Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke Delivers Remarks Announcing Six Mississippi Law Enforcement Officers Plead Guilty to Torturing and Abusing Two Black Men

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Hello, I am Kristen Clarke, the Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the United States Department of Justice. I am pleased to join our law enforcement partners in Mississippi for this announcement.

Together we announce that six white officers with the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department pled guilty to serious civil rights crimes for their torture of two Black men who were residing in a home in Rankin County, and also the additional guilty pleas of three of those officers for using excessive force against a different victim in a separate incident.

Any act of police abuse threatens the administration of justice, erodes the trust between the public and law enforcement officials, and instills fear in communities that are targeted for such abuses. The details of the crimes these defendants committed is a horrific and stark example of violent police misconduct which has no place in our society today.

The first set of charges and guilty pleas entered today relate to the brutal assault earlier this year of two Black men who were arrested without probable cause, unlawfully detained, beaten, and tortured at the hands of law enforcement officials, and then falsely charged with serious criminal offenses.

The six white police officers involved in this assault sought to dehumanize their victims and to send a message that these two Black men were not welcome “on their side of the river.”

These defendants helped one another deliver their message by, among other things, handcuffing the victims behind their backs and:

• Using racial slurs and derogatory language when yelling at the victims;
• Discharging a firearm in order to scare and intimidate the victims,
• Holding them down and pouring cooking oil, milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup on their faces and into their mouths, forcing them to painfully and involuntarily ingest those liquids;
• Striking one of the victims with objects including a metal sword, a piece of wood and a wooden kitchen implement;
• Kicking one of the victims in the ribs;
• Tasing the victims dozens of times with department issued tasers; and
• Stealing personal belongings from the house;

This abhorrent course of conduct culminated with defendant Elward forcing the barrel of his department issued firearm into the mouth of one of the victims and pulling the trigger in an attempt to scare him. He did this not once, but twice, and when he did so a second time, a bullet ripped through the victim’s mouth and throat and exited through the neck causing life threatening injuries.

Remarkably, the victim survived the shooting even though these defendants left him laying on the floor, gushing blood, for a considerable amount of time without providing medical care, because they were too busy developing a false story to try to cover-up their misconduct.

This cover up included lying about their unlawful entry into the victim’s residence, charging the victims with crimes they did not commit, planting and fabricating evidence to be used against one of the victims in subsequent criminal proceedings, destroying physical evidence, including shell casings, clothing and surveillance video, threatening physical harm and death to witnesses if they told the truth and repeatedly lying to investigators about the facts and circumstance surrounding the shooting.

The second incident to which three of these defendants plead guilty involved an unlawful assault last year of another victim who was beaten, tased and one defendant fired a gun near his head in an attempt to coerce a confession. Two of these defendants were also charged with failing to intervene to stop the misconduct. 

The conduct that I just summarized is outrageous and shocks the conscience.

While many law enforcement officers work hard to serve the public and to carry out their duties with integrity and professionalism, the misconduct that these former law enforcement officers engaged in strikes at the very heart of policing.

The actions of these defendants not only caused significant physical, emotional, and psychological harm to the victims, but also caused harm to the entire community, who feel they cannot trust the police officers who are supposed to serve them and leaving other police officers to try to mend the communal wounds inflicted by these defendants. This trauma is magnified because the misconduct was fueled by racial bias and hatred.   

This case is a stark reminder that although much progress has been made in Mississippi since Neshoba County Sheriff’s Deputy Cecil Price arrested three civil rights workers in the Summer of 1964 before turning them over to members of the Klu Klux Klan, who murdered them, burned their car, and buried their bodies, there is still much to be done to root out law enforcement misconduct, especially when that misconduct is motivated in part by the color of the victims’ skin. 

I applaud the outstanding work of our federal partners including the Civil Rights Division, the United States Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi, and the FBI, as well as our state partners at the Mississippi Attorney General’s Office and the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation. The collaborative efforts undertaken by each of these offices helped ensure that a comprehensive investigation was completed, and that justice was done.

The defendants in this case wanted to send a message to the victims that they didn’t belong in Rankin County, but we have a message of our own: Abusive law enforcement officers will not be tolerated in any of our communities, and we will pursue justice and accountability whenever, and wherever, police misconduct rears its ugly head.