A Mississippi sheriff who oversees a department where five deputies were convicted of torturing two Black men earlier this year — and where at least five people died in its custody in 2021 — is running for reelection unopposed.
Malik Shabazz, an attorney for the two men tortured in January, told a CBS affiliate in Jackson on Tuesday that he believes the problem extends beyond the group of officers who pleaded guilty and that the sheriff, Bryan Bailey, should be removed from office.
“We must press for the maximum sentence for this hate crime, and we must continue to press for the removal of Bryan Bailey as sheriff,” Shabazz said. Activists in Rankin County have also been calling for the sheriff to resign.
For now, Bailey remains on the ballot in November, according to the Rankin County elections website. Bailey received a total of 22,850 votes in the Republican primary on August 8. He’ll be running unopposed though there is an option to write in a candidate.
Have you ever considered the blue wall of silence and the consequences for breaking that silence?
Yes, I have. I’m not without empathy for the difficulty of standing up for what’s right in an atmosphere wherein you’re going to be punished for doing it. Still, progress has to start somewhere, and while I would absolutely agree that means pressure coming down from the top, the fact of the matter is that the system isn’t going to get fixed unless well-intentioned people start replacing the corrupt cops to the point where the corrupt ones are outnumbered. This is a necessary step if we want change.