Rankin County's branch of the NAACP is calling for Sheriff Bryan Bailey's removal from office nearly a month after five Rankin County deputies and one Richland officer pled guilty to state and federal charges for their roles in the beating and torture of two Black men.
Perhaps best known as the 'Goon Squad', five Rankin County Sheriff's deputies and one off-duty Richland officer brutalized and shouted racial slurs at Michael Corey Jenkins and friend Eddie Terell Parker for nearly two hours on the night of January 24, tasering both more than two-dozen times each and shooting the former in his mouth.
After an attempted coverup by the officers – in which they shut off body cameras and planted both methamphetamine and a gun at the scene – all six have since pleaded guilty on both state and federal civil rights charges. Each faces between 70 to 120 years in prison.
But some worry the issue runs far deeper in the department and have called for Sheriff Bryan Bailey's removal from office via formal petition.
“We believe that he has shown that he is not an effective leader and that he has allowed this terrible culture of violence and excessive force to exist without anything punitive being afforded to the officers,” said Angela English, president of the Rankin County NAACP.
“Now, we don't believe that this was the first time that this has happened. We just believe that this is the first time they were caught red handed, and had Michael Corey Jenkins succumbed to his injuries and not been so bold to speak out, we may never have known about these criminals and what was going on under Bryan Bailey's direction.”
Under Mississippi law, a petition signed by no less than 30% of qualified voters in the county is required before being placed under consideration by a committee appointed by the Governor. At the time of publication, English says the petition has already received more than 1,000 signatures.
“His so-called surprise about their lying, about planting evidence and going into the home without a warrant? We are sure there are more than five "goons" in that department — those were the five that got caught. He was elected to protect and serve the public, not just a select few, and [he] let Rankin County and Mississippi down and has caused great embarrassment. If he has any integrity and common decency and he truly loves the county that he serves, he should not run for re-election.”
Revealed in the August 4 hearing where the six officers pled guilty to federal civil rights and criminal charges was that the self-proclaimed “Goon Squad” were members of the Rankin County Sheriff Department’s 11 a.m. to 11 p.m. shift.
The no-warrant raid on the Braxton home began when a neighbor called Deputy Brett McAlpin, who lived in the neighborhood himself, and complained to him that two Black men were staying in the home with a white woman.
The officers said McAlpin then contacted another deputy, Christian Dedmon, who then messaged the others and asked if they were available for a mission. That mission, according to Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, involved the officers beating, torturing, sexually assaulting and racially abusing the two men for 90 minutes.
“The lady who owns the house is a disabled white female, and one of our clients actually lived there as her caretaker because they had known each other 25 or 30 years or however long. And so essentially, you took what was a neighbor's prejudice and or suspicions, and all you had to do was hand that over to Brett McAlpin,” said Trent Walker,who, alongside his co-counsel Malik Shabazz, represents Jenkins and Parker.
“What was revealed that I found really outstanding was apparently they had uniform patches and they had challenge coins as you would receive like if you were in Alcoholics Anonymous and you had been clean for however long and you get these coins,” he said. “So they had their own version of a challenge coin with its own logo on the front, the Rankin County Sheriff's Department logo on the reverse.”
Deputy Hunter Elward, who was among the six officers involved in that raid, has also been placed at the scene of at least two other violent interactions between a Rankin County Sheriff’s Deputy and a Black man. In 2021, Elward responded to a vandalism call and upon arriving chased 29-year-old Damien Cameron into his family’s home without a warrant.
Cameron’s mother says Elward then punched her son and tasered him a number of times before kneeling on his neck for 20 minutes while awaiting support from another officer.
After placing Cameron in handcuffs and the back of his car to gather evidence, Elward returned and found Cameron was non-responsive. As paramedics attended to her son in the family’s front yard, Elward was seated on the back of his car crying “why me?” according to Cameron’s mother, Monica Lee.
Elward was also named in the fatal 2019 shooting ofPierre Woods, a Black man who Elward said exited his house during a standoff with officers brandishing a weapon. Sheriff Bryan Bailey was also at the scene.
“I would certainly take the position that, as far as Elward is concerned, there's adequate evidence that he was an officer who had a pattern of using excessive force that was certainly known to the leadership of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department. He had been named not just in the Monica Lee Cameron lawsuit, but in at least one other lawsuit,” said Walker. “He, Dedmon and Opdike pleaded guilty in an entirely different federal case that we had no knowledge about as soon as they finished taking their guilty pleas in our case. So all that to say, Elward was a known user of excessive force. And to me, it's very difficult to imagine a situation where that was not known to the leadership of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department.”
Sheriff Bailey did not respond to multiple requests for comment.