A Mississippi grand jury has declined to indict a police offi­cer who respond­ed to a call, and shot and wound­ed an unarmed 11-year-old boy inside the home.

The grand jury found that Indianola Police Sgt. Greg Capers did not engage in crim­i­nal con­duct when he shot Aderrien Murry in the chest on May 20 while respond­ing to a domes­tic dis­pute. Murry was hos­pi­tal­ized for five days with a col­lapsed lung, lac­er­at­ed liv­er and frac­tured ribs from the gun­shot wound in his chest.

The Mississippi Attorney General’s Office, who pre­sent­ed the case to a Sunflower County grand jury, announced the deci­sion Thursday. In a writ­ten state­ment, Carlos Moore, Murry’s attor­ney, said the fam­i­ly would seek account­abil­i­ty through a fed­er­al civ­il lawsuit.

“While the grand jury has spo­ken, we firm­ly believe that there are unan­swered ques­tions and that the shoot­ing of Aderrien Murry was not jus­ti­fied,” Moore said. “We are com­mit­ted to seek­ing jus­tice for Aderrien and his family.”

Reached by phone Thursday, Michael Carr, Capers’ attor­ney, said the offi­cer had suf­fered per­son­al­ly and finan­cial­ly due to the case and that the grand jury made the right decision.

“Sgt. Capers is relieved at the result, and he is glad that the cit­i­zens of Sunflower County reached the fair and cor­rect result,” Carr said. “He is look­ing for­ward to con­tin­u­ing to serve the cit­i­zens of Sunflower County and the city of Indianola.”

The Indianola Board of Aldermen vot­ed in June to place Capers on unpaid admin­is­tra­tive leave. Capers can­not return to work and get paid unless the Board votes to take him off leave, Carr said.

Indianola is a town of about 9,300 res­i­dents in the rur­al Mississippi Delta, about 95 miles (153 kilo­me­ters) north­west of Jackson.

On the May evening of the shoot­ing, Nakala Murry asked her son to call the police around 4 a.m. when the father of one of her oth­er chil­dren showed up at her home, Moore said. Two offi­cers went to the home, and one kicked the front door before Nakala Murry opened it. She told them the man they called about had left, and that three chil­dren were inside the home, Moore said.

According to Nakala Murry, Capers yelled into the home and ordered any­one inside to come out with their hands up, Moore said. He said Aderrien Murry walked into the liv­ing room with noth­ing in his hands, and Capers shot him in the chest.

The Murry fam­i­ly has filed a fed­er­al law­suit against Indianola, the police chief and Capers. The law­suit, which seeks at least $5 mil­lion, says Indianola failed to prop­er­ly train the offi­cer and that Capers used exces­sive force.

With the grand jury’s deci­sion, the Attorney General’s Office said no fur­ther crim­i­nal action at the state lev­el would be tak­en against Capers. _​_​_​This sto­ry has been cor­rect­ed to show that the grand jury found that Capers did not engage in crim­i­nal con­duct, not that he had engaged in crim­i­nal conduct.

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The Jamaica Constabulary Force once had as its Core func­tion three things: (1) The Prevention And Detection Of Crime, The Preservation Of Peace And Good Order, and (3) The Protection Of Life And Property.
Long ago, when I served, those were the oper­at­ing tenets… I must admit it has been many years since I depart­ed, and the Force has gone through many changes even though the fun­da­men­tal need for police remains under the umbrel­la of those three foun­da­tion­al principles.
If the police depart­ment becomes good at those three prin­ci­ples, the nation’s vio­lent crime rate will decrease despite the many atten­dant con­trib­u­tors to crime.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force has nev­er been good at any­thing, least of all har­ness­ing the skills of the peo­ple with­in the depart­ment to ben­e­fit the ser­vice. It has nev­er been good at con­ti­nu­ity; it has been par­tic­u­lar­ly derelict in deal­ing with crime and could rea­son­ably be accused of rest­ing on its lau­rels, await­ing good outcomes.
The best thing that has hap­pened to the JCF has been the tal­ent­ed, brave offi­cers who have been a part of the agency from its incep­tion. The worst thing to hap­pen to the JCF has been the inep­ti­tude of the lead­er­ship since its inception.
I am not naïve to the ever-present and oblig­a­tory dark shad­ow that has hov­ered over the force that has expo­nen­tial­ly hin­dered the force from car­ry­ing out its man­date. This dark shad­ow of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence has been both by co-mis­sion and omis­sion. Direct inter­fer­ence, on the one hand, and refusal to pass ade­quate laws to aid in the reduc­tion of crime have been the crimes of both polit­i­cal par­ties in our country.
The police depart­ment must oper­ate under the rule of the con­sti­tu­tion with respect for all rights, but the police [must]have a free hand to enforce the laws impar­tial­ly with­out favor, mal­ice, or ill will.

