Rankin County, Mississippi Goon Squad

On 24 January 2023 six Mississippi cops, five of them self-labelled as the “Goon Squad,” subjected Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker to nearly two hours of torture. The cops were dispatched on this “mission” after receiving a report of black men socializing with a white woman in a home in overwhelmingly white Rankin County. Parker was a childhood friend of the woman and had been helping take care of her because she had been paralyzed since she was a teen.

The Goons kicked in the door, handcuffed and arrested the two men, tased them 17 times, punched, kicked and sexually abused them, all while spewing racial slurs and shouting“stay out of Rankin County.“ One cop, Hunter Elward, shot Jenkins in the mouth, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw. As Jenkins lay bleeding on the floor, the cops gathered outside the home to devise a false cover story. Jenkins recalled he “felt like a slave” and was “left to die like a dog.” The cops destroyed surveillance video and taser cartridges, planted a gun and drugs and then filed false charges against Jenkins and Parker which stood for months. Two of the Goons threatened to kill other officers who divulged the truth.

The cops pled guilty to state and federal charges in August 2023 and in March and April 2024 received sentences ranging from 10-45 years—an anomaly in racist capitalist America. In May 2025, a lawsuit against Rankin County by Jenkins and Parker settled for $2.5 million. In May 2026, Jenkins and Parker also filed defamation suits against Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines, who days after the city agreed to the settlement, publicly referred to them as “dopers” and rapists.

The persistence of the two men, their attorneys, and community activists brought the savage attack to public attention and put a spotlight on the Sheriff's Department. Dozens of people came forward to describe being subjected to or witnessing torture, including waterboarding, at the hands of Rankin County deputies for two decades. These revelations helped spark the OPA campaign in August 2023.

Following a joint investigation, in November 2023, the New York Times and Mississippi Today revealed much more of the Rankin cops’ sadism. Narcotics detectives and night patrol officers broke into homes in the middle of the night, accused the people inside of dealing drugs, handcuffed or held them at gunpoint and tortured them to confess or rat on others, while hurling racial slurs. Among the many cases, in 2016 Christopher Holloway was beaten and shocked until he defecated on himself. They then dragged him outside and threatened to throw him into a pool while handcuffed. In 2018 Rankin County deputies shocked Robert Jones with a taser while he lay submerged in a flooded ditch, then rammed a stick down his throat until he vomited blood. In another raid that year, Mitchell Hobson was choked with a lamp cord, waterboarded and beaten until his blood splattered the walls.

For years, complaints to the Justice Department about the cops' brutality went nowhere. In September 2024 the DOJ announced a civil rights investigation of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. Within weeks of taking office the Trump administration put a hold on all DOJ investigations of racist police abuse.

In January 2026, the ACLU of Mississippi and Center for Constitutional Rights filed a public records lawsuit seeking information about Rankin County D.A.‘s office’s handling of cases in which sheriff deputies engaged in nearly two decades of misconduct. The police torture that has been uncovered in Rankin County is just the tip of the iceberg. All archives of the Rankin County Sheriff's Department and D.A.’s office must be opened to bring to light all the cop atrocities in Rankin County.