I saw this cover up and it was sickening. Of course when you hit somebody on the road and then bury them without telling the family it’s a cover up. What else could it be? The police is paid to always make a statement that drags out the issue (“we will fully investigate it” —over the next two years) or that they had no ill-intent. Of course, we can’t see of prove an officer’s intent. In this case intent doesn’t even matter; they didn’t tell the mother. So it is ill intent. There can be no mistake that if a person is run over by the police and they don’t inform the family than it is illegal intent. When they bury that person in addition to not informing the family it looks horrific, and does compound the suspicion that there is nothing but ill intent.
But in Mississippi this is not a “legacy” of discriminatory police practices; racial profiling is the only history of police practice. A legacy indicates something was intervening and there was sufficient change in police practices. There wasn’t. It’s the only practice there ever was.