The Department of Justice (DOJ) announced a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department following a racist attack on two Black men by white officers.
The investigation will determine whether the department engages in patterns or practices that violate the Constitution and federal law by evaluating all types of force used by officers, including deadly force. The investigation will also determine whether the department regularly engages in unlawful stops, searches and arrests.
In January of last year, six white officers responded to a complaint from a white neighbor who was upset that two Black men were staying with a white woman.
Deputy Brett McAlpin told Deputy Christian Dedmon, who then texted a group of white deputies nicknamed “the Goon Squad” for their willingness to use excessive force. Dedmon asked if the officers were “ready for a mission.”
The six officers proceeded to the location where they then physically, sexually and emotionally abused Michael Corey Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker, including at one point shoving a gun into Jenkins’s mouth and pulling the trigger, mutilating his tongue.
“The public is now well aware of the heinous attack inflicted on two Black men by Rankin County deputies who called themselves the ‘Goon Squad,'” Attorney General Merrick Garland said Thursday.
“Those officers have since been convicted and sentenced, but we are launching this civil pattern or practice investigation to examine serious allegations that the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department systematically violates people’s constitutional rights through excessive use of force; unlawful stops, searches, and arrests; and discriminatory policing.”
The “Goon Squad” officers were sentenced in March to federal prison, with terms ranging from about 10 to 40 years.
The civil investigation will remain separate from the federal criminal civil rights prosecutions of the deputies involved in the assault of Jenkins and Parker.
As part of the investigation, the DOJ will review Rankin County Sheriff’s Department policies, training and supervision along with its systems of accountability.
“The violent, unlawful and racially charged actions of the so-called Goon Squad left lasting and damaging effects on the community,” said Kristen Clarke, assistant attorney general of the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division.
“Since the Goon Squad’s sickening acts came to light, we have received reports of other instances where Rankin deputies overused tasers, entered homes unlawfully, bandied about shocking racial slurs, and deployed dangerous, cruel tactics to assault people in their custody,” she added.
Todd W. Gee, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of Mississippi, said the information the department has received “calls back to some of the worst periods of Mississippi’s history.”
“We do not have to accept the old hatreds and abuse of the past,” Gee said. “And we do not have to accept the false claim that safety comes at the price of illegal force and abuse of power.”