Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers have pleaded guilty to charges related to the torture and abuse of three people in two separate incidents.
The defendants—five former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and one former Richland city police officer—were charged with 16 felonies connected to the violation of civil rights.
The Rankin County sheriff’s deputies in the case are chief investigator Brett McAlpin, 52; narcotics investigator Christian Dedmon, 28; Lt. Jeffrey Middleton, 46; Dep. Hunter Elward, 31; and Dep. Daniel Opdyke, 27, along with Richland City Police Officer Joshua Hartfield, 31, who was also present during the incident.
All six pleaded guilty to charges such as civil rights conspiracy, deprivation of rights under the color of law, discharging a firearm during a crime of violence, and conspiracy to obstruct justice.
Details of the Assaults
According to the indictment, Mr. McAlpin received a complaint on Jan. 24, 2023, from a Braxton, Mississippi, resident who reported suspicious behavior at the neighboring home of a woman identified as K.W.The defendants confessed to kicking in the door of K.W.’s home without a warrant. The two victims, black men identified in the indictment as M.J. and E.P., were living in the home.
“The defendants handcuffed and arrested the men without probable cause to believe they had committed any crime, called them racial slurs, and warned them to stay out of Rankin County,” the Department of Justice said.
The six officers then punched and kicked the men, used a stun gun on them 17 times, forced them to ingest liquids, and assaulted them with a sex object. During the incident, Mr. Dedmon fired his gun twice to intimidate the men, the DOJ said.
At one point, Mr. Elward then removed a bullet from the chamber of his gun, forced it into M.J.’s mouth, and pulled the trigger two times, intending to dry fire the weapon.
On the second trigger pull, the gun discharged, and the bullet cut through M.J.’s tongue, broke his jaw, and pierced through his neck.
“As M.J. was bleeding on the floor, the defendants did not provide medical aid, but instead gathered outside the home to devise a false cover story and took steps to corroborate it, including: planting a gun on M.J.; destroying surveillance video, spent shell casings, and taser cartridges; submitting fraudulent drug evidence to the crime lab; filing false reports; charging M.J. with crimes he did not commit; making false statements to investigators; and pressuring witnesses to stick to the cover story,” the DOJ said.
‘Torturous and Hateful’
Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch called the January incident a “brutal attack” that severed the trust between law enforcement and the public.“Without a relationship of trust between law enforcement officers and those they swear to serve and protect, our fight for justice and against crime is doomed to fail,” she said.
The incident drew the attention of attorney and former chairman of the New Black Panther Party Malik Shabazz, now national president of Black Lawyers for Justice.
In a $400 million lawsuit filed against the defendants, Mr. Shabazz called the assault “one of the worst and most bizarre incidents of police misconduct in United States history.”
“The egregious conduct described in this Complaint is torturous and hateful,” Mr. Shabazz wrote in the complaint. “The acts described herein, committed under the color of law, set the standard of what is wrong with policing today in America.”
‘Sick to My Stomach’
Mr. Bailey addressed the lawsuit in an Aug. 4 press conference, where he denied any wrongdoing.“The only thing I am guilty of on this incident right here is trusting grown men that swore an oath to do their job correctly,“ he said. ”I am guilty of that, but the people of Rankin County elected me to do a job during good times and during bad times. Yes, this is a bad time.”
Mr. Bailey said he was lied to about what took place the night and was “sick to my stomach” about the incident.
“I have 115 other deputies that do a good job,” he said. “I’ve tried to build a reputation here. I’ve tried to have a safe county, and they have robbed me of all of this.”
The actions of the few have harmed the reputation of the department and serve as an example of why the public doesn’t trust the police, he said.
Department Violates Public Records Act
In February 2023, Rankin County Chancery Court Judge Troy Odom said the sheriff’s department violated the Mississippi Public Records Act for refusing to hand over incident reports on the deaths of two men who died in the custody of the department and two others who were shot by officers, according to Insider.Insider sued the department in 2022 after it denied the outlet’s request for incident reports on the deaths.
The department argued that the incident reports were being used in an investigation and couldn’t be released until it was over.
According to Insider, by the time the case was heard by Judge Odom, the investigation was over and the reports had been released to the media outlet, though the judge still gave his opinion that the department failed to hand over the incident reports in a timely manner.
“It’s an incident report,” Judge Odom said, adding that it didn’t contain classified information such as nuclear codes or trade secrets.
“Without any investigatory information contained therein, it needs to be produced when requested,” he said.
A reporter asked Mr. Bailey at his news conference about what he would say to people who feel unsafe in Rankin County due to the actions of the five sheriff’s deputies.
“What I’ll say about race is, we’re a human race, and no member of the human race should treat another member of the human race the way that the two victims were treated.”
