Stop Police Brutality

Six white former Mississippi law officers pleaded guilty on Monday to state charges for torturing two Black men in a racist assault. All six had recently admitted their guilt in a connected federal civil rights case.

In the gruesome crimes committed by men tasked with enforcing the law, federal prosecutors saw echoes of Mississippi’s dark history, including the 1964 killing of three civil rights workers after a deputy handed them off to the Ku Klux Klan. Locally, the sheriff whose deputies committed the crimes this year called it the worst case of police brutality he had ever seen.

Prosecutors say some of the officers nicknamed themselves the “Goon Squad” because of their willingness to use excessive force and cover up attacks including the assault that ended with a deputy shooting one victim in the mouth.

A Mississippi jury has rejected a civil lawsuit seeking money damages from two police officers who fatally shot a man while serving a warrant at the wrong house.