Mississippi Today
Final two ‘Goon Squad’ officers sentenced in Mississippi torture case
Brian Howey and Nate Rosenfield are examining the power of sheriffs' offices in Mississippi as part of The Times's Local Investigations Fellowship.
A federal judge handed down sentences Thursday to a high-ranking Rankin County deputy prosecutors say was the ringleader of the notorious “Goon Squad” and a local police detective associated with the crew for their roles in the torture and sexual assault of two Black men last year.
Judge Tom Lee of US District Court sentenced former Rankin County chief investigator Brett McAlpin to more than 27 years behind bars.
“McAlpin is the one who molded these men into what they became,” federal prosecutor Christopher Perras said during the hearing. “He modeled that behavior for young impressionable officers, and it's no wonder that they followed his lead.”
Former Richland Police Department detective Joshua Hartfield also received a 10-year sentence Thursday. Hartfield was the only officer who participated in the violent raid who did not work for the sheriff's department.
The sentencing is the latest chapter in a saga that has rocked the quiet suburban county near Jackson.
A Justice Department investigation found that McAlpin, Hartfield, and former deputies Jeffrey Middleton, Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward and Daniel Opdyke handcuffed, beat and shocked Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker with Tasers during a warrantless raid of Parker's home in January, 2023.
In a separate incident in December 2022, Dedmon, joined by Elward and Opdyke, shocked Alan Schmidt repeatedly with Tasers before sexually assaulting the man while he was handcuffed.
These incidents were not isolated, prosecutors and the deputies revealed during the hearings this week. In at least nine incidents over the last five years, Perras said McAlpin brutalized people during arrests.
He earned a reputation for training young deputies to mimic his violent tactics, building the Goon Squad from the ground up.
“He didn't sit at a desk, he beat people. He forced confessions,” Perras said. “If you wanted to advance at the Rankin County Sheriff's Department, you had to be like Brett McAlpin.”
Hartfield received the shortest sentence of all the involved officers. Of the four others, Dedmon received the stiffest sentence, 40 years; Elward, 20 years; and Opdyke and Middleton, each almost 18 years.
Because he was not a known member of the Goon Squad and was less involved in the torture of Mr. Jenkins and Mr. Parker, Judge Lee said he looked at Hartfield differently and was conflicted about how to sentence him.
“You had no knowledge at the outset of what was planned or likely to occur at the home,” he said. “You were the least involved and the least culpable.”
All of the defendants were ordered to collectively pay $79,000 in restitution to the three victims.
Local activists and attorneys for Jenkins and Parker said the problem is much deeper than just these six officers, and other deputies deserve to be prosecuted for their roles in the abuse.
“This happened over and over again,” attorney Trent Walker said. “It wasn't the first time they did it, it was the first time they got caught.”
Last year, Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a decades-long reign of terror by nearly two dozen Rankin County deputies.
More than 50 people say they witnessed or experienced torture and warrantless raids at the hands of deputies, most of whom have not been charged with a crime.
The Rankin County District Attorney's Office recently confirmed it is reviewing and dismissing criminal cases involving Goon Squad members, but District Attorney Bubba Bramlett has so far declined to share which cases have been dismissed or how far back in time his review will go.
Several months after the publications released their findings, state lawmakers introduced a bill that would expand oversight over Mississippi law enforcement, allowing the state board that certifies officers to investigate and revoke the licenses of officers accused of misconduct, regardless of whether they are criminally charged.
House Bill 691 passed overwhelmingly in the House and is now before the Senate.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1892
MAY 21, 1892
Crusading journalist Ida B. Wells published a column exposing the lynchings of African-American men and denouncing claims that the lynchings were meant to protect white women.
Her anti-lynching campaign came after a mob killed three of her friends, who had reportedly opened a grocery store that competed with a white-owned store in Memphis.
Upset by Wells' writings, a white mob destroyed her presses and threatened to kill her if she ever published again. She left Memphis for Chicago, but she continued to expose lynchings, calling for national legislation to make lynching a crime.
In 1898, she took her protest to the White House.
“Nowhere in the civilized world save the United States of America do men, possessing all civil and political power, go out in bands of 50 and 5,000 to hunt down, shoot, hang or burn to death a single individual, unarmed and absolutely powerless,” she wrote. “We refuse to believe this country, so powerful to defend its citizens abroad, is unable to protect its citizens at home.”
The National Memorial for Peace and Justice in Montgomery, which opened in 2018, features a reflection space in honor of her.
Congress finally passed an anti-lyncing law in the 2021-22 session. The Emmett Till Antilynching Act defines lynching as a federal hate crime.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
On this day in 1961
MAY 20, 1961
A white mob of more than 300, including Klansmen, attacked Freedom Riders at the Greyhound Bus Station in Montgomery, Alabama. Future Congressman John Lewis was among them.
“An angry mob came out of nowhere, hundreds of people, with bricks and balls, chains,” Lewis recalled.
After beating on the riders, the mob turned on reporters and then Justice Department official John Seigenthaler, who was beaten unconscious and left in the street after helping two riders.
“Then they turned on my colleagues and started beating us and beat us so severely, we were left bloodied and unconscious in the streets of Montgomery,” Lewis recalled.
As the mob headed his way, Freedom Rider James Zwerg said he asked for God to be with him, and “I felt absolutely surrounded by love. I knew that whether I lived or died, I was going to be OK.”
The mob beat him so badly that his suit was soaked in blood.
“There was nothing particularly heroic in what I did,” he said. “If you want to talk about heroism, consider the Black man who probably saved my life. This man in coveralls, just off of work, happened to walk by as my beating was going on and said ‘Stop beating that kid. If you want to beat someone, beat me.' And they did. He was still unconscious when I left the hospital.”
To quell the violence, Attorney General Robert Kennedy sent in 450 federal marshals.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Podcast: The controversial day that Robert Kennedy came to the University of Mississippi
Retired U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Edward Ellington talks with Mississippi Today's Bobby Harrison and Geoff Pender about former U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy's speech at the University of Mississippi less than four years after the riots that occurred after the integration of the school. Ellington, who at the time headed the Ole Miss Speaker's Bureau as a law school student, recalls the controversy leading up to the speech.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
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