A federal judge in Mississippi handed down lengthy prison sentences to six white former law enforcement officers last week, after they tortured two Black men in January of last year. The judge sentenced the sixth and final officer, Joshua Hartfield, on Thursday to 10 years in prison. The officers referred to themselves as the “Goon Squad,” according to prosecutors.
Now that the last of the officers is sentenced, civil rights attorneys representing Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, the two men who were tortured, are demanding that Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey resign. He was not involved in the attack, but five of the six officers were his deputies.
“None of this would have existed if Bryan Bailey did his job and was not complicit,” Malik Shabazz, one of the attorneys representing Jenkins and Parker in an ongoing federal civil suit, told HuffPost.
Jenkins and Parker are suing Rankin County and Bailey, as well as officers involved in last year’s incident, for $400 million. The suit, filed last year, alleges that the sheriff created an atmosphere in which bad officers could run wild.
Bailey has filed for “qualified immunity” in the suit. Qualified immunity is the legal doctrine that law enforcement officers can avoid liability for abuses unless they broke “clearly established” laws.
“Sheriff BRYAN BAILEY directly participates in acts of excessive force with the deputies he supervises,” the lawsuit states, adding that he “has been denied qualified immunity by this court” previously.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Office did not respond to requests for comment on the litigation.
The suit cites a separate case from 2019, when Rankin County deputies fatally shot a Black man, Pierre Woods, during a standoff. Woods’ family said that he suffered from mental illness.
A judge said that Bailey was present at the scene of that incident, the lawsuit states, adding that the sheriff did not tell officers to stop firing during the fatal…
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