Ex-Mississippi officers plead guilty to racist assault on 2 black men during raid

Michael Corey Jenkins (pictured) and Eddie Terrell Parker filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Rankin County in June seeking US$400 million ($655 million) in damages. Photo / AP

Six white former law enforcement officers in Mississippi who called themselves the “Goon Squad” have pleaded guilty to a racist assault on two black men in a home raid that ended with an officer shooting one man in the mouth.

The officers entered the house without a warrant on January 24, assaulting the men with a sex toy and using stun guns and other objects to abuse them over a roughly 90-minute period, court documents show. After one victim was shot and wounded in a “mock execution” that went awry, the documents say the officers conspired to plant and tamper with evidence instead of providing medical aid.

“The defendants in this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims,” said US Attorney General Merrick B. Garland, adding they “egregiously violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect”.

“The Justice Department will hold accountable officers who abuse the public trust,” Garland said on Thursday.

The civil rights charges come after an Associated Press investigation that linked the deputies involved in the episode to at least four violent encounters with black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.

“It’s kind of a partnership in crime,” US District Judge Tom Lee said about the conspiracy charges, which were unsealed on Thursday.

Court documents said the officers gave themselves the Goon Squad nickname “because of their willingness to use excessive force and not to report it”.

The two victims, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against Rankin County in June seeking US$400 million ($655 million) in damages.

Those charged in the case are five former Rankin County Sheriff’s Department employees — Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke — and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, who was off duty when he participated in the raid.

The documents identified Elward as the person who shot Jenkins, and Opdyke and Dedmon as the ones who assaulted the two men with the sex toy.

The bullet fired into Jenkins’ mouth lacerated his tongue, broke his jaw and exited his neck, the documents say.

The officers initially went to the home in Braxton because a white neighbour had complained that black people were staying with a white woman who owned the house, court documents show. Officers used racist slurs against the two men during the raid and “warned them to stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River — areas with higher concentrations of black residents,” the documents say.

Before the raid, the officers agreed to enter without a warrant if they could avoid being spotted by the home’s security cameras. They also planned to use excessive force ahead of time — but not in the face, agreeing to “no bad mugshots”, the documents say.

The officers threw eggs on the handcuffed victims and forced them to lie on their backs while pouring milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup down their mouths. The men were forced to shower to remove the evidence.

The officers also repeatedly electrocuted the victims with stun guns to see whether the sheriff’s department or police department stun guns were more powerful.

One deputy, Middleton, offered to plant an unregistered firearm at the scene.

Federal marshals took the former officers into custody on Thursday, and the judge said the men would be sentenced in mid-November.

The victims are identified in the court documents only by their initials, but Jenkins and Parker have discussed the episode publicly.

The Justice Department launched the civil rights probe in February.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey announced on June 27 that all five deputies involved in the episode had been fired or resigned. Hartfield was later revealed to be the sixth law enforcement officer at the raid. He was also fired.

Malik Shabazz, one of the attorneys representing Jenkins and Parker, issued a statement on Thursday thanking the Justice Department.

“These guilty pleas are historic for justice against rogue police torture in Rankin County and all over America,” Shabazz said in the statement from Black Lawyers for Justice. “Today is truly historic for Mississippi and for civil and human rights in America.”