The Jamaica Constabulary Force has nev­er had the option of oper­at­ing with­out the ever-present dark shad­ow of polit­i­cal inter­fer­ence. Within Jamaican soci­ety, there is a pletho­ra of ticky-ticky fish who har­bor the notion that the laws do not apply to them. The list includes politi­cians, judges, lawyers, pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, their friends and fam­i­ly, and ever damn Tom, Dick, and Harry who knows some­body who knows somebody.
Ultimately, there is hard­ly any­one left for the police to arrest. This has not gone unno­ticed by the pow­er­less who don’t know any­one who knows any­one. And so, our lit­tle island has become a crim­i­nal-free-for-all, a par­adise for crim­i­nals, police includ­ed in the mix.
Having said that, the police depart­ment can do a much bet­ter job than it has done, all things con­sid­ered. After all, much of what the police are tasked with doing has been done before, and there is a wealth of infor­ma­tion on how to do the job more effectively.
It has got­ten so bad for the coun­try because of the inep­ti­tude of the JCF that mur­der­ers now video­tape them­selves bury­ing the corpses of the peo­ple they kill and then do voice record­ings explain­ing the why, what, and how of their actions.
The JCF was nev­er an agency that was ever ahead of the crim­i­nal net­works in our coun­try, main­ly because the crim­i­nal net­works have always had polit­i­cal cov­er and poor police leadership.
Successes of the police over the decades have nev­er been a con­se­quence of top-down lead­er­ship and poli­cies but a result of indi­vid­ual offi­cers who laid it all on the line for the coun­try’s good.
It made sense, there­fore, that the heads of the crim­i­nal net­works that the nation was rid of were made pos­si­ble by The American Government and the hard work of the Rank and file of the JCF. I chal­lenge any­one to point me to a major crime syn­di­cate head being chopped off by the Jamaican Government or the High Command of the Police Department.
In fact, the Jamaican Government has stead­fast­ly stood in the way of both the hard-work­ing police offi­cers and the American’s effort to root out known crime syn­di­cate heads.

We are in 2023, about to step into a new year, and the most basic steps nec­es­sary in law enforce­ment are still not being pur­sued by the JCF hier­ar­chy. The nation’s roads are race tracks for taxi dri­vers, minibusses, and pri­vate motorists who over­take long traf­fic lines around cor­ners, down­hill, uphill, and on the side­walks at break­neck speeds with­out police crackdown.
The Government and the Police com­mis­sion­er have all but ced­ed the streets to the law­less dri­vers. Driving on Jamaican roads is the equiv­a­lent of play­ing Russian Roulette. Every year, hun­dreds are killed in traf­fic crash­es that the pathet­ic media calls traf­fic acci­dents. Accidents are caused by cir­cum­stances out­side the vic­tim’s con­trol. Crashes are caused by direct action or inac­tion of offend­ers, result­ing in the end result. Speeding, and oth­er breach­es of the Road Traffic Act. Last year, 2022, 488 Jamaicans per­ished on the Island’s roads and high­ways large­ly because of the actions of moron­ic Jackasses who breach the road traf­fic laws with­out con­se­quence. Where are the traf­fic cops?
As of November 27^th, 2023, a total of 373 lives were extin­guished on the nation’s roads. This unnec­es­sary loss of life and the trau­ma is a con­se­quence of exces­sive speeds, over­tak­ing around cor­ners, dri­ving too fast on wet roads, and dri­ving motor­cy­cles at high speeds with­out hel­mets are the main rea­sons why we are hav­ing these fatal col­li­sions,’ on ACP of police told the press. Still no reme­di­al action of note oth­er than beg­ging dri­vers to stop.
The same strat­e­gy is employed as it relates to vio­lent crimes. The police have been rel­e­gat­ed to beg­ging crim­i­nals to stop.
Reminds me of Nancy Reagan’s strat­e­gy for drug users, ‘just say no’.
Laughable.

I am mind­ful of the con­cerns of some of my for­mer col­leagues, who will chas­tize me for being so hard on the police when of course, there are oth­er play­ers that are seri­ous­ly dri­ving the nation’s crime rate, notably the com­mu­nist judges who seem to have sworn an oath to destroy the coun­try. From the high­est perch to the low­est court these com­mu­nists that emerged from the Norman Manley Law School are dead set on ensur­ing that dan­ger­ous mur­der­ers are returned to the streets.
More to say about that.…..

