A Mississippi civil rights attorney believes her recent arrest was in retaliation for her advocacy efforts in Lexington.

Today (June 15), CNN reported that Jill Jefferson, a civil rights lawyer, was arrested on Saturday (June 10) by the Lexington Police Department. According to Jefferson, her apprehension came after she filmed a traffic stop of a Black motorist in the town’s square. “My plan was to film footage of police falsely arresting Black people, and I just happened to get caught up in it,” she told the outlet.

Before the arrest, Jefferson, who founded the Mississippi civil rights group JULIAN shared that she was invited to a private event. As she left the occasion, she claimed she witnessed police detaining a Black motorist and began recording on her phone. Per CNN, one of the officers flagged down the lawyer and told her to pull over. “I stopped, and the officer asked, ‘Show me your ID.’ He just started yelling,” Jefferson stated.

However, the lawyer did not show her ID, which she believed made the incident worse. During her conversation with the publication, Jefferson alleged that an officer pointed a taser at her as authorities told her to get out of the car. She also claimed officers snatched her phone from her hand and yanked her from the vehicle. “They illegally searched my car,” she continued. “They went through my glove compartment, under my floor mats, they went into the briefcase, and unzipped it, and started taking things out and looking through them. All of this is an illegal search.”

The state attorney mentioned that she recognized one of the officers from her civil work in the city. Jefferson noted that she and the law enforcement member engaged in intense interactions over the phone in the past. “I heard them talking about me once they took me to jail. They said, ‘That’s the woman that’s suing us.’ That’s when I learned that they definitely knew who I was when I got there,” she said. Jefferson spent two days in the Holmes County Jail on charges of failure to comply, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest, which she claimed are “false.”

In 2022, Jefferson filed a federal lawsuit against the city of Lexington and its police department. In the suit, she alleged intimidation, harassment, and unlawful imprisonment by officers in the LPD. A trial date is set for June 2024.