Deputies accused of abusing Black men are fired by Mississippi sheriff amid federal probe
Jun 27, 2023, 2:51 PM
CORRECTS FIRST NAME TO OF SHERIFF TO BRYAN, INSTEAD OF BRIAN FILE - Michael Corey Jenkins stands outside Taylor Hill Church in Braxton, Miss., March 18, 2023. The police shooting of Jenkins, who sustained critical injuries after he says a deputy put a gun in his mouth and fired, led the Justice Department to open a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff's Office. Deputies said Jenkins was shot after he pointed a gun at them. Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey said Tuesday, June 27, that an unspecified number of deputies involved in that encounter had been fired. (AP Photo/HG Biggs, File)
Credit: ASSOCIATED PRESS
(AP Photo/HG Biggs, File)
JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — Deputies accused of beating and sexually assaulting two Black men before shooting one of them in the mouth, prompting a federal civil rights investigation, have been fired, a Mississippi sheriff announced Tuesday.
The announcement comes months after Michael Corey Jenkins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker said six deputies from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department burst into a home without a warrant. The men said deputies beat them, assaulted them with a sex toy and shocked them repeatedly with stun guns in a roughly 90-minute period during the Jan. 24 episode, Jenkins and Parker said.
Jenkins said one of the deputies shoved a gun in his mouth and then fired the weapon, leaving him with serious injuries to his face, tongue and jaw.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey announced Tuesday that deputies involved in the incident had been fired, but he would not provide the names of the deputies who had been terminated or say how many law enforcement officers were fired. Bailey would not answer additional questions about the January’s episode.
