Six former Mississippi state law enforcement officers pleaded guilty to tortured and for hours abusing two African Americans in January of this year. CNN reports it, citing a press release from the Mississippi attorney general’s office. The six officers were charged with a total of 13 felonies related to the “torture and physical abuse” of two men, the Justice Department said in a news release.
The six white officers, Christian Dedmon, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Jeffrey Middleton, Daniel Opdyke and Joshua Hartfield, appeared in the Rankin County courthouse today along with their attorneys. The events they are accused of took place in Braxton, Mississippi, where the agents broke down the door of the house where the African Americans lived and then tortured them.
The victims, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, filed a federal lawsuit in June, alleging that officers illegally entered their home and handcuffed, kicked, waterboarded and attempted to sexually assault them for almost two hours. The officers, “in their repeated use of racial slurs in the course of their violent acts, were oppressive and hateful of their African-American victims,” the lawsuit states. The attack was “motivated on the basis of the race and skin color of the people who attacked”, the complaint continues.
In June Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey announced the firing of the officers involved. The Richland Police Department announced in July that Hartfield, who was off duty at the time of the alleged assault, had resigned.
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