army National Guard before switching to law enforcement in 2019, working for three departments over the next seven years in northern Mississippi. 

Most of Foster’s former coworkers and supervisors declined to answer our questions, citing the sensitivity of the fatal shooting.

Two of his former colleagues in Senatobia described Foster as a good officer with an even demeanor. An ex-girlfriend with whom Foster shares a child said he was “a good person and an amazing father,” but declined to answer more questions. “It seems like everyone has already painted an awful picture of him,” she said. 

From 2021 to 2024, Foster worked at the DeSoto County Sheriff’s Office, where he built a reputation as a prolific patrol officer.

Two years in a row, he won an award for issuing the most DUI citations of any officer in the state of Mississippi. In one month in 2022, he wrote more than 150 traffic citations, an average of about seven per workday, court records show.

On a Sunday afternoon in 2022, Laterrius Inge encountered Foster on a county road just outside Memphis. Inge said the used Camaro he recently purchased had started jerking, so he pulled over. Foster pulled up just as Inge popped open the hood.

Body-worn camera footage shows the two chatting calmly at first, but things change after a dispatcher informs Foster that the license plate on the car doesn’t match the Camaro, and that he can’t be identified by the name he had given.

Without warning, Foster reaches out to cuff his left hand.

Inge asks why he is being detained. Instead of answering, Foster repeatedly says “Stop,” raising his voice, the video shows.

“I ain’t did nothing! What are you doing?” Inge asks, raising his right hand in surrender. Foster, still holding Inge by his handcuff, points his Taser, threatening to shock Inge if he doesn’t turn around.

Foster then grabs Inge by his arm and shoves him against the car. Inge crumples to the ground and wails in pain for nearly 10 minutes, repeatedly screaming, “My wrist!” At one point, footage shows, Foster drags Inge by his handcuffs across the pavement, tearing his hoodie.

Foster later wrote in his report that he had dragged Inge to get him on his stomach, but that he kept rolling on his back, refusing to give up his right arm.

Matt Steffey, a criminal and constitutional law professor at Mississippi Christian University who helped draft the state’s rules on criminal procedure, said the video could be “a training video on how not to conduct a traffic stop.” He noted that the officer did not ask Inge to put his hands behind his back before cuffing or dragging him.

Inge was charged with careless driving, failure to surrender his driver’s license, being an uninsured motorist and having a switched tag. In an interview, he said that Foster had caused a shoulder injury that still requires treatment.

“It was a traumatic, traumatic experience,” he said.

‘Why are you beating me up?’

Experts who reviewed the footage said that Foster appeared to have escalated some situations without cause or warning.

One night in 2023, he stopped a man named Jonathan Fields on the side of a highway over an improper vehicle tag. Footage from the incident was captured on the squad car’s dashboard camera.

Foster asks if Fields has a gun in the car. He says that he does, and Foster asks where it is. (Mississippi is an open carry state.)

In his incident report, Foster wrote that Fields had “grabbed the firearm.” The action isn’t clear from the footage, but Fields can be heard saying, “I was just trying to show you where it’s at.”

Audio from the footage captures Foster berating and cursing at Fields for touching the gun. Then, the officer tells him to step out of his Chevrolet sedan. When Fields doesn’t immediately exit, seven seconds later, Foster draws his gun and points it at Fields until he complies, the footage shows.

A few moments later, Foster tells Fields not to move while he questions him about having marijuana in the car. When Fields takes a few steps toward his car, a second deputy tells him to stop. When he does, the officer tries to handcuff him, Fields waves his hands away, and Foster tackles him to the ground.

In his incident report, Foster later wrote that the man had “ripped” his arms away from the other deputy.

Foster punches Fields at least 14 times while the other officer holds him down. “Why are you beating me up?” Fields yells.

In his use-of-force report, Foster called his punches “distractive,” delivered when he felt Fields tense his body, which he interpreted as part of an effort to fight back.

Steffey, the law professor, noted that Foster began striking Fields before asking him for his hands.

