A Mississippi police chief has been fired after a recording of him boasting that he killed 13 people was leaked.
Sam Dobbins - the now-former police chief of the predominantly Black town of Lexington - could be heard bragging about the kills he had made in the line of duty during a racist tirade.
His words were captured in a 16-minute audio in April, which another officer passed on to civil rights group JULIAN, per The Independent.
Among those Dobbins killed was a Black man who he shot at least 119 times, in what he claims was an attempt to save school children.
The damning recording was taken by officer Robert Lee Hooker and begins with Dobbins refusing to apologize to him for creating a toxic work environment.
"You’re going to get in some s*** in the streets, and there’s only going to be one man fighting for you, and it’s going to be me, OK?" Dobbin can be heard saying.
"Don’t ever ruin that, all right, because these other n******, they’ll leave you dry. I don’t give a f*** if you kill a m*********** in cold blood," he continued.
The ex-police chief continued to rant, claiming to have "killed 13 men in my career, justified."
He goes on to describe a shootout in which he allegedly "saved 67 kids in a school" by shooting a Black man. "I shot that n****** 119 times, OK? The vehicle was shot 319 times, but he was hit 119 times by me," Dobbins described.
The audio was first reported by the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting. In an interview with Mississippi's WJTV, Hooker explained that he purposefully provoked Dobbins to get him to confess while being secretly recorded.
"I knew that once I could get him talking, he was going to say something out of line," Hooker said.
He went on to explain why he wanted to expose Dobbins, saying: "I just got to the point where you’re not doing the people right, you’re not doing right, so therefore let me expose you for what you are."
Lexington's board of aldermen voted 3-2 to fire Dobbins last Wednesday (July 20). The board represents the town's 1,600 residents - almost 80 percent of whom are Black, per The Independent.