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mikebeckles.com.Check mike out on Youtube @ Mikebeckles

Power in the hands of fools is always a dan­ger­ous thing. Almost unchecked pow­er in the hands of fools who can­not think and are gid­dy about using pow­er is even more dan­ger­ous. Add qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty (gov­ern­ment carte blanch pro­tec­tion) to the two sce­nar­ios, and you get American policing.
The most dis­gust­ing of all is that when they make stu­pid deci­sions because they have the pow­er and pro­tec­tion to do what­ev­er they want to cit­i­zens, they claim it is their policy.
Truthfully, it is gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy to have its agents do what­ev­er they want to the aver­age cit­i­zen, includ­ing death, so that it can retain [con­trol].
This kind of unchecked pow­er and unre­strained immu­ni­ty is then unleashed against the poor­est and most vul­ner­a­ble Americans. This group is usu­al­ly Black.
In the same breath, on the rare occa­sion that the robot­ic androids step out of line and do the same to a white woman, and her fragili­ty is dis­turbed, the rules change.…..At least for the high­est court.
One of the endur­ing incon­sis­ten­cies in American legal think­ing on polic­ing is that younger peo­ple, par­tic­u­lar­ly younger peo­ple of col­or, are unde­serv­ing of the same pro­tec­tions under the laws as old­er, frail­er cit­i­zens. Every cit­i­zen is enti­tled to the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly pro­tect­ed doc­trine of inno­cent until found guilty. Therefore, police have no legal author­i­ty to sum­mar­i­ly and arbi­trar­i­ly deter­mine some­one’s inno­cence or guilt even before a traf­fic stop is com­plet­ed based on how they look or the col­or of their skin.
But doing so is stan­dard polic­ing prac­tice in America. It is time for qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty to go.
(Editor)

Elise Brown was a lit­tle over five feet tall and weighed 117 pounds when she was ordered out of her blue Oldsmobile by police in California in 2019. She was also 83 years old. The offi­cers who pulled Brown over thought the car she was dri­ving had been stolen – mis­tak­en­ly, it turns out – and, fol­low­ing their pro­to­col, they drew their hand­guns, hand­cuffed Brown, and forced her to her knees. A fed­er­al appeals court this year ruled that Brown could sue the police for exces­sive force, waiv­ing a legal doc­trine known as qual­i­fied immu­ni­ty that pro­tects police from lia­bil­i­ty for civ­il rights vio­la­tions in many cir­cum­stances. On Monday, the Supreme Court let that low­er court rul­ing stand, keep­ing Brown’s law­suit alive.
At a time when the nation is grap­pling with fatal police con­fronta­tions, the Supreme Court has most­ly balked at law­suits ques­tion­ing the legal immu­ni­ty extend­ed to offi­cers. Police orga­ni­za­tions have long coun­tered that offi­cers need immu­ni­ty in cas­es when they must defend them­selves, and split-sec­ond deci­sions can lead to unfore­seen tragedy. The Chino Police Department offi­cers argue they were fol­low­ing pro­to­cols: traf­fic stops for poten­tial­ly stolen vehi­cles are “high-risk” under city and state stan­dards, they said. Brown was required to kneel for no more than twen­ty sec­onds and was in hand­cuffs for approx­i­mate­ly three min­utes, they said.

The offi­cers “deployed firearms in states of readi­ness con­sis­tent with their respon­si­bil­i­ties on the scene of a high-risk stop,” the police told the Supreme Court. Brown, police said, appeared to “be in her 50s or ear­ly 60s” and “appeared not to need any accom­mo­da­tion due to health or frailty.” Brown sued in 2020, claim­ing the police used exces­sive force and unrea­son­ably detained her. “Ms. Brown was ter­ri­fied, humil­i­at­ed, and emo­tion­al­ly trau­ma­tized,” her lawyer told the Supreme Court. “That con­duct was not rea­son­able; it was extra­or­di­nar­i­ly dan­ger­ous and flat­ly incon­sis­tent with the Fourth Amendment’s pro­hi­bi­tion on exces­sive force.”

The vio­lence you see in the actions of these state agents is pro­tect­ed and made pos­si­ble by the high­est courts and paid for with your tax dollars.

An Alabama police offi­cer is on leave after a video post­ed on social media showed her curs­ing at and using a stun gun on a man who was hand­cuffed and cry­ing. The video begins with a hand­cuffed man lying in the street as an offi­cer with the Reform Police Department tells him to stand up. The offi­cer then walks the man over to a car, the footage shows. “Stay still,” the offi­cer says as she push­es him against the hood of the car and holds her stun gun to his back. “I ain’t doing s — , bro,” the man responds. “I got a gun right there.” As the offi­cer removes the gun from the man’s pants, she laughs and says, “oh yeah!” “What you say­ing ‘oh, yeah’ for?” the man asks. The offi­cer responds by using her stun gun on the man, the video shows. “Shut the f— up,” she says.

