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How MS Deputies' 'Goon Squad' Terrorized County For Years

Crime and Justice News

A group of sheriff’s deputies in Rankin County, Miss., entered homes in the middle of the night, accused people of dealing drugs, then tortured them into confessing or providing information, the New York Times reports. Some deputies who took part called themselves the Goon Squad, and dozens of people say they endured or witnessed assaults by the group. They described violence that sometimes went on for hours and seemed intended to strike terror into the deputies’ targets. In one example, in the pursuit of drug arrests, deputies shocked Robert Jones with a Taser in 2018 while he lay submerged in a flooded ditch, then rammed a stick down his throat until he vomited blood, he said. The string of violence might have continued unchecked if not for one near-fatal raid in January, where a deputy shoved the barrel of a gun into a man’s mouth and pulled the trigger, not realizing a bullet was in the chamber.


The man was seriously injured, and the incident was thrust into the national spotlight. In August, five deputies and a police officer pleaded guilty to criminal charges. An investigation by the Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today revealed a history of blatant and brutal incidents stretching back to at least 2004. Reporters examined hundreds of pages of court records and sheriff’s office reports and interviewed more than 50 people who say they witnessed or experienced torture at the hands of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. What emerged was a pattern of violence that was neither confined to a small group of deputies nor hidden from department leaders. The reporting shows how Rankin deputies were allowed to operate with impunity, while racking up arrests for relatively minor drug infractions and leaving entire neighborhoods in fear of violent raids.

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