Bombshell report finds many law enforcement brutality complaints ignored in Mississippi

A Mississippi sheriff back in 2019 ordered his deputies to physically attack a suspect they were engaged in a high-speed chase with. One the deputies caught up with the suspect and did exactly that, The New York Times reported Thursday.

Marquise Tillman was left with a fractured eye socket and broken bones in his face and chest. Clarke County Sheriff Todd Kemp denied giving the order but, as was revealed in Tillman's lawsuit, could plainly be heard giving the order in a recording. The accusation was backed up by testimony from four of his deputies.

Tillman was awarded an undisclosed amount to settle his claim, but the incident received no news coverage and there was no state investigation, the Times reported.

"That is not unusual in Mississippi, where allegations like those leveled against Sheriff Kemp often go nowhere," according to the report.

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A review of publicly available federal lawsuits in the state that involve severe brutality and other abuses of power showed that at least 27 claims resulted in no state investigations, even though some of the claims included eyewitness accounts and other forms of strong evidence.

Two of those claims involved a man who said his jailers tied him to a chair and choked him and squeezed his genitals until he vomited back in 2020. A woman claimed that in 2016, a deputy held her arms behind her back and raped her in a cell.

While both their lawsuits were settled, officials with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said they could find no records showing that either office had investigated those allegations and the 25 others.

“This wasn’t one renegade cop or a renegade D.A. There is a systemic problem here,” said James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who now lectures at Harvard Law School.

Read the full report over at The New York Times.