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Goon Squad Violence Leads to Federal Investigation of Mississippi Sheriff’s Office
The Justice Department will determine if allegations of widespread violence and improper searches amount to a pattern of discrimination in the department.
Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield are examining the power of sheriffs’ offices in Mississippi as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. Jerry Mitchell is an investigative reporter who has examined civil rights-era cold murder cases in the state for more than 30 years.
The Justice Department announced Thursday that it had expanded its investigation into the suburban Mississippi sheriff’s department where a self-described “Goon Squad” of deputies has been accused of torturing people for nearly two decades.
Investigators will seek to determine if the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department engaged in a pattern of unconstitutional policing through widespread violence, illegal searches and arrests or other discriminatory practices.
Rankin County came to national attention last year after deputies, some from the Goon Squad, tortured two Black men in their home and shot one of them, nearly killing him. Six officers pleaded guilty and were sentenced to federal prison in March.
“Since the Goon Squad’s sickening acts came to light, we have received reports of other instances where Rankin deputies overused Tasers, entered homes unlawfully, bandied about shocking racial slurs and deployed dangerous, cruel tactics to assault people in their custody,” Kristen Clarke, the assistant attorney general for civil rights at the Justice Department, said during a news conference.
Many of those allegations were detailed last year in an investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today recounting the stories of nearly two dozen residents who said that Rankin deputies had burst into their homes, restrained the residents and brutalized them in search of illegal drugs.
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