Great question! That’s definitely been on our minds as well. It’s hard for us to say at this point whether there are other ‘Goon Squads’ across the state. We’ve heard about similar allegations of abuse in other departments. We haven’t looked into whether any of these are related yet.

It was clear from the start with the Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker case that the “Goon Squad” wasn’t limited to the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. One of the men was a Richland PD officer. But we don’t know the full extent of this overlap between departments or even how involved this one officer was in other incidents.

To find out more we’re going to use the same old shoe leather reporting methods. Talk to people who say they’ve experienced this type of conduct, file records requests with the departments and pursue these questions doggedly until we find answers.

Do you mean doing investigative work? I would throw out a little bit of caution there. One thing to consider is the sensitivity and danger of this case for so many of the people involved. Our investigation was backed by a whole team of editors, lawyers and investigative reporters and the New York Times and Mississippi Today with decades of experience in pursing investigations following ethical and legal guidelines.

But there are aspects of this that anyone can pursue. Any citizen can file public records requests with these departments that abide by Mississippi’s public records laws. You can attend county board of supervisor meetings and local protests and press conferences where leaders and activists are discussing this issue to learn more. And you can try to talk with public officials about their conduct and what they’re doing to prevent these kinds of abuses.

It’s so important for everyone to be engaged, informed, curious and invested in these issues.

The FOIA laws here are similar to other states. Actually the time span in which agencies have to respond is pretty quick here—only seven days. But like with all states, the reality is that responsiveness is going to vary by agency. Each agency has their own resources and cultures around facilitating public access to records. And there are specific provisions of the law that apply to different agencies and circumstances. I’m going to shout out Robert Wentworth at the MS Department of Public Safety as one of the most considerate, professional and swift public records administrators I’ve ever worked with. If you have specific questions about the laws, I’m happy to try to dig around and learn more for you.

Sheriffs are elected positions. One important aspect of how the role operates is that Sheriff’s don’t have other offices that they are beholden too. For instance, local police departments are usually overseen by municipal governments, which typically have the ability to fire department leaders. But that’s not true for Sheriff’s. Their departments can be investigated by other law enforcement agencies like MBI and the FBI for criminal conduct. And their budgetary decisions have to be approved by the county board of supervisors. But it’s really hard to fire a sheriff for doing a bad job. They really have to be deposed through elections for the most part.

Whether that accounts for the lawlessness in the department, I can’t say. But I would point out that Sheriff’s typically have a lot power politically and legally within the counties they oversee. Our investigative series is trying to explore what kinds of abuses can occur in these departments with the current state of oversight.

Our job as reporters is to try to get the truth out there. What happens after that is best left up to the public.

I can say that the sentencing guidelines for the crimes the six officers indicted this summer are currently facing are steep. They could be serving decades in prison. And that’s just for those two incidents.

As a reporter I might not have the best answer for this question.

I think it’s important to consider all the things that went right in this situation and helped bring the truth forward as a model for how to prevent similar abuse in the future.

A few years ago, a state law was introduced that mandated that MBI look into any officer involved shootings in Mississippi. That’s what got them on the scene right away when Michael Jenkins was shot. And it’s our understanding that MBI began to see signs of wrongdoing and that’s when the Feds were brought in.

In all of the cases we looked into, no one was shot.

Also, the justice department conducted an incredibly swift and thorough investigation and provided a lot of detail to the public about what they found. The criminal information that was produced during the officers’ indictment gave a detailed walk through of everything they did that night. This helped bring clarity and attention to the issue.

What we see in both cases is outside agencies with mandates to investigate wrongdoing by law enforcement agencies acting swiftly and informing the public.

Whether this should have happened sooner and what checks and balances to put in place to ensure that it will in the future is a bigger question it might be best to ask your local congressional leaders.

I’ll add that accountability in policing is a massive issue nationally with a long history. If you’re looking for an introduction into the legal frameworks for holding police accountable I’d personally recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Shielded-How-Police-Became-Untouchable/dp/0593299361 It’s definitely got an argument it’s putting forward, but it’s also a really comprehensive look at the legal frameworks currently in place and how they came to be.

Yes, the Justice Department is still investigating the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. A couple days after our story published, the DoJ published this press release, asking for anyone who’d experienced abuse at the hands of Rankin deputies to contact them as soon as possible.

Paul Holley was the department’s lawyer. He then briefly became undersheriff before resigning in Oct. We’re not sure exactly why he resigned. He made a public statement that didn’t explain exactly why he left. We found department records that showed Holley was present at one on of the incidents we reported on. We don’t know what if any involvement he had though. He’s working for the Attorney General’s office now I believe.

The most direct and powerful legal mechanism voters have to remove Bailey is to vote during the next election. Also there needs to be organizing to rally a contender. He ran unopposed this year.

Thanks for this question! In addition to the shooting of Michael Jenkins, we know that Christian Dedmon was present during the fatal shootings of Pierre Woods and Shawn Fondren, and that he fired his weapon during the incident involving Shawn Fondren. How that compares to officers at other agencies depends on which agency and which officer you’re looking at. Many police officers go their entire careers without firing their weapons in the line of duty. A few have been involved in several shootings. As a deputy who was present for at least three shootings, Mr. Dedmon appears to fit somewhere in the middle of those two poles.

