(RepublicanNews.org) – Six ex-police officers from Mississippi are due to be sentenced for their roles in a violent assault against two men and their consequent attempts to cover up the abuse, which included shooting one of the men in the mouth in what has been described as a “mock execution” gone wrong.
The six defendants, who pleaded guilty to thirteen federal charges in August, stood accused of breaking into a home in which Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker were staying and proceeding to beat the men, electrocute them with stun guns, assault them with a sex toy, and even shooting Jenkins in the mouth. Throughout the ordeal, the six white officers are alleged to have used racial slurs against their victims, who are both black men, and accused them of having drugs in their possession.
The victims’ ordeal is reported to have been set in motion when one of the “goon squad,” as some of the six former officers are known to have called themselves, received a text message from a neighbor tipping him off about two black men behaving “suspiciously” at the property. The home belonged to a friend of Jenkins, who had been staying there. The six officers arranged a “mission” and on January 24th, 2023, broke into the property without a warrant, according to the prosecution, and proceeded to handcuff and terrorize the men inside in a manner the prosecution described as “torture.”
After brutalizing Parker and Jenkins, prosecutors say the offenders then forced their victims to strip and take showers in an attempt to remove evidence of their crimes before arresting them and proceeding to falsify evidence. The former officers have been accused of creating a cover story that they pressured witnesses to endorse. They are also alleged to have submitted false narcotics evidence, planted a weapon, and destroyed video evidence.
Prosecutors have recommended that the six men, Joshua Hartfield, Hunter Elward, Brett McAlpin, Daniel Opdyke, Christian Dedmon, and Jeffrey Middleton, receive sentences ranging from five to 30 years. These would be served concurrently with separate sentences stemming from state-level convictions. The victims and their attorneys have requested the harshest sentencing available due to the heinous nature of the crimes.
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