Outside the Walmart<\/span> in Senatobia, Mississippi, where police shot and killed 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, a shrine of stuffed animals sits between the garden center and the pharmacy. There are teddy bears, elephants, and kangaroos with babies in their pouches. There is a Bluey plush toy \u2014 Kohen\u2019s favorite cartoon \u2014 along with matchbox cars, a green plastic tractor, and an array of artificial flowers.<\/p>\n A banner frames the display, featuring a celestial image of baby Kohen wearing gingham overalls. A handwritten sign reads, \u201cJustice Delayed is Justice Denied.\u201d<\/p>\n In the parking lot, a cop pulled a gun on a gray Ford Fusion on a Sunday afternoon and fired while Kohen\u2019s mother held him in the passenger\u2019s seat. A bullet struck the child on his right side, tearing through his small body and exiting his left. The driver, who was also hit, sped to a hospital, but it was too late. At 19 months old, Kohen was dead.<\/p>\n The killing sparked anguish and rage in Senatobia, a small city some 40 miles south of Memphis, Tennessee. At protests and press conferences, people demanded answers, while officials stayed mostly silent. It took several days for the mayor to deliver a scripted video statement<\/a> that did not even include the child\u2019s name.<\/p>\n The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation announced a probe into the case. Speaking before an agitated crowd, state Department of Public Safety Commissioner Sean Tindell said<\/a> this could take months, refusing to say when \u2014 or even whether \u2014 his agency would provide further updates.<\/p>\n Until then, the official narrative would be a version of a familiar tale told by those who kill under color of law: On June 14, Senatobia police got a shoplifting call<\/a> from Walmart over baby clothes and a pack of Pampers diapers. According to an MBI press release<\/a>, officers tried to stop \u201ctwo subjects and a juvenile child fleeing from the store.\u201d The suspects \u201cdrove in the direction of the officers, almost striking one.\u201d That\u2019s when an officer fired.<\/p>\n Police offered nothing to back the story. A witness video captured mostly chaos as the car drove off, while a woman who asked not to be named told<\/a> a local TV station she saw police chasing the car before hearing gunshots. Nevertheless, the police narrative took off. On Facebook pages like \u201cSenatobia Happenings UNCENSORED,\u201d commenters blamed Kohen\u2019s mother for his death.<\/p>\n The accusations escalated after famed civil rights attorney Ben Crump took the family\u2019s case, with critics accusing him of stoking racial grievances for profit. When Crump released a video<\/a> of Kohen\u2019s mother, Vel\u2019lesiya Wiley, telling her side of the story \u2014 saying she \u201craised my baby up\u201d to warn officers that Kohen was with her \u2014 a wave of racist vitriol followed. Some demanded to know why Kohen wasn\u2019t in a car seat. Others said she\u2019d used him as a \u201chuman shield.\u201d<\/p>\n The comments were shockingly cruel. They also ignored what Black residents of Senatobia, which is about 40 percent Black, had long insisted: Police treated them with contempt and brutality. <\/p>\n A year earlier, at the same Walmart where Kohen was killed, a police officer forced<\/a> a woman from her car in front of her children for parking in a handicapped spot \u2014 part of a string of violent incidents that made national news. In the summer of 2025, Senatobia\u2019s board of aldermen finally voted to dismiss<\/a> the police chief.<\/p>\n By then, the department had already hired the officer who would later be identified in the local press as involved in killing Kohen Wiley \u2013 a police sergeant who\u2019d been previously sued for misconduct while working at two different law enforcement agencies. Just two days before Kohen was killed, a Black officer filed a complaint<\/a> against him for making a racist remark.<\/p>\n To racial justice activist Patrick Lumumba, the decision to hire such a man was emblematic of the city\u2019s disregard for Senatobia\u2019s Black community. \u201cYou think they didn\u2019t know about his past?\u201d he asked. \u201cBut who was he gonna hurt? If he hurt anybody it wasn\u2019t gonna be white people.\u201d<\/p>\n On the last Saturday in June, as the family laid Kohen to rest<\/a>, the Senatobia Walmart was relatively quiet. A police car was parked across the shopping plaza, where protesters had gathered the day before. At an empty restaurant where a TV played \u201cLeave It to Beaver,\u201d a young white employee said no one had come in all day, blaming the \u201crioters\u201d for keeping customers away.<\/p>\n At the memorial site, a white woman retrieved a bouquet of dried flowers blown away by the wind. She defended the protests, adding that they had been peaceful. For all the speculation and rumor, she said, no one really knew what had happened. But nothing could justify shooting a 1-year-old boy.<\/p>\n \u201cThe whole thing is very, very sad,\u201d she said. \u201cNo mother should have to bury her child.\u201d She did not wish to share her name. \u201cI don\u2019t want to stir any trouble.\u201d<\/p>\n Senatobia, the seat of Tate County, sits on the northern tip of the Mississippi Delta, a mostly rural region famous as the birthplace of the blues. Downtown, historical markers boast connections to Black musicians like pioneering country singer O.B. McClinton. \u201cBeing in the small contingent of African-American performers in country music was never a cinch,\u201d his marker reads, \u201cbut McClinton often dealt with the subject good-naturedly in shows and songs.\u201d<\/p>\n Easier to miss are the places that once saw violent attacks on the civil rights movement. Just north of town, on Highway 51, a marker commemorating the site where James Meredith was ambushed and shot<\/a> during a solo march from Memphis to Jackson has been knocked from its post; it currently sits on the ground. After Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. resumed the 1966 march alongside other civil rights leaders, they passed through Senatobia, in the same spot where the Walmart now stands.<\/p>\n The activists were widely depicted as radical outsiders \u2014 \u201cHard Core Civil Rights Militants,\u201d as one headline read. But the march included locals; many offered their homes to the visitors at great personal risk. \u201cMost people would sleep in the backyard of people\u2019s homes because they were scared they would bomb the home,\u201d recalled independent publisher<\/a> Gloria Zuurveen, a Senatobia native whose aunt hosted activists. \u201cBut she said, \u2018No, y\u2019all ain\u2019t sleeping in my backyard. Come on in this house.