The Mississippi deputies, dubbed the “Goon Squad,” who were sent to federal prison in the torture of two Black men have been exposed for a nasty thread of text messages with their colleagues joking and boasting about the very crimes they plead guilty to and more.
A WhatsApp group chat obtained by The New York Times and Mississippi Today revealed conversations between over a dozen deputies at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office dating back to 2019. Among the messages was the typical banter about using excessive force against crime suspects – Tasing people in the anus, specifically. The report says messages also included talks of taking nude photos of a female suspect as well as a video of an officer defecating on someone’s bed.
Conversations also featured jokes about shooting and killing suspects, per The Times.
Around the time of a 2019 probe into three fatal shootings by members of the so-called Goon Squad, deputies created a game out of arrests. In one message, Deputy Cody Grogan asked how many points he’d get for shooting someone. Another deputy replied the points depend on if they die or not.
“People that know me know that’s not going to happen. I’m not going to go out and shoot anybody,” Grogan told The Times. He was also seen in another message suggesting the deputies kill a hit-and-run suspect, bury him at his house and burn his car.
He no longer works for the department.
As if that wasn’t disturbing enough, the report says the messages included banter about dead bodies. Yes, you read that right. Upon arriving on a scene of homicide, suicide or overdose, the report says deputies often shared pictures of the corpses, joking about mutilating them or having sex with them.
“We see dead bodies all the time. That’s kind of how we deal with stuff,” said Deputy Cook to The Times. Another deputy told reporters it was just “stuff you see on the job” and that “it wasn’t against the law” to exchange photos of the deceased.
All of these disgraceful correspondences were sent in the presence of supervisor Lieutenant Jeffrey Middleton, one of the six Goons who pleaded guilty to the kidnapping, sexual assault and torture of Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker from January 2023. Middleton, in one message, told the deputies to poke a dead body with a stick, per the report. In response to a deputy who asked permission to beat a suspect who exposed himself to a woman, Middleton texted him to “justify it good” in his report.
Middleton along with former Rankin County sheriff’s deputies Hunter Elward, Christian Dedmon, Brett McAlpin, Daniel Opdyke and former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield are serving between over 17 years in federal prison.
What happens now with these messages? Well according to the Times, at least nine of these officers are still active in the department. The Rankin County Sheriff’s Office announced they will conduct a review based on the leaked messages, per CNN.