“That looks like assault,” Steffey said.

Another night, in 2023, Foster pulled over an Uber driver for failing to dim his high beams. Footage shows officers eventually ordering a passenger out of the car, too, after Foster said he smelled marijuana.

Then, all of a sudden, Foster shoves the passenger face down toward the hood of a squad car, grabbing the back of his neck.

The second officer pulls the man’s hands above his head while instructing him to put his hands behind his back. In the ensuing struggle, Foster punches him at least six times, including before giving the man any clear commands.

Barbara Attard, a policing consultant and former Independent Police Auditor for the city of San Jose, said Foster’s use of force that day was “totally inappropriate” and “excessive.”

Four months later, Foster arrived at a scene where two other officers were trying to get a man out of his car in his driveway. Within 13 seconds of arriving, Foster opens the door and pulls the unarmed man from his vehicle, tackling him to the ground, dashboard camera footage shows.

Foster later curses at the man for attempting to record the interaction on his cellphone.

‘Can you please stop cussing?’

By the time Foster started working in Senatobia, the city of roughly 8,400 people — 40 percent of whom are Black — was already reeling from a string of policing controversies.

In 2023, the city’s chief of police, who is white, was caught on camera barging into a Black man’s home and choking him. The chief at the time said officers had believed a fleeing suspect to a shooting was hiding there. The same year, the department faced criticism after its officers arrested a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in a parking lot. The chief said that officers had violated their training.

The following year, two Black teenage girls accused the chief of shouting “get your Black ass out of the road” when he arrested them outside a public housing complex. The year after that, a Black woman was thrown to the ground by an officer after she parked in a handicapped spot in the same Walmart parking lot where Kohen was later killed. City leadership voted to remove the chief.

So when news broke in June that a white officer had killed a Black toddler in a dispute over shoplifting, many residents saw the incident as part of a pattern of racist policing. 

Things intensified in August when The Times, Mississippi Today and Verite News obtained internal department complaints alleging that Foster had used racially offensive language toward his colleagues. In September, we revealed the police chief at the time had routinely used racist slurs in texts to a colleague. That chief was pushed out too.

Experts noted that Foster frequently stopped Black motorists over minor infractions, like not having a license plate light, then accused them of drug use before searching them and their cars. Those actions carry the hallmarks of pretextual stops, which some states have placed heavy restrictions on, though not Mississippi.

Experts agreed that the most problematic incident they reviewed was in response to a domestic call in early May that was captured on body-worn camera footage and recently obtained by reporters.

Within a minute of arriving at a home in a predominantly Black neighborhood in Senatobia, where a woman had accused her child’s father of hitting her, Foster launches into an expletive-filled tirade.

Upon learning the man accused of assault had left, Foster immediately raises his voice at her and other women standing outside, who are Black, calling them a “bunch of motherfuckers.”

“Can you please stop cussing?” Kenesha Herron, the mother of the man who had left, asks. “No, ’cause I’m sick of this shit,” he says.

He accuses the group of women, who are standing with two children, of trying to hide the man. “I’m tired of y’all doing this,” Foster says.

“Tired of who doing what?” Kenesha Herron, the man’s mother, asks, having interpreted Foster’s comment as being racially motivated. She later said in an interview that she had “never felt so openly hated” because of her skin color.

Moments later, Foster tells other officers he’s sick of “this place,” adding another expletive, video shows.

“He’s the kind of officer that is to blame for the fact that communities of color have no confidence in public safety,” said Gennaco, the former civil rights prosecutor.

Foster’s body-worn camera footage shows him apologizing to Herron after their altercation. “I’m sorry for being loud with you,” he says. “Sometimes things get heated.”

Sheelagh McNeill of The New York Times and Julie Lee of Mississippi Today contributed reporting.

A Times analysis and review by experts found that the police officer who opened fire on a vehicle, killing 1-year-old Kohen Wiley in Senatobia, violated basic policing protocols and his department’s use-of-force policy.

