Last two members of Mississippi ‘Goon Squad’ sentenced
JACKSON, Miss. (WJTV) – The final two members of the Mississippi "Goon Squad" were sentenced in federal court on Thursday, March 21. The six former law enforcement officers pled guilty to a long list of state and federal charges for torturing two Black men.
Former Rankin County Deputy Brett McAlpin, 53, was sentenced to 27.25 years in prison by U.S. District Judge Tom Lee.
McAlpin on Thursday wore a jumpsuit turned inside out to conceal the name of the jail where he is detained, and he nodded to his family in the courtroom. He offered an apology before he was sentenced but did not look at the victims as he spoke.
“This was all wrong, very wrong. It’s not how people should treat each other and even more so, it’s not how law enforcement should treat people,” McAlpin said. “I’m really sorry for being a part of something that made law enforcement look so bad.”
Former Richland police officer Joshua Hartfield was given an approximately 10-year federal prison sentence on Thursday.
Before giving Hartfield a 10-year sentence Thursday, Lee said Hartfield did not have a history of using excessive force and was roped into the brutal episode by one of the former deputies, Christian Dedmon. Lee said, however, that Hartfield failed to intervene in the violence and participated in a cover-up.
On Wednesday, Daniel Opdyke, 28, was sentenced to 17.5 years in prison, and Christian Dedmon, 29, was sentenced to 40 years in prison.
On Tuesday, Hunter Elward, 31, and Jeffrey Middleton, 46, were both sentenced in federal court. Elward received about 20 years in prison, and Middleton received 17.5 years in prison. They, like Opdyke and Dedmon, worked as Rankin County sheriff’s deputies.
On Monday, the victims of the so-called “Goon Squad,” Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, and their attorneys called for a federal judge to impose the strictest possible penalties at their sentencings this week.
Jenkins and Parker were subjected to numerous acts of racially motivated, violent torture last year.
In January 2023, the group of six burst into a Rankin County home without a warrant and assaulted Jenkins and Parker with stun guns, a sex toy and other objects. Elward admitted to shoving a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and firing in a “mock execution” that went awry.
The terror began on Jan. 24, 2023, with a racist call for extrajudicial violence when a white person phoned McAlpin and complained that two Black men were staying with a white woman at a house in Braxton. McAlpin told Deputy Dedmon, who texted a group of white deputies so willing to use excessive force they called themselves “The Goon Squad.”
Once inside, they handcuffed Jenkins and his friend Parker and poured milk, alcohol and chocolate syrup over their faces. They forced them to strip naked and shower together to conceal the mess. They mocked the victims with racial slurs and shocked them with stun guns.
After Elward shot Jenkins in the mouth, they devised a coverup that included planting drugs and a gun. False charges stood against Jenkins and Parker for months. Jenkins suffered a lacerated tongue and broken jaw.
Last March, months before federal prosecutors announced charges in August, an investigation by The Associated Press linked some of the deputies to at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries.
All six former officers are facing potentially decades-long prison sentences on the federal charges. Time served for separate convictions at the state level will run concurrently with the potentially longer federal sentences.
In a statement Tuesday, U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland condemned the “heinous attack on citizens they had sworn an oath to protect.”
The majority-white Rankin County is just east of the state capital, Jackson, home to one of the highest percentages of Black residents of any major U.S. city.
The officers warned Jenkins and Parker to “stay out of Rankin County and go back to Jackson or ‘their side’ of the Pearl River,” court documents say, referencing an area with higher concentrations of Black residents.
Attorneys for several of the deputies have said their clients became ensnared in a culture of corruption that was not only permitted, but encouraged by leaders within the sheriff’s office.
For months, Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, whose deputies committed the crimes, said little about the episode. After the officers pleaded guilty in August, Bailey said the officers had gone rogue and promised to change the department.
The sheriff released a statement after the sentencings that said in part, "As the duly elected and acting Sheriff of Rankin County, I will remain committed to the betterment of this county and this sheriff’s department moving forward. Together with the honest, hard-working men and women currently with this department, we will strive daily to make this community a safer and more secure place to live for everyone."
Jenkins and Parker have called for his resignation, and they have filed a $400 million civil lawsuit against the department.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.