Sylvie Claire / August 4, 2023
Six white Mississippi police officers have admitted torturing two African-Americans for two hours with a dildo, tasers and a sword, even shooting one of the victims in the mouth, the U.S. Department of Justice announced Thursday.
This case is a "horrific and striking example of bad police behavior, which has no place in our society", Ministry representative Kristen Clarke blasted the press, denouncing acts "motivated by racial prejudice and hatred". The six officers, some of whom admitted to belonging to a team nicknamed the "Thug Brigade" and renowned for its brutality, are currently being prosecuted and are no longer on duty.
In January, they entered "without warrant or justification" a house in Braxton, a small town in this southern U.S. state, to torture the two black men inside, according to a statement from the department. The officers handcuffed them and subjected them to a torture session using "racial slurs", Clarke recounted.
According to the prosecution, the officers sexually assaulted their two victims with a dildo and inflicted 17 electric shocks with their tasers. They also humiliated them by forcing them to swallow alcohol, cooking oil, milk and other liquids. According to Ms. Clarke, one of the two African-Americans was hit with "a metal sword, a piece of wood, and a wooden kitchen utensil ».
The ordeal, which lasted around two hours, culminated when one of the officers put his service weapon in the mouth of one of the two men. To scare him off, he first pulled the trigger after removing a bullet from the magazine. On a second attempt, however, the bullet went through the victim's neck.
The police then left their victims in a pool of blood for several minutes, while they worked together to cover up the blunder.
The team destroyed the home's video surveillance, one of the shell casings used and attempted to burn the victims' clothing to make the evidence disappear, according to the prosecution. The officers also placed a shotgun on one of the victims and methamphetamine at the scene to pretense a motive for intervention.
They then filed false reports and repeatedly lied to investigators. Five of the defendants were Rankin County Sheriff's officers, while the sixth belonged to the Richland Police Department.
Three of them also pleaded guilty in another case of police violence, dating back to December. According to the court, one of the trio used a Taser on a white man and fired close to his head to extract a confession, without any intervention from the other two.