JACKSON, Miss. — The last of six former law enforcement officers who tortured two Black men outside Mississippi’s capital has been sentenced.
Former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield was given an approximately 10-year federal prison sentence on Thursday.
The six white officers were fired and pleaded guilty to subjecting Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to numerous acts of racist torture in January 2023.
The so-called “Goon Squad” broke into a home where a neighbor complained that the Black men were staying with a white woman. Hartfield tried to destroy evidence of the torture.
THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) - A high-ranking former sheriff’s deputy in Mississippi - one who was often seen as a father figure by younger officers - was sentenced to more than 27 years Thursday for breaking into a home with a group of law enforcement officers as they tortured two Black men, an act the judge called “egregious and despicable.”
Former deputy Brett McAlpin, 53, was the fifth former law enforcement officer sentenced this week by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee after pleading guilty to the attack, which involved beatings, repeated uses of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth. The sixth and final member of the group, 32-year-old former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield, is set to be sentenced Thursday afternoon.
McAlpin on Thursday wore a jumpsuit turned inside out to conceal the name of the jail where he is detained, and he nodded to his family in the courtroom. He offered an apology before the judge sentenced him.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” said McAlpin, who did not look at the victims as he spoke. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
Lee sentenced Christian Dedmon, 29, to 40 years and Daniel Opdyke, 28, to 17.5 years on Wednesday. He gave about 20 years to Hunter Elward, 31, and 17.5 years to Jeffrey Middleton, 46, on Tuesday. All but Hartfield served with the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office outside Mississippi’s capital city, where some called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
McAlpin was the fourth highest-ranking officer at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office, a probation officer said in court. Arguing for a lengthy sentence, federal prosecutor Christopher Perras said McAlpin was not technically a member of the Goon Squad but “molded the men into the goons they became.”
Parker told investigators that McAlpin, who was off duty and not in uniform during the attack, functioned like a “mafia don” as he instructed the officers throughout the evening. Prosecutors said other deputies often tried to impress McAlpin, and Opdyke’s attorney said Wednesday that his client saw McAlpin as a father figure.
The younger deputies who were already sentenced tried to wrap their heads around how they had started off “wanting to be good law enforcement officers and turned into monsters,” Perras said Thursday.
“How did these deputies learn to treat another human being this way? Your honor, the answer is sitting right there,” Perras said as he turned and pointed at McAlpin.
In March 2023, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.
The officers invented false charges against the victims, planting a gun and drugs at the scene of their crime, and stuck to their cover story for months until finally admitting that they tortured Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing it in what federal prosecutors said was meant to be a “mock execution.”
In a statement read by his attorney Thursday, Jenkins said he “felt like a slave” and was “left to die like a dog.”
“If those who are in charge of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office can participate in these kinds of torture, God help us all. And God help Rankin County,” Jenkins said.
For each of the deputies sentenced so far, Lee has handed down prison terms near the top of the sentencing guidelines.
The terror began Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white person complained to McAlpin that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton. McAlpin told Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies asking if they were “available for a mission.”
“No bad mugshots,” Dedmon texted - a green light, according to prosecutors, to use excessive force on parts of the body that wouldn’t appear in a booking photo.
Dedmon also brought Hartfield, who was instructed to cover the back door of the property during their illegal entry.
Once inside, the officers mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns. They handcuffed them and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. Dedmon and Opdyke assaulted them with a sex toy. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess.
After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw, they devised a coverup. The deputies agreed to plant drugs, and false charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months.
McAlpin and Middleton, the oldest men of the group, threatened to kill the other officers if they spoke up, prosecutors said. In court Thursday, McAlpin’s attorney Aafram Sellers said only Middleton threatened to kill the other officers.
Sellers also questioned probation officer Allie Whitten on the stand about details submitted to the judge. When federal investigators interviewed the neighbor who called McAlpin, that person reported seeing “trashy” people at the house who were both white and Black, Sellers said. That called into question whether the episode started on the basis of race, he argued.
Federal prosecutors said the neighbor referred to people at the home as “those people” and “thugs.” The information included in the charging documents, which the officers did not dispute when they pleaded guilty, revealed some of them used racial taunts and epithets throughout the episode.
The majority-white Rankin County is just east of Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city. The officers shouted at Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say.
Attorneys for several of the deputies said their clients became ensnared in a culture of corruption that was not only permitted, but encouraged by leaders within the sheriff’s office.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, who took office in 2012, revealed no details about his deputies’ actions when he announced they had been fired last June. After they pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and promised changes. Jenkins and Parker called for his resignation and filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department. Last November, Bailey was reelected without opposition to another four-year term.
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Michael Goldberg is a corps member for the Associated Press/Report for America Statehouse News Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit national service program that places journalists in local newsrooms to report on undercovered issues. Follow him at @mikergoldberg.
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