JACKSON, Madam. — The prosecution of six former police officers who two black men tortured in Mississippi is an example of the Justice Department’s efforts to build and maintain public trust after that trust has been broken, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday.
Garland spoke during an appearance at the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi. He was in the same federal courthouse where the six former officers have pleaded guilty last year and where a judge gave them a statement earlier this year sentences of 10 to 40 years in prison.
Garland said the lawless actions of the six men — five officers from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department and one Richland police officer — were “a betrayal of the community the officers were sworn to protect.” Garland had previously condemned the “depravity” of their crimes.
The Department of Justice announced last week that it is civil rights research to determine whether the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, frisks and arrests, and whether there has been racially discriminatory police practices.
“We are committed to working with local officials, agents and the community to conduct a comprehensive investigation,” Garland told about two dozen federal, state and local law enforcement officials Wednesday. The group included five sheriffs, but not Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey.
Former officers Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke and former Richland officer Joshua Hartfield have pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and an hours-long assault on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. racist attack included assaultrepeated use of stun guns and attacks with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.
Some officers were part of a group so willing to use excessive force that they called themselves the Goon Squad. The charges against them followed a Associated Press investigation in March 2023, in which several officers were linked to at least four violent confrontations since 2019, which left two black men dead.
Angela English, president of the Rankin County NAACP, was in federal court Wednesday and said she was “thrilled” that Garland had come to Mississippi. She told reporters she hopes the Justice Department’s civil rights investigation will lead to criminal justice reforms.
“This has been going on for decades … abuse and terrorism and all sorts of heinous crimes against people,” English said. “It’s destroyed lives and families and caused mental breakdowns, people losing their livelihoods. People have been forced to give statements for things they didn’t do.”
The attacks on Jenkins and Parker began on Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person called McAlpin and complained that two black men were staying with a white woman in Braxton, federal prosecutors said.
Once inside the home, officers handcuffed Jenkins and Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup on their faces. They forced them to undress and shower together to cover up the mess. They taunted the victims with racial slurs and assaulted them with sex objects.
Locals saw echoes of Mississippi history in the gruesome details of the case racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a high price for their crimes, according to advocates for the victims.
Deputy Attorney General Kristen Clarke said last week that the Justice Department had received information about other disturbing incidents in Rankin County, including officers using excessive stun guns, unlawfully entering homes, using “shocking racial slurs” and employing “dangerous, brutal tactics to assault people in their custody.”