Officials in a Mississippi county settle lawsuit filed by 2 Black men tortured by deputies
Rankin County officials announced last week that they had settled a lawsuit filed by Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker—who were brutalized by sheriff's deputies in 2023—for $2.5 million.
'This amount, for Mississippi, is historic,' said Trent Walker, the attorney for the two men. 'I can't think of an excessive force settlement larger than this.'
Six Rankin County law enforcement officers handcuffed, beat and shocked Jenkins and Parker with Tasers before shooting Jenkins in the mouth during a warrantless raid of Parker's home.
'This is the ending of the Michael Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker case from the perspective' of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department, said its lawyer, Jason Dare.
The county's insurance policy will cover $2 million of that payment, he said.
The remaining $500,000 will come from the sheriff's coffers, which is funded by taxpayer dollars, Dare said, but taxpayers won't have to pay for any increase to the department's budget.
Last year, a federal judge sentenced the six officers — former deputies Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward and Daniel Opdyke and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield — to between 10 and 40 years in federal prison for their roles in the 2023 torture of Jenkins and Parker.
Middleton's shift called themselves the 'Goon Squad' and created a WhatsApp channel and commemorative coins featuring the moniker and drawings of mobsters.
An investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a decades-long reign of terror by nearly two dozen Rankin County deputies, but the six officers are the only ones who have been charged.
During the officers' sentencing hearings, former deputies and prosecutors said the torture of Jenkins and Parker was far from isolated. In at least nine incidents over five years, McAlpin brutalized people during arrests, prosecutors said.
'McAlpin is the one who molded these men into what they became,' federal prosecutor Christopher Perras told the judge. 'He modeled that behavior for young impressionable officers, and it's no wonder that they followed his lead.'
Dare said the sheriff's office has taken steps to ensure such behavior ceases. 'The compliance director, Captain Wayne Carter, and the (Internal Affairs) investigators, do an excellent job of going through everything now to make sure that something similar to what happened in January 2023 never happens again,' he said.
The events in Braxton had impacted not only Mr. Jenkins, 'but also the Rankin County community and the fine, upstanding law enforcement officers who are with the Rankin County Sheriff's Department, who have weathered the storm that has ensued since that day,' Dare said. 'We hope that this resolution brings some sense of finality.'
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This story was originally published by Mississippi Today and distributed through a partnership with The Associated Press.
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