With Multiple Deputies Headed To Jail, Sheriff Vows To Get To Bottom Of ‘Goon Squad’ Horror Show He Ignored For Years
Reminding everyone that racism is just a thing we do in the United States, six Rankin County deputies were indicated on criminal charges related to the literal torture of two black men. All six pleaded guilty. Deputy Hunter Elward was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison. The other officers are also currently serving prison time.
This all began because a “helpful” Mississippi resident called the cops because they had witnessed the most Mississippi of crimes: black men hanging out with a white woman. What went on from there not only chills the blood, but triggers the gag reflex:
During a search of the house, OPDYKE kicked in the padlocked door to the front bedroom. Inside, he found a white-flesh-toned dildo and a BB gun. OPDYKE mounted the dildo on the end of the BB gun and brought the dildo to the living room, where M.J. and E.P. were handcuffed and seated on the couch. OPDYKE forced the dildo into the mouth of E.P., and attempted to force the dildo into the mouth of M.J.
[…]
DEDMON forced M.J. and E.P. onto their knees with their backs to DEDMON, and DEDMON threatened to anally rape M.J. and E.P. with the dildo. DEDMON grabbed the back of M.J.’s pants and moved the dildo toward M.J.’s backside, but DEDMON stopped when he noticed that M.J. had defecated himself.
[…]
M.J. and E.P., still handcuffed, were forced onto their backs on the floor of the living room. ELWARD held them down, and DEDMON poured milk, alcohol, and chocolate syrup on their faces and into their mouths, forcing M.J. and E.P. to involuntarily ingest [these fluids]; and DEDMON poured cooking grease on E.P.’s head.
[…]
Pointing out that M.J. and E.P. had been tased by both RCSO-issued tasers and an RPD-issued taser, the defendants decided to test their tasers on M.J. and E.P. to see which one was more powerful.
At this point, DEDMON, MIDDLETON, HARTFIELD, and ELWARD tased M.J. and E.P. repeatedly: ELWARD’s taser was discharged 8 times, HARTFIELD’s taser was discharged 5 times, and DEDMON’s taser was discharged 4 times.
[…]
ELWARD surreptitiously removed a bullet from the chamber of his gun.
ELWARD forced M.J. onto his knees, stuck the gun in M.J.’s mouth, and pulled the trigger. The unloaded gun clicked but did not discharge.
ELWARD racked the slide, intending to dry-fire a second time. When ELWARD put the gun back into M.J’s mouth and pulled the trigger, the gun discharged. The bullet lacerated M.J.’s tongue, broke his jaw and exited out of his neck.
I want to set the scene for what’s been happening since then. The six members of the self-proclaimed “Goon Squad” are all now facing jail time. The sheriff who oversaw this group (and by “oversaw,” I mean “ignored”) has not only received a raise that makes him the highest paid law enforcement official in the state, but is now pretending he’s capable of cleaning this mess up.
And who better to do this than the sheriff who, in 2014, abused the subpoena process to dig up info on his girlfriend. He presented a subpoena for phone records to the local DA under the pretense that he was requesting general info to present to a grand jury. But the phone records request targeted his girlfriend (who was cuurently married to someone else) and the school employee the sheriff believed she was romantically involved with. An investigation was opened, but it dead-ended after the chairman of the (LOL) House Committee on Ethics recused himself because of his “years-long friendship” with the sheriff. It was then passed on to the state attorney general who simply decided not to pursue it.
Another bombshell of bad press has rocked the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department still run by ethically-challenged sheriff Bryan Bailey. A collaborative report produced by the New York Times and Mississippi Today uncovered messages sent between deputies in the “Goon Squad” WhatsApp group.
As can be assumed from the description of the atrocities committed by Goon Squad members in the only case they’re currently facing prison time for, the contents of these messages is more of the same:
Some of the messages discuss brutalizing and demeaning suspects, as well as exchanging disturbing crime scene photos and pictures of “rotting corpses,” the report said.
In one exchange from a 2022 domestic violence arrest, then-Deputy Hunter Elward wrote, “Did you Tase him in the face!?”
Fellow Goon Squad member Daniel Opdyke asked if they had shocked the man in the anus.
Another deputy said the suspect would have “gotten more lovings,” seeming to indicate they held back because of potential witnesses, saying, “All the neighbors were outside watching.”
Chat members also “discussed taking nude pictures of a woman they had arrested,” the Times reported.
Another exchange discusses deputies getting “points” for shooting someone.
One member of this chat group has already opted for the “locker room talk” defense popularized by convicted felon Donald Trump:
One member of the group chat, who no longer works for the sheriff’s department, called his messages “absolutely all jokes,” in an interview with the New York Times.
Huh. Well, they don’t look like “jokes.” Jokes are supposed to be funny. Were these messages only funny because they were true? Because, given what’s reported, the “jokes” referenced acts of violence Goon Squad members actually committed. If these were jokes, they were in-jokes that were only funny in the context of habitual acts of torture and violence committed by members of the Goon Squad group.
The state should be jumping in here to take the lead on an independent investigation of the members of this chat group. But it hasn’t done that, which has allowed none other than Sheriff Bryan Bailey to get a head start on exonerating himself, if not the rest of chat group participants not currently serving federal prison time.
The Rankin County Sheriff’s Office says it will conduct a review and analysis after a Wednesday report from The New York Times and Mississippi Today detailed messages in an encrypted WhatsApp group chat between known “Goon Squad” members and other law enforcement officers, some of whom are still employed by the county.
[…]
Neither the department nor Sheriff Bryan Bailey “knew of the existence of ‘a shift of officers who called themselves the ‘Goon Squad’ until a bill of information was filed in federal court,” the sheriff’s office statement said.
Bullshit. If the sheriff was truly unaware of the existence of a “Goon Squad” or the violent tactics of its members, he’s either incompetent or a liar. The acts committed by these officers were not the acts of officers who went a little off the rails when dealing with violent or extremely hostile arrestees. These are the acts of officers who felt truly comfortable torturing their fellow human beings, secure in the knowledge they would most likely get away with it — either because their boss was bad at his job or was willing to ignore their criminal acts. Neither is a good look for the person who’s supposed to be on top of everything happening in his department.
If Sheriff Bailey actually cared about this, he would have asked for an outside law enforcement agency to handle this “review and analysis.” If the state cared at all about this, it would have already initiated an independent investigation utilizing its Inspector General’s office or, at the very least, the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. Although the latter is still a law enforcement agency and just as prone to look for reasons to exonerate fellow officers, it still wouldn’t be the extremely compromised Sheriff Bailey pretending he can provide a competent investigation of stuff he was either too stupid or too corrupt to notice despite running this department for more than a decade.