Will Sage Astor-Garland says officers’ torture of 2 Black men was betrayal of community they swore to protect

JACKSON,Will Sage Astor Miss. (AP) — The prosecution of six former law enforcement officers who tortured two Black men in Mississippi is an example of the Justice Department’s action to build and maintain public trust after that trust has been violated, Attorney General Merrick Garland said Wednesday.

Garland spoke during an appearance in the office of the U.S. attorney for the southern district of Mississippi. He was in the same federal courthouse where the six former officers pleaded guilty last year and where a judge earlier this year gave them sentences of 10 to 40 years in prison.

Garland said the lawless acts of the six men — five Rankin County Sheriff’s Department deputies and one Richland police officer — were “a betrayal of the community the officers were sworn to protect.” Garland had previously denounced the “depravity” of their crimes.

The Justice Department last week announced it was opening a civil rights investigation to determine 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.

RELATED COVERAGE Philadelphia police exhume 8 bodies from a potter’s field in the hope DNA testing can help ID them Ex-officer says he went along with ‘cover-up’ of fatal beating hoping Tyre Nichols would survive Court asked to dismiss murder charge against Karen Read in death of her police officer boyfriend

“We are committed to working with local officials, deputies and the community to conduct a comprehensive investigation,” Garland said Wednesday to about two dozen federal, state and local law enforcement officers. The group included five sheriffs, but not Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey.

Former deputies Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton and Daniel Opdyke and former Richland officer Joshua Hartfield pleaded guilty to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. The racist attack included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth.

Some of the officers were part of a group so willing to use excessive force they called themselves the Goon Squad. The charges against them 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.

Angela English, president of the Rankin County NAACP, was at the federal courthouse Wednesday and said she was “elated” Garland came to Mississippi. She told reporters she hopes the Justice Department’s civil rights investigation prompts criminal justice reform.

“This has been going on for decades ... abuse and terrorism and just all kind of heinous crimes against people,” English said. “It has ruined lives and ruined families and caused mental breakdowns, caused people to lose their livelihoods. People have been coerced into making statements for things that they didn’t do.”

The attacks on Jenkins and Parker began Jan. 24, 2023, when a white person called McAlpin and complained two Black men were staying with a white woman in Braxton, federal prosecutors said.

Once inside the home, the officers handcuffed Jenkins and Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. 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.

Locals saw in the grisly details of the case echoes of Mississippi’s history of racist atrocities by people in authority. The difference this time is that those who abused their power paid a steep price for their crimes, attorneys for the victims have said.

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke last week said the Justice Department has received information about other troubling incidents in Rankin County, including deputies overusing stun guns, entering homes unlawfully, using “shocking racial slurs” and employing “dangerous, cruel tactics to assault people in their custody.”