Audio recording is automated for accessibility. Humans wrote and edited the story.
Days after the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department reached a $2.5 million settlement with two Black men tortured by “Goon Squad” officers last May, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines referred to the men as “dopers” and rapists.
Now those men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, are suing Gaines individually for damages in separate lawsuits filed in Rankin County Monday. “These statements were false, widely disseminated, and caused severe reputational and emotional harm,” they say.
Although the lawsuit does not name Rankin County as a defendant, it does take issue with how the county responded. “Rankin County failed to issue any correction, retraction, or discipline,” according to the litigation. “The County’s failure to address such misconduct demonstrates deliberate indifference.”
On Jan. 23, 2023, Parker and Jenkins were beaten, tased and sexually assaulted by the deputies before they shot Jenkins in the mouth during a mock execution. The deputies tried to plant a BB gun and drugs on the men to cover up their crimes, but they were ultimately convicted and sent to federal prison for decades.
An investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a decades-long reign of terror by 20 Rankin County deputies, several of whom routinely tortured suspected drug users to elicit information and confessions. Some still work for the department.
Many people have filed lawsuits alleging abuses by deputies, or say they filed complaints with the department or reported these incidents directly to Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, but the sheriff has denied any knowledge of these alleged abuses.
Gaines made the remarks at a Rankin County breakfast sponsored by the sheriff and his former father-in-law, Irl Dean Rhodes. The supervisor said the sheriff’s department’s attorney, Jason Dare, “beat the pants off of those guys — the dopers, the people that raped and doped your daughters. He beat their pants off.”
Michael Jenkins (second left) and Eddie Parker were in Rankin County Circuit Court, Monday, Aug. 14, 2023, to hear the guilty pleas of the officers accused of beating and torturing them in January.
Jenkins has no known felony convictions.
Parker has one felony conviction in Rankin County for failing to “stop vehicle pursuant to officer’s signal,” according to court records. In Alabama, he had a 2019 conviction for drug possession with intent to distribute. In December, he was arrested in Louisiana on drug violations, possession with intent to distribute, carrying a concealed weapon and being a felon in possession of a firearm.
Gaines did not respond to a request Wednesday for comments on the litigation, which is seeking both compensatory and punitive damages.
He previously told Mississippi Today in a statement that his remarks “were not aimed at anyone personally, and I did not name any individuals.” He said his focus is “supporting the ongoing efforts by law enforcement in Rankin County to keep our community safe and strong.”
Gaines, who worked for three decades as an agent with the Office of Inspector General, praised Bailey for enduring the scandals that have wracked his department and prompted investigations by the Justice Department and the state auditor’s office regarding Bailey’s alleged misuse of taxpayer money and equipment and supplies used at his mother’s commercial chicken farm.
“It made me cry at night that Sheriff Bailey, my friend, was absorbing this,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you, he has weathered the storm, and we are back.”
Gaines praised other Rankin County officials, citing the county’s smooth roads and relatively low crime rates, and expressed concern about the county’s growing pains, such as students from other counties attending Rankin schools.
“ How do you feel about paying the taxes that you pay and people from across the river coming over here and putting their kids in your school?” he told the nearly all-white crowd, referring to the Pearl River that separates Hinds and Rankin counties. “They’re gonna pay taxes maybe one year or maybe not at all.”
Rankin County is 72% white, while Hinds County is 72% Black.
The attorney for Jenkins and Parker, Trent Walker of Jackson, told Mississippi Today that what Gaines said about the two men in light of what they had been through was “outrageous and cannot be allowed to stand. For him to be heartless and accuse them of raping and doping white people’s daughters was just an atrocity.”