The man starts cry­ing. “OK, OK, OK,” he repeats. “Oh my God.” “You want it again?” the offi­cer asks as the man con­tin­ues to cry. “Shut the f— up. You was big and bad, shut your b — - a– up.” The video then ends. It’s unclear what hap­pened before or after the 45-sec­ond clip post­ed to Facebook, and the Reform Police Department has shared very lit­tle infor­ma­tion about the Dec. 2 inci­dent. In a brief state­ment, police Chief Richard Black and Reform Mayor Melody Davis said they were aware of the video, and the depart­ment is “in the process of turn­ing over all mate­ri­als relat­ed to this arrest to the Alabama State Bureau of Investigation.” “In accor­dance with City Policy, the offi­cer involved has been placed on admin­is­tra­tive leave while the inves­ti­ga­tion is con­duct­ed,” the state­ment said. Further ques­tions about the inci­dent were direct­ed to the State Bureau of Investigation. NBC affil­i­ate WVTM of Birmingham, Alabama, iden­ti­fied the man as Micah Washington, 24, of Tuscaloosa. His girl­friend, Jalexis Rice, said the offi­cer pulled up as Washington and two oth­er peo­ple were chang­ing a tire on their car. Rice said the video made her upset.

“When I seen it, I couldn’t do noth­ing but cry,” she told the news sta­tion. “I couldn’t do noth­ing but cry.” Online jail records show that Washington was charged with resist­ing arrest, obstruct­ing gov­ern­men­tal oper­a­tions, pos­ses­sion of mar­i­jua­na, drug traf­fick­ing, and an ex-felon being in pos­ses­sion of a firearm. He is being held at the Pickens County jail on a $505,000 bond, accord­ing to jail records. On Monday night, Washington’s loved ones and mem­bers of the com­mu­ni­ty gath­ered near the city hall to protest the arrest and demand account­abil­i­ty, accord­ing to WVTM. Black and Davis said they have request­ed a thor­ough inves­ti­ga­tion into the incident.

RANKIN COUNTY, Miss. — For near­ly two decades, a loose band of sheriff’s deputies roamed impov­er­ished neigh­bor­hoods across a cen­tral Mississippi coun­ty, met­ing out their own ver­sion of justice.

Narcotics detec­tives and patrol offi­cers, some who called them­selves the Goon Squad, barged into homes in the mid­dle of the night, accus­ing peo­ple inside of deal­ing drugs. Then they hand­cuffed or held them at gun­point and tor­tured them into con­fess­ing or pro­vid­ing infor­ma­tion, accord­ing to dozens of peo­ple who say they endured or wit­nessed the assaults.

They described vio­lence that some­times went on for hours and seemed intend­ed to strike ter­ror into the deputies’ targets.

Sign up for The Morning newslet­ter from the New York Times

In the pur­suit of drug arrests, deputies of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department shocked Robert Jones with a Taser in 2018 while he lay sub­merged in a flood­ed ditch, then rammed a stick down his throat until he vom­it­ed blood, he said.

During a raid the same year, deputies choked Mitchell Hobson with a lamp cord and water­board­ed him to sim­u­late drown­ing, he said, then beat him until the walls were spat­tered with his blood. That raid took place at the home of Rick Loveday, a sheriff’s deputy in a neigh­bor­ing coun­ty, who said he was dragged half-naked from his bed at gun­point, before deputies jabbed a flash­light threat­en­ing­ly at his but­tocks and then pum­meled him relentlessly.

The string of vio­lence might have con­tin­ued unchecked if not for one near-fatal raid in January.

According to a Justice Department inves­ti­ga­tion, deputies broke into the home of two Black men, Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, shocked them with Tasers and threat­ened to rape them. Deputy Hunter Elward shoved the bar­rel of a gun into Jenkins’ mouth, not real­iz­ing a bul­let was in the cham­ber, and pulled the trig­ger. Jenkins was griev­ous­ly injured, the inci­dent was thrust into the nation­al spot­light, and in August five deputies and a police offi­cer plead­ed guilty to crim­i­nal charges.

Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey said in a news con­fer­ence this sum­mer that he was stunned to learn of the “hor­ren­dous crimes” com­mit­ted by his deputies. “Never in my life did I think it would hap­pen in this department.”

But an inves­ti­ga­tion by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today reveals a his­to­ry of bla­tant and bru­tal inci­dents stretch­ing back to at least 2004.

