‘Goon Squad’ police jailed over torture
Former Mississippi officers sentenced for abusing two black men last year
A federal judge in Mississippi has begun sentencing the last of six white ex-lawmen who pleaded guilty to last year’s “Goon Squad” torture and sexual abuse of two black men, leaving the defendants with combined prison terms totalling more than a century.
The six men will still face sentencing on state charges for their roles in the home-invasion assault, which has stood out among dozens of racially charged US police misconduct cases in recent years for its calculated brutality.
The two victims, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, were handcuffed, stripped naked, beaten, sexually assaulted and subjected to electric taser shocks and waterboarding as the officers screamed racial slurs at them, according to accounts filed by prosecutors in the case.
The two-hour ordeal on January 24, 2023 began when the six officers entered the house without a warrant, ostensibly looking for illegal drugs, and ended in a mock execution that left Jenkins gravely wounded from a gunshot to the mouth, court records showed.
The former lawmen referred to themselves as members of the so-called Goon Squad, a group that routinely used excessive force, according to case records. All but one were members of the Rankin county sheriff’s office.
The case finally brought national attention to what Rankin county residents say has been decades of abuse perpetrated by patrol officers and detectives in the sheriff’s department against poor people, white and black, in central Mississippi.
The defendants were sentenced this week for federal felony offences to which they pleaded guilty last summer, including civil rights conspiracy, deprivation of rights under colour of law, conspiracy to obstruct justice and obstruction of justice.
Brett McAlpin, former chief investigator for the sheriff’s department, was sentenced on Thursday to more than 27 years in prison.
US District Judge Tom Lee also imposed a 10-year sentence on the final defendant, Joshua Hartfield, 32, a former narcotics investigator from the police force in Richland, Mississippi.
Christian Dedmon, 29, who prosecutors considered the ringleader of the raid, received the longest prison term, 40 years, when sentenced on Wednesday. Hunter Elward, who fired the gunshot that wounded Jenkins, was given 20 years on Tuesday.
Jeffrey Middletown, 46, a sheriff’s lieutenant at the time of the raid, was sentenced on Tuesday to 17.5 years. Daniel Opdyke received the same sentence on Wednesday.
According to federal prosecutors, the six defendants barged into the house in Braxton, Mississippi, after the sheriff’s office had received a complaint from a white neighbour that they had seen “suspicious behaviour” from the black men living there.
On entering the home without warning or probable cause, the officers detained Jenkins and Parker, demanding to know “where the drugs were”, court documents said.
After subjected their victims to nearly two hours of torture, Elward shoved the barrel of a gun into Jenkins’ mouth, unaware that a bullet was in the chamber and pulled the trigger, firing a gunshot that shattered Jenkins’ jaw and lacerated his tongue.
Rather than render medical aid, the officers reassembled outside to devise a cover story. They left a gun at the scene, destroyed surveillance video, tried to burn the victims’ clothes and planted illegal drugs in the house.