6 Mississippi ‘Goon Squad’ Deputies Plead Guilty to Torturing Black Men

The following article was first published on Common Dreams by Brett Wilkins on August 4, 2023. 

“Anyone surprised by this, at this point, can only be a willful denier of what Black people have said—and continue to say—about the broken culture of policing in America.”

Six former Mississippi sheriff’s deputies from a self-described “Goon Squad” pleaded guilty Thursday to subjecting two Black men to racialized torture and shooting one of the victims in the mouth after a neighbor called in a complaint about the men staying in the home of a white woman.

Former Rankin County Sheriff’s Office (RCSO) Deputies Brett Morris McAlpin, Jeffrey Arwood Middleton, Christian Lee Dedmon, Hunter Thomas Elward, Daniel Ready Opdyke, and Joshua Allen Hartfield pleaded guilty to federal charges in connection with the January 24 torture of 32-year-old Michael Corey Jenkins and 35-year-old Eddie Terrell Parker.

On January 24, the white deputies—who had no warrant—broke down the door of the Braxton home where Parker was living, handcuffing and repeatedly tasing the victims before sexually assaulting them, calling them racist names while threatening to kill them, and shooting Jenkins in the mouth, shattering his jaw and causing permanent injuries to his tongue and neck.

“These guilty pleas are historic for justice against rogue police torture in Rankin County and all over America,” Malik Shabazz, an attorney representing Jenkins and Parker, said in a statement. “Today is truly historic for Mississippi and for civil and human rights in America.”

Trent Walker, another attorney for the two men, told Mississippi Todaythat his clients “feel they’re getting justice. They feel vindicated.”

“There were a lot of naysayers,” Walker added. “This proves there is justice in Mississippi, even in Rankin County with its long history of police violence.”

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey—who in June said the six deputies had resigned or been terminated—called the case “the most horrible incident of police brutality I’ve learned of over my whole career, and I’m ashamed it happened at this department.”

The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) launched a probe into the case in February after an Associated Press investigation linked the Rankin County deputies “to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.”

According to Mississippi Today:

In 2021, Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old Black man, died after a confrontation with Rankin County deputies Elward and Luke Stickman. Cameron’s mother, who filed a civil lawsuit against the department, said she witnessed the officers kneel on Cameron’s neck and back, while Cameron told them he could not breathe for over 10 minutes.

A grand jury chose not to indict the officers for Cameron’s death a year before Elward shot Jenkins. “If they would have did something then, this wouldn’t have happened,” said his father, Mel Jenkins.

Kristen Clarke, who heads the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division, said the defendants “caused harm to the entire community who feel that they can’t trust the police officers who are supposed to serve them.”

U.S. Attorney Darren LaMarca said the deputies “became the criminals they swore to protect us from.”

“Now, they’ll be treated as the criminals as they are,” he added.

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