Reporters exam­ined hun­dreds of pages of court records and sheriff’s office reports and inter­viewed more than 50 peo­ple who say they wit­nessed or expe­ri­enced tor­ture at the hands of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department. What emerged was a pat­tern of vio­lence that was nei­ther con­fined to a small group of deputies nor hid­den from depart­ment leaders.

Many of those who said they expe­ri­enced vio­lence filed law­suits or for­mal com­plaints, detail­ing their encoun­ters with the depart­ment. A few said they had con­tact­ed Bailey direct­ly, only to be ignored.

The Times and Mississippi Today iden­ti­fied 20 deputies who were present at one or more of the inci­dents — many assigned to nar­cotics or the night patrol — but also sev­er­al high-rank­ing offi­cials: a for­mer under­sh­er­iff, for­mer detec­tives and a for­mer deputy who is now a local police chief.

Brett McAlpin, for­mer chief inves­ti­ga­tor for the depart­ment, was involved in at least 13 of the arrests and was repeat­ed­ly described by wit­ness­es as lead­ing the raids. He was named in at least four law­suits and six com­plaints going back to 2004. Even so, Bailey named him inves­ti­ga­tor of the year in 2013. This year, he plead­ed guilty to crim­i­nal charges for his role in the January raid.

Taken togeth­er, the report­ing shows how Rankin deputies were allowed to oper­ate with impuni­ty, while rack­ing up arrests for rel­a­tive­ly minor drug infrac­tions and leav­ing entire neigh­bor­hoods in fear of vio­lent raids.

Among the dozens of alle­ga­tions reviewed, the Times and Mississippi Today were able to cor­rob­o­rate 17 inci­dents involv­ing 22 vic­tims based on wit­ness inter­views, med­ical records, pho­tographs of injuries and oth­er documents.

In near­ly half the cas­es, Taser logs obtained from the depart­ment through a pub­lic records request helped cor­rob­o­rate the alle­ga­tions. Electronically record­ed dates and times of Taser trig­gers lined up with wit­ness accounts and sug­gest­ed that deputies repeat­ed­ly shocked peo­ple for longer than is con­sid­ered safe.

The Taser logs also sug­gest that the scope of the vio­lence may extend much further.

At least 32 times over the past decade, Rankin deputies fired their Tasers more than five times in under an hour, acti­vat­ing them for at least 30 sec­onds in total — dou­ble the rec­om­mend­ed lim­it. Experts in Taser use who reviewed the logs called these inci­dents high­ly suspicious.

“This is not typ­i­cal Taser use,” said Seth Stoughton, fac­ul­ty direc­tor of the Excellence in Policing & Public Safety pro­gram at the University of South Carolina. “There’s just no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for that.”

It is impos­si­ble to tell from the logs alone whether a series of shocks were aimed at one tar­get, and whether they all made con­tact. Incident reports by the deputies offer lit­tle clar­i­ty, because in near­ly every case they failed to men­tion that a Taser was used at all.

Over the past year, the Times and Mississippi Today have inves­ti­gat­ed how pow­er­ful sher­iffs in rur­al Mississippi have dodged account­abil­i­ty in the face of mis­con­duct alle­ga­tions. The report­ing exposed numer­ous sex­u­al abuse accu­sa­tions against two sher­iffs in coun­ties near Rankin, along with evi­dence that Bailey obtained sub­poe­nas to sur­veil his girlfriend’s phone calls.

Bailey has faced increased scruti­ny since the Justice Department began to inves­ti­gate his deputies’ con­duct this year, and the NAACP and local activist groups have called for his res­ig­na­tion. After 12 years as sher­iff, he was reelect­ed in November when he ran unopposed.

The deputies accused of being involved in vio­lent arrests declined to com­ment or did not respond to repeat­ed requests for interviews.

It is not always clear what actions indi­vid­ual deputies took dur­ing the inci­dents. Witnesses often did not know their names and many of the deputies did not wear uni­forms or name tags dur­ing the raids.

Jason Dare, a lawyer for the depart­ment, declined to com­ment on the Times and Mississippi Today’s findings.

During a brief phone inter­view Sunday, Bailey repeat­ed­ly declined to com­ment. Told that sev­er­al high-rank­ing deputies were involved in arrests that had sparked accu­sa­tions of bru­tal treat­ment, he said, “I have 240 employ­ees, there’s no way I can be with them each and every day.”

On Tuesday, the depart­ment announced that it had updat­ed its inter­nal poli­cies and that deputies would receive train­ing on fed­er­al civ­il rights laws.

