The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff's department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns, and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday. The Justice Department will investigate whether the Rankin County Sheriff's Department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, the AP reports, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.
Five Rankin sheriff's deputies pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. A sixth officer, from the Richland Police Department, also was convicted in the attack. Some of the officers were part of a group so willing to use excessive force they called themselves the Goon Squad. All six were sentenced in March, receiving terms of 10 to 40 years. The charges followed an AP investigation in March 2023 that linked some of the officers to at least four violent encounters since 2019 that left two Black men dead. "The concerns about the Rankin County Sheriff's Department did not end with the demise of the Goon Squad," Clarke said Thursday.
The Justice Department has information about other incidents, including deputies overusing stun guns, entering homes unlawfully, using "shocking racial slurs," and employing "dangerous, cruel tactics to assault people in their custody," Clarke said. Malik Shabazz and Trent Walker, attorneys for Jenkins and Parker, applauded the Justice Department for opening the civil rights investigation. "This is a first, critical step in cleaning up the Sheriff's Department and holding Rankin County legally accountable for the years of constitutional violations against its citizenry," Shabazz and Walker said in a statement. "All of this took place because, despite innumerable warnings, Rankin County and Sheriff Bailey belligerently refused to properly monitor and supervise this rogue department."
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