Remarks of United States Attorney Todd Gee Announcing a Pattern or Practice Investigation of the Rankin County, Mississippi Sheriff’s Department and Rankin County

Thank you, Assistant Attorney General Clarke for your leadership. The Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division has a long history of helping to bring change to Mississippi and this nation, and you have continued that tradition with the work we announce today.

In January of last year, five white deputies from the Rankin County, Mississippi Sheriff's Department, some of whom were part of a unit that described itself as the "Goon Squad," entered a home without a warrant, and then handcuffed, kicked, tased, and sexually assaulted two African-American men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, while taunting them with racial slurs. They told the victims, who both resided in Rankin County, to "go back" to Jackson or to "their side" of the Pearl River-areas with a higher concentration of African-American residents. A deputy eventually shot one of the victims in the mouth during a mock execution, and then the group tried to frame them both for crimes they did not commit. The Department of Justice obtained criminal convictions of those five deputies, along with another local officer who joined in the assault, and they were sentenced to terms in prison ranging from 10 to 40 years.

But for several reasons, this may not simply be written-off as an isolated incident in Rankin County. First, three of these same deputies pleaded guilty to participating in another brutal attack just a month earlier, in December 2022, when they punched, kicked, and tased a white victim and then fired a gun near him to try to scare him.

Second, publicly reported text communications between the members of the Goon Squad, including officers who were not present for the January 2023 assault, indicate that deputies routinely discussed extreme, unnecessary uses of force and other ways to dehumanize residents of Rankin County. For example, deputies shared a video of an officer defecating in the home of a Rankin County resident.

Third, brave residents of Rankin County have come forward to report abuse by members of the Rankin County Sheriff's Office. Journalists have compiled harrowing accounts of beatings, taser use, and other extreme uses of force. In a listening session my office held in Rankin County, I heard first-hand accounts of alleged abuse. The accounts came from men and women, old and young alike.

Together this information indicates that there may be a pattern or practice of civil rights violations by the Rankin County Sheriff's Department and Rankin County. The investigation we announce today will examine those alleged pattern or practices in great detail. And if the Department of Justice's investigation determines that such a pattern or practice of discrimination has occurred, we will seek remedies that bring real change to all the residents of Rankin County.

I want to make clear that there are good law enforcement officers in Rankin County and throughout Mississippi that go to work every day and do the right thing. They answer the call when people are in need, and they treat those they encounter fairly. But the information we have learned to date about the conduct of some members of the Rankin County Sheriff's office calls back to some of the worst periods of Mississippi's history.

This year is the sixtieth anniversary of the "Mississippi Burning" murders of three civil rights workers that this office prosecuted. There, too, law enforcement played a role in the violence. We all want to hope that Mississippi and our nation have moved past a time when such crimes can occur, but the allegations involving the Goon Squad and others in Rankin County echo back to 1964 in ways that we must confront.

Simply put, the events in Rankin County appear to be a continuation of the violence and intimidation that for too long has defined how many African-Americans experience the justice system in Mississippi. We do not have to accept the old hatreds and abuse of the past. And we do not have to accept the false claim that safety comes at the price of illegal force and abuse of power. In Mississippi and throughout the nation we have learned over and over that real change in civil rights sometimes requires us to dig up the past, tell painful facts, and offer new ways of doing things. We intend for this investigation to do that same work in Rankin County.

Let me close by reminding anyone who has information about alleged civil rights abuses in Rankin County that they can make a report through email at [email protected] or on a telephone hotline at 888-392-8557.

Thank you all for joining us today for this important announcement.

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