Horrific!
'The Goon Squad': How rogue Mississippi officers tried to cover up their torture of 2 Black men
JACKSON, Miss. -- Men who had sworn an oath to protect and serve were huddled on the back porch of a Mississippi home as Michael Corey Jenkins lay on the ground, blood gushing from his mutilated tongue where one of the police officers shoved a gun in his mouth and pulled the trigger.
The roughly 90-minute period of terror preceding the shooting began late on Jan. 24 after a white neighbor called Rankin County Deputy Brett McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman inside a Braxton home.
McAlpin tipped off Deputy Christian Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies who called themselves "The Goon Squad," a moniker they adopted because of their willingness to use excessive force.
"Are y'all available for a mission?" Dedmon asked. They were.
A little more than six months after the racist attack on Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker, who are Black, six former officers pleaded guilty on Thursday.
The officers included Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department and Joshua Hartfield, a former Richland police officer. Their attorneys did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
They pleaded guilty to charges including conspiracy against rights, obstructions of justice, deprivation of rights under color of law, discharge of a firearm under a crime of violence, conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Court records detail how they burst into a home without a warrant, handcuffed Jenkins and Parker, assaulted them with a sex toy and beat Parker with wood and a metal sword. They poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces and then forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess.
Then one of them put a gun in Jenkins' mouth and fired.
As Jenkins lay bleeding, they didn't render medical aid. They knew the mission had gone too far and devised a hasty cover-up scheme that included a fictitious narcotics bust, a planted gun and drugs, stolen surveillance footage and threats.
The deputies were under the watch of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who called it the worst episode of police brutality he has seen in his career.
http://www.dailyherald.com/news/20230804/the-goon-squad-how-rogue-mississippi-officers-tried-to-cover-up-their-torture-of-2-black-men
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