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n The claim that protesters were \u201coutside agitators\u201d was a common refrain \u2014 a persistent way<\/a> to dismiss any movement<\/a>. When local pastor Michael Cathey, Senatobia\u2019s first Black alderman, led boycotts of its public schools and businesses in 1987 \u2014 part of a wave of similar<\/a> actions across Mississippi \u2014 some suggested they\u2019d been orchestrated by the NAACP. \u201cI\u2019d like to see local people solve local problems without outside assistance,\u201d the mayor told reporters.<\/p>\n In reality, \u201cthe whole community took a stand,\u201d Cathey recalled. \u201cThe school buses ran empty. Nobody went to the store.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThe city government is hiding behind the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n Cathey has been outspoken about the killing of Kohen Wiley. His congregation, the West Gilmore Church of Christ, hosted the viewing for the toddler in June. \u201cThe city government is hiding behind the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation,\u201d Cathey said. Their excuse is that they must wait on the state. \u201cBut that\u2019s not true. The city can speak to the matter. \u2026 They need to be working to make sure we have transparency. But it\u2019s not happening.\u201d<\/p>\n Cathey said that the case had attracted many activists from outside Senatobia, making the protests easier for officials to ignore. But a bigger problem, Cathey and others said, is the refusal of elected leaders to represent their constituents.<\/p>\n Cathey served as an alderman for over 30 years, leaving office in 2017. In the decade since Donald Trump\u2019s rise, he said, local conservatives have increasingly modeled themselves after MAGA politicians, shedding any pretense of concern for Senatobia\u2019s Black community. Unlike the civil rights era, in which the federal government forced states like Mississippi to expand hard-fought legal rights, Trump is doing the opposite: weaponizing his office<\/a> to turn back the clock<\/a> on equal rights.<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we see Trump doing on a national level, we have that same attitude locally,\u201d he said. \u201cAnd I don\u2019t see it just being a Mississippi problem. It\u2019s a national problem.\u201d<\/p>\n Not that long ago, the South seemed poised toward progress.<\/p>\n As protests spread across the country<\/a> after the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer in 2020, many declared it time to break from the past. Confederate monuments<\/a> were toppled and, in some states, lawmakers passed criminal justice<\/a> reforms to roll back the legacy of racial violence<\/a>.<\/p>\n In Mississippi, lawmakers did what once seemed impossible: Vote to replace the state flag, eliminating its Confederate iconography. Senatobia Republican Trey Lamar pushed the effort, calling it<\/a> \u201csomething I knew in my heart for a long time was the right thing to do.\u201d<\/p>\n Such symbolic gestures, however, did not translate to systemic change. Before long, Mississippi politicians were disenfranchising Black residents in sweeping new ways. Lamar became the chief sponsor of legislation to create a new, state-controlled court system<\/a> in the majority-Black capital city of Jackson, usurping the power of the city\u2019s elected judges and handing it to white state lawmakers. The measure was about crime control, Lamar insisted. It had nothing to do with race.<\/p>\n But \u201claw and order\u201d has long been a code<\/a> for racial politics. In Senatobia, which hosted a \u201cBack the Blue and Trump\u201d parade in the fall of 2020, the mayor and board of aldermen started making changes of their own. The city\u2019s Black police chief, a 26-year department veteran, was replaced with a white man who had only recently joined the force.<\/p>\n The new chief, Richard Chandler, was given free rein to transform the department. Some moves seemed sensible enough. Senatobia police officers were paid as little as $13.75 per hour when Chandler arrived, and he successfully argued for better wages. But other decisions raised red flags. Despite the department\u2019s small size \u2014 some 30 officers in a town of roughly 8,500 \u2014 Chandler formed a SWAT team and assigned a dozen officers to the unit. One was a 22-year-old recent recruit who described herself as \u201can adrenaline junkie,\u201d as she told<\/a> reporters. \u201cI want to kick down doors and go in there and arrest the bad guy.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThere was no consideration to how it affected the citizenry. It was just about making money.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/figure>\n The stated goal was modernization; the city built a new police station<\/a>, bought a fleet of new vehicles, and hired a grant writer to seek federal funds. Chandler also pushed aldermen to pass new ordinances aimed at increasing city revenue. Between 2021 to 2025, according to city meeting records, the board voted to add financial penalties to punish misdemeanor drug charges<\/a>, loitering<\/a>, and \u201cnuisance level gatherings<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n The fines, ranging from $25 to $1,000, would inevitably target those who could least afford it. \u201cThere was no consideration to how it affected the citizenry,\u201d said Cathey, who attended many of the meetings. \u201cIt was just about making money.\u201d<\/p>\n It wasn\u2019t long before a string of shocking incidents were caught on video. In February 2022, police violently arrested a man named Rodney Rucker<\/a>, who was warming up his car outside a local motel before an early shift at McDonald\u2019s. Body camera footage showed<\/a> police accusing him of having white powder under his nose and, when he refused to leave his vehicle, smashing his window and breaking his phone. No drugs were found in the car.<\/p>\n![\"\"](\"https:\/\/theintercept.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/IMG_2046.jpg?fit=3993%2C2965\")
\u201cOutside Agitators\u201d<\/h2>\n
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Law and Order<\/strong><\/h2>\n
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