prominent civil rights defender gets arrested for filming traffic stop or, according to the cops she's already suing, 'resisting arrest'

[butters]

A prominent Mississippi civil rights lawyer who predicted she would be the victim of retaliation for suing cops over civil rights violations was arrested and jailed for filming a traffic stop conducted by the same police department she is suing.

Jill Collen Jefferson is the president of JULIAN, a civil rights organization that sued the Lexington Police Department in 2022 on behalf of a group of local residents. The lawsuit alleged that Black residents of the county are regularly subjected to “targeting and merciless brutality” as well as “harassment, coercion, threatening conduct, and often brutal mistreatment” by the department.

Jefferson is also a trial advocacy instructor at Harvard Law School, a former speechwriter for Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign, and a civil rights policy staffer for the late Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.). She was arrested Saturday, charged with multiple crimes, and held in a local jail until Monday afternoon.

she refused to pay bail and a separate booking charge for an illegal arrest (failure to comply, disorderly conduct, and resisting), citing that there are many thusly charged who cannot afford to pay; the bond and booking charges were ultimately dropped, though she is to return to court on july 13th

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/crim...&cvid=4395ba55a5134ddfb54d20ce987cbae1&ei=283