l called for an independent investigation of the police department.

 We need answers about departmental leadership, internal culture, the handling of complaints and misconduct, financial practices, and whether the Board has been receiving the information necessary to provide proper oversight,  McConnell said in a statement.  Our citizens deserve a police department they can trust. 

National civil rights attorney Ben Crump, representing Kohen Wiley's family, called the chief's firing the  right decision. 

 The racist language that cost Chief Vanderford his job is exactly why this family cannot simply be told to trust the process,  Crump said in a statement calling for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigations to release body-camera footage of the shooting.  Give this family the facts they have been owed since the day Kohen died. 

The Senatobia Police Department declined to comment on the firing, and Vanderford could not be immediately located for a response Wednesday.

Big picture view:

Vanderford was appointed police chief on Sept. 29, 2025, after the board of aldermen declined to reappoint the previous chief, Richard Chandler, in July of that year.

Chandler led the police department through several controversies. They included the 2023 arrest of a 10-year-old Black boy for urinating in public and an incident in which an officer threatened a woman with a Taser and pulled her from her car during a dispute over a handicapped parking space outside the same Walmart where the child was shot.