Mother Jones

ARRESTED DEVELOPMENT

Under Jeff Sessions, the Justice Department is backing away from investigating crooked police—and not just in big cities.

COPS WERE VIOLATING THE rights of the residents of Ville Platte, Louisiana, as far back as anyone can remember. Arthur Sampson Jr. grew up in this rural community, roughly 80 miles west of Baton Rouge. Sampson, a calm 54-year-old African American man with a big laugh, recalls his own run-in with the police more than three decades ago, when he was a small-time drug dealer. “I remember selling a guy two bags of weed from my cousin’s house,” he says as he sits in his living room. “Turns out the guy I sold it to was undercover.”

Sampson was

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