A state­ment from the depart­ment that referred to the January assault with­out acknowl­edg­ing a broad­er pat­tern said, “Even though the pri­or actions were abnor­mal and extreme, we will make every effort to ensure that they do not occur in the future.”

New Problems, Old Tactics 

For most of its his­to­ry, Rankin County was a rur­al area dom­i­nat­ed by farm­land and forests.

That began to change when white flight reached the cap­i­tal city of Jackson in the 1960s and Rankin’s fields gave way to sub­di­vi­sions and strip malls.

But tucked among the state­ly homes and man­i­cured lawns, some of the county’s most impov­er­ished res­i­dents live in run-down trail­ers and makeshift shacks, a few with­out run­ning water or electricity.

These neigh­bor­hoods were hit hard in the ear­ly 2000s as meth — cheap, high­ly addic­tive and easy to man­u­fac­ture in iso­lat­ed places — spread across rur­al America like wildfire.

Local sher­iffs, even in small depart­ments, set up spe­cial nar­cotics units and joined state and fed­er­al task forces in the war on drugs. The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department respond­ed by tar­get­ing low-income com­mu­ni­ties and polic­ing them relentlessly.

In an area called Robinhood, res­i­dents said home raids became rou­tine and it felt as if they couldn’t go to the cor­ner store with­out being stopped and searched.

“Once they start pick­ing on you,” said a for­mer res­i­dent, Matasha Harris, “they will not leave you alone.”

Though Rankin deputies appear to have tar­get­ed peo­ple based on sus­pect­ed drug use, not race — most of their accusers were white — their tac­tics could have been pulled from the Jim Crow era, when sher­iffs and their deputies harassed and beat Black Southerners and civ­il rights activists.

During that peri­od, deputies coerced false con­fes­sions, some­times using cat­tle prods or “the water cure”: pour­ing water into sus­pects’ nos­trils until they complied.

Priscilla Perkins, co-pres­i­dent of the John & Vera Mae Perkins Foundation, a non­prof­it based in Jackson that pro­motes racial rec­on­cil­i­a­tion, said the Goon Squad’s acts remind­ed her of the reign of ter­ror against civ­il rights activists that often involved law enforce­ment officers.

“It’s the hid­den shame of Mississippi and America,” she said. “People are still try­ing to cov­er it up.”

Among the offi­cers of that era accused of beat­ing Black res­i­dents was Lloyd Jones, a state troop­er who would become sher­iff in near­by Simpson County.

A Justice Department inves­ti­ga­tion long after his death found that he had bragged to a col­league about fatal­ly shoot­ing a Black man, Benjamin Brown, in the back dur­ing a 1967 stand­off between police offi­cers and civ­il rights protesters.

In 1970, Jones par­tic­i­pat­ed in the beat­ing of the Rev. John Perkins in the Rankin County jail, which cul­mi­nat­ed with a deputy jab­bing a fork up his nose, accord­ing to the pas­tor and wit­ness­es who tes­ti­fied against the officers.

As sher­iff, he gave Bryan Bailey his first job in law enforcement.

“He is on my life’s wall of grat­i­tude and had a huge impact on who I am,” Bailey wrote on Facebook in 2015. “Not a day goes by that I don’t think about him or recall some­thing that he taught me.”

Bailey called him a men­tor. But years before, Simpson County res­i­dents had begun call­ing him some­thing else: “Goon” Jones.

Scope of Abuse 

It’s unclear when Rankin County deputies adopt­ed their nick­name, but last year, they ordered com­mem­o­ra­tive coins embla­zoned with car­toon­ish gang­sters and the words “Lt. Middleton’s Goon Squad.” Lt. Jeffrey Middleton was the squad’s super­vi­sor. He is among the five deputies who plead­ed guilty to crim­i­nal charges stem­ming from the January raid on Parker and Jenkins.

A Justice Department inves­ti­ga­tion this year found that Rankin County deputies chose the name Goon Squad “because of their will­ing­ness to use exces­sive force and not report it.”

The inves­ti­ga­tion found that McAlpin, along with a nar­cotics detec­tive, Christian Dedmon, and Goon Squad mem­bers burst into Parker’s home, tor­tured and humil­i­at­ed the men while demand­ing to know where drugs were, and then dis­posed of the evidence.

Across the 17 cas­es for which reporters found cor­rob­o­rat­ing wit­ness­es and evi­dence, accusers described sim­i­lar tac­tics by deputies, almost always over small drug busts.

Deputies held peo­ple down while punch­ing and kick­ing them or shocked them repeat­ed­ly with Tasers. They shoved gun bar­rels into people’s mouths. Three peo­ple said deputies had water­board­ed them until they thought they would suf­fo­cate. Five said deputies had told them to move out of the county.