This is a great question. Based on the incidents we reviewed, the majority of these alleged torture cases occurred in low-income neighborhoods in Rankin County. Many of these local residents described near-nightly raids in their communities. Certain neighborhoods, such as the Robinhood community in Brandon, Miss., were especially popular areas for the deputies. So yes, location was a factor, but it’s more complicated than that…

Nearly all of the people targeted by the deputies were suspected drug users or small-time dealers. Combine their income with their drug use, and you have a group of people who are unlikely to be believed by authority figures. And that’s exactly what we saw: even in cases where people lodged complaints, filed lawsuits, and fought their criminal charges, even when they showed up to court visibly injured, there doesn’t appear to have been any serious investigation conducted by anyone with the authority to do so. I hope that answers your question!

Yes, the Justice Department has investigated the incident involving Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker and filed charged against 5 deputies and a local police officer for their roles in that incident. Those six officers also face state charges for the same incident. The DoJ’s investigation is ongoing, and shortly after we published our investigation, the department requested more information from anyone who’d experienced abuse at the hands of Rankin deputies.

It’s difficult to say who was officially a “member” of the Goon Squad, which was a night shift of patrol deputies at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. What we can say is that we used department incident reports, dispatch records and Taser logs to identify 20 deputies who were listed as present during the additional alleged torture incidents we uncovered. Five of those deputies are currently facing criminal charges. What role those additional 15 deputies played in these incidents is hard to determine, but we were able to identify several deputies who have so far eluded criminal charges and who appear to have triggered their Tasers during several of these alleged torture incidents.

We asked for comments from several local leaders before we published our story, they either declined to comment or did not respond. We will continue to ask!

There have been several protests at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office and other locations around county, as well as numerous calls for Sheriff Bryan Bailey to resign. We’ve been told there are additional protests in the works as well.

I think these would make for great questions for your local, state and national lawmakers, who have the power to implement stronger accountability mechanisms for law enforcement agencies, something we’ve seen happen across the country in the wake of George Floyd’s murder. One thing our and our colleagues’ reporting has exposed is the general lack of effective accountability mechanisms for sheriff’s departments, especially in Mississippi. That this extreme level of alleged misconduct could continue for nearly 20 years before triggering a serious investigation by a higher authority is astounding. This can change, but that change requires action by local, state and national representatives. As journalists, all we can do is deliver the truth and hope that voters and lawmakers put that information to good use.

As reporters, our best defenses against anyone that seeks to quash the freedom of the press are the First Amendment and voters. We’re extremely lucky to enjoy constitutional protections that enshrine our ability to do our work with little fear of reprisals. But we’ve never seen a greater threat to press freedoms than we are seeing today. We rely on the public and elected officials to hold accountable anyone who seeks to infringe on those rights and protect our ability to do hard-nosed reporting. We also rely on readers who support good journalism, especially local journalism! So if you want to keep reading investigative reporting like Nate’s and my deep-dive into the Goon Squad, make sure to support your local news outlet!

I really appreciate this question and your concern for us. We definitely had to manage safety issues throughout the reporting process. We have a whole team at the Times devoted to this that we consulted with. We had to think a lot about how to protect ourselves and our sources. Fortunately, everything’s worked out fine so far. But it’s definitely been a stressful part of this process.

Jerry Mitchell and Ilyssa Daly, two amazing reporters on our team, did incredible investigations into the Clay County Sheriff’s Department and the Noxubee County Sheriff’s Department. You should definitely check them out!

I think we found some compelling evidence that the Sheriff had been alerted that there was a problem. Multiple sources told us they filed complaints, wrote letters, sent facebook messages to the sheriff directly or called him on the phone to talk about the abuse of these same deputies.

Yeah! There was a great investigation on this by the Tampa Bay Times. Truly insane. It seems like that was a case where official department policy went haywire, leading to potentially unconstitutional conduct rather than a group of officers engaging in explicitly criminal conduct and covering up their actions, like what’s been alleged here. But there are definitely some important overlaps, good point!

Great question! We’re still looking into the level of involvement of officers at other departments. One Richland PD officer was involved in the Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker case. And we reported that the current Pearl Police Chief, Dean Scott was present at least one of the incidents in our story when he was a Rankin Sheriff’s Deputy. Whether that raises questions about his fitness for office is for the community and their representatives to decide. But it’s an important question!

Great question! We found that some of the these deputies had social media contacts with officers at other departments. That alone doesn’t say much, but it’s definitely a lead. We haven’t spotted anything overt about collaboration in misconduct on social media though.

That’s a big question. We’re hoping to find the answer. Still very unclear at this point but if we find anything you’ll know about it. Stay posted.

We’re definitely looking into similar conduct across different departments. We didn’t find that the events we reported on in Rankin had to do with any militarization of the department. But we haven’t looked into that issue in the area. Definitely worth further exploration. Great questions!

Not yet. We expect that the officers who’ve been indicted will speak at their sentencing in January. And others may come forward with time. But so far we’ve been met with silence.

I know that the mood in Rankin County shifted a lot after the federal indictment came down this summer and after our story dropped last month. A few months ago we heard a fair amount of skepticism about what was going on in the department. Now we’re hearing pretty unanimous outrage.

I can’t speak for cops or the majority of Mississippians. But I can say that most of what we’ve heard from community members in the area in the past few weeks—including people involved in law enforcement—has been condemnation of these deputies’s actions.

The Federal case against the officers were related to constitutional violations, not criminal charges. The state cases against the 6 officers in August were criminal. They were mostly related to covering up evidence. Hunter Elward, who fired the gun in Michael Jenkins mouth, was charged with assault. There were no charges related to the sexual violence. That doesn’t mean state prosecutors couldn’t have pursued those charges or won’t in other cases, but so far that hasn’t been their strategy.