JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — The Justice Department has opened a civil rights investigation into a Mississippi sheriff’s department whose officers tortured two Black men in a racist attack that included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said Thursday.

The Justice Department will investigate whether the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department has engaged in a pattern or practice of excessive force and unlawful stops, searches and arrests, and whether it has used racially discriminatory policing practices, according to Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke.

Five Rankin sheriff’s deputies pleaded guilty in 2023 to breaking into a home without a warrant and engaging in an hourslong attack on Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. A sixth officer, from the Richland Police Department, was also convicted in the attack

  • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
    link
    fedilink
    English
    arrow-up
    18
    ·
    edit-2
    2 months ago

    NO!

    But I heard the South was a paradise, and everyone online said they faced FAR less racism than in the north! A veritable rainbow of love and harmony!

    Could it possibly be that I was misinformed? Unthinkable.

      • InverseParallax@lemmy.world
        link
        fedilink
        English
        arrow-up
        12
        ·
        2 months ago

        Are you kidding me? I get that every time something comes up.

        There’s racism everywhere, the south is actually less racist because there’s more segregation in the north, and I don’t know what I’m talking about even though I lived in the south and I’m not white.

        They get really, really angry about it.