Many of the tar­gets teetered on the edge of home­less­ness and were caught with a few grams of meth or with only drug para­pher­na­lia — a glass pipe or used syringe. Several peo­ple sat in jail for days or weeks only to have their charges dropped.

The largest bust among the inci­dents exam­ined was for a $420 hero­in sale.

In 2018, a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant arranged an $80 meth deal at Jerry Manning’s home. Manning, who denies being part of the sale, said he heard deputies burst into his trail­er and scream his name.

When he went to inves­ti­gate, deputies pinned him to the floor. They said they want­ed to test their new Tasers on him to see which hurt more, he said.

“They got me in my pri­vate parts, they got me in my head,” Manning said. “They kept tas­ing and tas­ing and tasing.”

Taser logs indi­cate that two of the nine deputies involved that night, James Rayborn and Cody Grogan, togeth­er trig­gered their Tasers at least 15 times dur­ing the 2 1/​2‑hour raid.

As the deputies ran­sacked his home look­ing for drugs, Manning said, they wrapped a pair of jeans around his head and punched him repeat­ed­ly in the face before using a blow­torch to melt a met­al nut­crack­er han­dle onto his bare leg as he screamed. On McAlpin’s orders, Manning said, a deputy then forced him to sit, pulled a belt around his neck and yanked it upward, chok­ing him until he believed he would suffocate.

Three oth­er men in the trail­er that night described vio­lent attacks. Garry Curro, 64, an Air Force vet­er­an, said deputies hand­cuffed, beat and shocked him. Adam Porter says McAlpin threw him into a glass mir­ror, then took Porter’s pock­etknife and sliced his pants to rib­bons, demand­ing to know where the drugs were. Manning’s room­mate, James Lynch, said McAlpin dragged a blow­torch flame across his feet while inter­ro­gat­ing him.

People’s accounts of the raids shared strik­ing sim­i­lar­i­ties, beyond the pat­terns in the violence.

At least 12 of the 17 cas­es began as Manning’s did, with a sus­pect being set up by a con­fi­den­tial infor­mant, some­one the deputies had per­suad­ed to stage a drug buy while they wait­ed nearby.

In six cas­es, peo­ple said deputies threat­ened to con­tin­ue assault­ing them until they dis­closed either the name of a drug deal­er or the loca­tion of drugs. Five peo­ple said the deputies ran­sacked their kitchens and destroyed their food or used it to humil­i­ate them — smash­ing a cake into a man’s face before arrest­ing him, dump­ing flour and rice onto a kitchen floor, pour­ing milk into a fresh­ly cooked din­ner. Every Black accuser said deputies had hurled racial slurs at them.

Most of the tar­gets were men in their 30s or 40s with a his­to­ry of drug use. But in 2009, McAlpin knocked out 19-year-old Christopher Hillhouse’s tooth with a Maglite, he and his moth­er say. The next year, deputies beat and shocked Dustin Hale, then 17, until he uri­nat­ed on him­self while his girl­friend watched, he said. When his moth­er and grand­moth­er went to the coun­ty jail to pick him up, they said, they hard­ly rec­og­nized him through the bruis­es and swelling.

The sto­ry of Jeremy Travis Paige, who was tar­get­ed in 2018, fits a typ­i­cal pat­tern described by the accusers.

Paige, a 41-year-old with sev­er­al arrests, was pulling up to his home in a work­ing-class neigh­bor­hood out­side Jackson when he real­ized deputies were there wait­ing for him, he said.

He drove away, hop­ing they wouldn’t notice. But McAlpin chased him and pulled him over, then deputies beat him uncon­scious in the inter­sec­tion, Paige alleged in a law­suit against the county.

The suit claimed that he regained con­scious­ness as the deputies dragged him, hand­cuffed, into his home. McAlpin and anoth­er deputy then pum­meled him in the liv­ing room for near­ly an hour, accord­ing to Paige and a wit­ness who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty, fear­ing ret­ri­bu­tion from the deputies.

In inter­views, Paige said the deputies pulled him into his roommate’s bed­room and sat him upright on the bed, where he felt some­one press a knee into his back and stretch a wash­cloth across his mouth. Then, he said, deputies poured gal­lon after gal­lon of water over his face. As he strug­gled to breathe, he said, one of them pressed a lit cig­a­rette into his thigh.

All the while, they shocked his groin inter­mit­tent­ly with Tasers, Paige said. Taser logs show that one of the four deputies who report­ed being at the scene trig­gered his Taser dur­ing the arrest.

