Five months after the Trump administration closed investigations into law enforcement agencies across the country, the Justice Department has signaled that it will continue its investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department.
Rankin County NAACP President Angela English said a Justice Department official recently informed her that Attorney General Pam Bondi had authorized federal investigators to move forward with the Rankin County investigation after months of uncertainty about whether it would continue under the Trump administration.
English has been coordinating with Justice Department officials since they began investigating the department in 2023, after a group of sheriff’s deputies and a Richland police officer, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad,” tortured two Black men during a late-night raid.
Last year, the six officers were sentenced to federal prison for their roles in the incident, and dozens more people have since accused Rankin County deputies of abuse.
“We need people to be held accountable for what they’re doing,” English said. “We need people to come forward and tell their own stories.”
After learning that the investigation would continue, English organized a listening session to help investigators connect with more alleged victims of the sheriff’s department.
The session will be held Nov. 1 at the Mount Elam Family Life Center in Pearl, where attendees will have an opportunity to share their experiences in private and submit their claims to the Justice Department.
“I have not seen where the Department of Justice has signaled anything regarding the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department,” said Jason Dare, the department’s attorney and spokesperson. “The RCSD will continue its cooperation with the investigation in order to show that all aspects of the department’s policing are within constitutional boundaries.”
The Justice Department launched an investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department in September 2024, after Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a pattern of torture by Rankin deputies stretching back nearly two decades and involving at least 20 deputies.
The federal agency did not respond to requests for comment on the investigation, but in July, it denied a Freedom of Information request filed by Mississippi Today seeking the status of its Rankin County investigation, saying the records “pertain to an ongoing law enforcement proceeding.”
While the investigation had not formally been abandoned, its future was uncertain under the Trump administration, which has moved to scuttle most of the Justice Department’s ongoing investigations into law enforcement agencies accused of civil rights violations.
In May, the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division announced it was closing eight investigations into police departments in Arizona, New Jersey, Tennessee, New York, Oklahoma and Louisiana.
The division also dismissed lawsuits and investigations into the Louisville and Minneapolis police departments, which were responsible for the deaths of Breonna Taylor and George Floyd.
Civil rights advocates said the sweeping changes signaled an end to the department’s longstanding practice of holding abusive law enforcement agencies accountable.
“The Trump administration is essentially giving a green light to police abuse and unconstitutional policing,” Jarvis Dortch, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Mississippi, said in a May statement.
Survivors of the Goon Squad’s abuses said news of the investigation came as a relief.
Rick Loveday, a former jail guard who said he was brutalized by Rankin County deputies when they raided his home in 2018, said he was excited to hear the Justice Department was continuing its investigation.
“ They did a bunch of bad stuff,” Loveday said. “Fate caught up with some of them, but they still haven’t been punished, really, for what they’ve done.”
This story was published in partnership with Creative Commons. Read the original story here.
