‘They Beat Me Like a Slave': Signs of Violence in Sheriff's Office Dated Back Years

New York Times

10-07-2025

For nearly two years, the embattled sheriff of Rankin County, Miss., has tried to distance himself from brutality in his department, saying he was unaware of assaults like those carried out by deputies who called themselves the Goon Squad.
But department records and interviews with a former F.B.I. agent reveal that the sheriff, Bryan Bailey, had evidence of his deputies' violent acts going back to his earliest days in office.
In 2012, the year Mr. Bailey became sheriff, the department and the F.B.I. had reviewed video footage of a deputy ramming his car into a teenager fleeing arrest and threatening to kill him.
Eight years later, a man sued the department claiming that deputies hit him with a metal rod and shoved a gun in his mouth while he was handcuffed.
Then, in 2022, a deputy was caught on video using his Taser to shock a handcuffed man in the back of a patrol car.
The Rankin County Sheriff's Department confirmed that it had investigated all three cases, and so had the F.B.I. One of the deputies involved was suspended and another was reassigned, but none of them were fired, and none faced prosecution. Several were later tied to violent raids by the Goon Squad or were convicted for their roles in torturing two men, Eddie Parker and Michael Jenkins, in 2023.
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