The Justice Department has initiated a civil rights inquiry into a Mississippi sheriff's department after officers were reported to have tortured two Black men in a racially motivated assault, The Associated Press reports. The attack involved beatings, multiple stun gun shocks, and assaults with a sex toy, culminating in one victim being shot in the mouth. 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, 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, was also convicted.
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 Associated Press 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 Justice Department has received information about other troubling 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. The attacks on Jenkins and Parker began on Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence, according to prosecutors. A white person phoned Deputy Brett McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton. The officers handcuffed Jenkins and Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces while mocking them with racial slurs. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and assaulted them with sex objects.
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