JACKSON, Miss. — A Mississippi county has settled a racial profiling lawsuit and its sheriff’s department is setting policies that limit officers’ use of race or national origin as a reason to stop and question people.
A family with Latino and Native American background filed a federal lawsuit in November against Hancock County, Mississippi.
The Southern Poverty Law Center and the Mississippi Center for Justice, representing the family, say a settlement was signed last month.
The suit says Marcos and Stephanie Martinez of Taylors, South Carolina, their children and three others were travelling through Mississippi in June 2017 when a deputy stopped them on Interstate 10 and asked if they were U.S. citizens. It says they underwent “extensive interrogation, threats and multiple unlawful searches because of their perceived race, ethnicity and national origin.”
Emily Wagster Pettus, The Associated Press
