A chilling affair. Six white Mississippi police officers have admitted to torturing two African American men for two hours with a dildo, tasers and a sword, going so far as to shoot one of the victims in the mouth, the US Department of Justice announced Thursday .
This case is a “horrifying and striking example of bad police behavior, which has no place in our society”, lambasted the ministry’s representative Kristen Clarke before the press, denouncing acts “motivated by racial prejudice and hatred”.
A chilling tale
The facts date back to January 24. The police entered “without warrant or justification” a house in Braxton, a small town in this southern state of the United States, to torture the two black men who were there, according to a press release from the ministry. The police handcuffed them and subjected them to a torture session by uttering “racial slurs”, said Kristen Clarke.
According to the prosecution, the officers sexually assaulted their two victims with a dildo and inflicted 17 electric shocks on them with their tasers. They also humiliated them by forcing them to swallow alcohol, cooking oil, milk and other liquids. According to the Department of Justice, one of the two African Americans was beaten with “a metal sword, a piece of wood, and a wooden cooking utensil”.
This ordeal, which lasted about two hours, culminated when one of the officers put his service weapon in the mouth of one of the two men. To scare him, he first pulled the trigger after removing a bullet from the magazine. On a second attempt, however, the bullet left and went through the victim’s neck. The police then left their victims in a pool of blood for long minutes, while they concerted to cover up this blunder.
The team destroyed the home’s CCTV, one of the shell casings used, and attempted to burn the victims’ clothing to make the evidence disappear, the prosecution said. Officers also planted a shotgun on one of the victims and methamphetamine at the scene to pretend motive. They then filed false reports and repeatedly lied to investigators.
The “thugs brigade”
Some of the six officers charged admitted to being part of a team dubbed the “Thug Brigade” because of their “ability to use excessive force and not report it”, says The Guardian. This brigade is renowned for its brutality.
They are currently being prosecuted and are no longer in practice. Five of the defendants were Rankin County Sheriff’s officers, while the sixth was from Richland Police.
Three of them also pleaded guilty in another case of police violence, dating back to December. According to the justice, one of the members of the trio used a taser on a white man and shot near his head to extract a confession, without any intervention on the part of the other two.
In June, the victims filed a lawsuit against Rankin County seeking $400 million in damages. The father of one of the victims indicated this Thursday in an interview to be “happy that justice has been done” and hope that this decision “will help other families (of victims)”.
2023-08-04 06:35:00
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