If Democrat Scott Colom ultimately wins Mississippi’s closely contested U.S. Senate race, upsetting Republican incumbent Cindy Hyde-Smith, he needs to send a special thank you to the Memphis suburb of DeSoto County.

Surprisingly, it appears Colom will win DeSoto County, long viewed as one of the state’s Republican strongholds. But more important than the DeSoto victory for Colom is the vote totals in the county.

In the 2024 presidential election, Republican Donald Trump garnered 48,064 votes in DeSoto County to 29,023 for Democrat Kamala Harris.

When all the votes from Tuesday’s election are finally counted in the coming days, Colom will ultimately match Harris’ vote total in DeSoto County or fall just short of it. By the same token, Hyde-Smith garnered fewer than 25,000 votes in DeSoto County, significantly underperforming Trump. The last time she was on the ballot, in the presidential election year of 2020, Hyde-Smith performed as well as Trump in DeSoto County, winning more than 40,000 votes.

Put simply, if she had performed as well this year as she did in 2020 in that one county – DeSoto – she would not be staring at a potential history-making upset.

If he does win, Colom would be the first Democrat in Mississippi to win a U.S. Senate race since 1982 and the first challenger to upset an incumbent Mississippi senator since, gulp, 1942.

A long-running joke is the political prognosticator proclaiming to a spellbound audience that the outcome of the election would depend on turnout. All election outcomes depend on turnout.

But Tuesday’s Senate election in Mississippi really, no really, depended on turnout, and Scott Colom and his team should be credited for a campaign that turned out his voters for what could be one of the most improbable victories in the history of not only the state but the nation. Hyde-Smith was not able to turn out her voters at the same level.

It is no secret that midterm election turnout is generally much less than the turnout in presidential elections. The turnout for this year’s midterm in Mississippi is most likely record-breaking, nearing 1 million votes, but still more than 200,000 short of the turnout in the 2024 presidential election and more than 300,000 short of the total in the 2020 election.

The midterm turnout will be about 100,000 more than the 2023 Mississippi gubernatorial election in which incumbent Republican Tate Reeves beat Democrat Brandon Presley by about 25,000 votes.

DeSoto County provides the example of how Colom was able to exceed Presley’s performance. Colom got nearly 15,000 more votes than Presley in the county.

DeSoto is not the only reason for Colom’s stunningly strong performance, but it is the biggest factor.

And it should be noted that DeSoto County has long been a bit of an enigma when it comes to Mississippi electioneering.

DeSoto for years has been the fastest or one of the fastest-growing Mississippi counties, thanks in large part to Memphis transplants. While the county grew to one of the state’s largest, it also was home to a large number of low-propensity voters. The Tennessee transplants did not appear to take much of an interest in Mississippi elections.

In 1999, Ronnie Musgrove, Mississippi’s last Democratic governor, barely lost to Republican Mike Parker in DeSoto County by a vote of 9,301 to 9,144. But in 2003, Musgrove’s Republican challenger, Haley Barbour, recognized the potential of DeSoto County and spent an inordinate amount of time campaigning in the Memphis suburb. Then-President George W. Bush campaigned for Barbour in DeSoto County. Barbour’s work led to him defeating Musgrove in DeSoto by 18,689 votes to 8,876 votes.

With that performance, DeSoto was birthed as one of the state’s  Republican strongholds.

Trump captured more than 60% of the votes in DeSoto County in each of his three presidential campaigns and a high of 48,064 votes in 2024. Remember, Hyde-Smith won fewer than 25,000 votes there last week.

Outside of presidential elections, though, DeSoto countians still appear to have only a lukewarm interest in Mississippi elections and politicians.

That is most likely why Trump came to DeSoto in 2018 during Hyde-Smith’s initial Senate campaign to stump for her.

This year, Trump opted to go to Corinth in northeast Mississippi instead of DeSoto County on the northwest side of the  state to campaign for Hyde-Smith.

Perhaps that decision was the wrong one. Or perhaps, Trump’s policies are unpopular even in what is believed to be a Republican stronghold like DeSoto County.