Before six former Rankin County lawmen were sentenced this past week for terrorizing two Black men, most all of them apologized to the victims for what they had done.
According to press accounts, some of the defendants looked at the two victims — one of whom had been shot in the mouth in a mock execution that went awry — while they offered their words of contrition. Some did not.
They said they were terribly sorry for what they had done. They’d be haunted by their actions for their rest of their lives. They had become monsters in ways they could still not fathom. They had let their profession down, casting a bad light on others who wear the badge.
Some of the defendants seemed sincere, like the one who cried profusely as he spoke. Others may have been saying only what they thought they were expected to say, hoping that their expressions of remorse — even if hollow — might persuade U.S. District Judge Tom Lee to go easy on them.
He did not, nor should he have. Five of the six, all former deputies of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department, drew sentences from 17½ to 40 years. The lightest sentence, 10 years, was given to the only municipal cop in the bunch. He apparently was not an official member of the “Goon Squad” but was brought along and asked to watch the back door while the other five barged into the house and began an hour and a half of physical, sexual and verbal abuse on the two Black men.
This case drew a lot of attention not only in Mississippi but nationally because of its racial dynamics. All six of the former lawmen are white, and it’s clear that racism was a motivating force behind their actions. They had descended on the house in Braxton because of a white resident’s complaint that the two Black men were staying there with a white woman who lived in the home.
But the Goon Squad did not only target Blacks, as reporters who dug into this story learned. It went after drug users or others from poor neighborhoods, Black and white, who were suspected of crimes. The lawmen expected they could abuse these individuals with impunity because those in authority and the general public would be inclined to believe and back the officers over any of their potential accusers.
Three of the deputies also pleaded guilty this week to beating up and sexually assaulting a white motorist who they accused of possessing stolen property.
These six have been labeled as rogue cops and not in any way indicative of what goes on in most law enforcement agencies.
That’s undoubtedly true, but it would be naive to think that there are not rogue cops in other places than Rankin County.
A culture exists in some segments of law enforcement that condones violence if that’s what it takes to break a case or keep crime down. And there’s a code of silence that prevails within the police fraternity that often protects those who cross the line.
That culture doesn’t always just restrict itself to solving crimes either. It sometimes morphs into a gang-like identity that preys on those who buck those in power or who are in a state of subjugation, such as those who are behind bars. Just this past week, news reports said that a former Noxubee County sheriff plans to plead guilty in a federal case that accuses him of having demanded that a female inmate at the jail he ran send him sexually explicit photographs and videos of herself.
The sickening case in Rankin County reminds me of what they say about dogs on the loose.
When a stray is by itself, you don’t have to worry much about it. But if there are a pack of strays together, watch out. They are inclined to be more aggressive and violent when they are with others, and to target those who appear to be vulnerable.
A couple of the Rankin County deputies, according to prosecutors, were the ringleaders, but others fell in line because they wanted to impress those who were the “lead dogs.”
Cases like this seriously erode the trust that the public has in law enforcement. It’s similar to the distrust that Black citizens had for the mostly white law enforcement agencies during the 1960s, when many lawmen saw themselves as the anointed defenders of segregation. In several places in the South, they joined the Ku Klux Klan so that they could be even more effective at enforcing racial domination.
What happened in Rankin County was a bad reminder of that time.
- Contact Tim Kalich at 662-581-7243 or tkalich@gwcommonwealth.com.
