Six former law enforcement officers in Mississippi — five of whom were in the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office’s self-titled “Goon Squad” — got sentences ranging from 15-45 years Wednesday for their confessed roles in a 90-minute torture session that included them assaulting two Black men with a sex toy and punching and kicking them as they called them racial slurs. One of the six, Hunter Elward, forced his gun into the mouth of Michael Corey Jenkins and fired a round, lacerating the man’s tongue and breaking his jaw. It seems nothing less than a miracle that the victims — Jenkins in particular — survived and were able to convey their anguish to the court Wednesday.
It seems nothing less than a miracle that the victims — Jenkins in particular — survived and were able to convey their anguish to the court Wednesday.
“They left me to die bleeding on the floor, and they set me up to be imprisoned,” Jenkins said in a statement that, because he still has trouble speaking, was read Wednesday by his attorney. “Your honor, they killed me,” Jenkins said in his statement. “I just didn’t die.” Eddie Parker, who was tortured alongside him that night, said, “I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to sleep again at night.” He said that “the humiliation and embarrassment from the sexual assault is too great for me to talk about.”
As satisfying as it may have been to see the officers sentenced again — they were sentenced following their guilty pleas to federal charges last month — their being sent to prison should not be where this story ends. That’s why it was only right that after former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies Brett Morris McAlpin, 53; Christian Dedmon, 29; Jeffrey Middleton, 46; 31-year-old Elward; Daniel Opdyke, 28, and former Richland Police Officer Joshua Hartfield, 32, were sentenced Wednesday that the focus returned to demanding the resignation of Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey.
The sheriff said the officers had lied…
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