Three peo­ple, includ­ing Paige, said they had been shocked not only with gun-shaped Tasers — the type issued by the depart­ment — but also with small, rec­tan­gu­lar ones, sug­gest­ing that some deputies used per­son­al stun guns that were not being tracked.

“They had the dev­il in them,” Paige said. “I thought they was going to kill me.”

Deputies ordered him to send Facebook mes­sages to friends ask­ing to buy drugs. He struck out, and the deputies took him to jail.

Before leav­ing, they stuffed the blood- and water-soaked bed­ding in trash bags and removed them from the house, Paige said.

The next day, when Paige was in jail, his son Trace vis­it­ed the house. He found evi­dence of the vio­lence, he said, includ­ing a bent bed frame where his father had been held down by deputies and a pud­dle of blood on the floor.

Pictures tak­en by Paige’s room­mate show the bed stripped of linens and blood spat­tered on the wall.

McAlpin wrote in his report that deputies restrained Paige after he tried to kick them dur­ing the arrest, but the detec­tive did not men­tion the use of Tasers or oth­er force that might explain the blood.

During Paige’s tri­al for drug sale charges, McAlpin tes­ti­fied that deputies might have injured Paige when they pulled him out of his car, because he was resist­ing. He denied hurt­ing Paige in his home.

Paige was sen­tenced to five years in prison. When he sued the sheriff’s depart­ment, no lawyer would take his case and he resort­ed to rep­re­sent­ing him­self. He wrote a let­ter to the judge explain­ing that he had only a sev­enth grade education.

“I don’t know how to present big words or any­thing like that,” he wrote. “But I do know the truth.”

After he missed sev­er­al court dead­lines, the judge dis­missed his case.

Who Knew

Over the years, more than a dozen peo­ple have direct­ly con­front­ed Bailey and his com­mand staff about the deputies’ bru­tal meth­ods, accord­ing to court records and inter­views with accusers and their families.

At least five peo­ple have sued the depart­ment alleg­ing beat­ings, chok­ings and oth­er abus­es by deputies asso­ci­at­ed with the Goon Squad.

The depart­ment set­tled two of those cas­es. Two oth­ers, includ­ing Paige’s, were dis­missed over pro­ce­dur­al errors by accusers rep­re­sent­ing themselves.

But the mount­ing alle­ga­tions sig­naled that some­thing was pro­found­ly wrong in the nar­cotics unit of Bailey’s department.

McAlpin, the department’s for­mer chief inves­ti­ga­tor who led most of the raids reviewed by reporters, was involved in at least four arrests that prompt­ed law­suits, court records show.

According to one suit that was set­tled, McAlpin kicked 19-year-old Brett Gerhart in the face and pressed a pis­tol to his tem­ple in 2010 dur­ing a mis­tak­en raid at the wrong address. In a 2012 case, tossed out because of missed court dead­lines, Gary Michael Frith claimed that he had been beat­en and choked in the back of a squad car dur­ing a drug bust; records show that McAlpin was one of the arrest­ing officers.

McAlpin also fig­ured promi­nent­ly in com­plaints lodged with the depart­ment. Seven peo­ple told reporters they had mailed let­ters, filed for­mal com­plaints or called the sher­iff per­son­al­ly to tell him about the abuse they experienced.

Joshua Rushing said he wrote sev­er­al let­ters to the depart­ment in 2020, after McAlpin and Dedmon drove him to an iso­lat­ed dead-end road and shocked and beat him. He said he nev­er heard back.

Nicole Brock said that when she went to the sheriff’s office to sub­mit a for­mal com­plaint against McAlpin for ran­sack­ing her car dur­ing a search, he tore up the form, threw it in the garbage and arrest­ed her for a syringe he had found dur­ing the car search.

Brock said she left sev­er­al mes­sages on Bailey’s office phone to report the deputy’s behav­ior, but he nev­er returned her calls.

Dare, the depart­ment lawyer, declined to pro­vide copies of com­plaints, say­ing they were con­sid­ered per­son­nel records pro­tect­ed by state law. When asked to con­firm the exis­tence of the sev­en com­plaints described by accusers, he said he could not imme­di­ate­ly pro­vide it.

Chuck Wexler, exec­u­tive direc­tor of the Police Executive Research Forum, said this long list of com­plaints and law­suits should have prompt­ed inves­ti­ga­tions by the sheriff.

“If you’re get­ting mul­ti­ple com­plaints about the same offi­cers, from dif­fer­ent sources, that’s a red flag,” he said. “If you don’t do any­thing about it, you’re in denial.”

Despite the alle­ga­tions against him, McAlpin con­tin­ued to rise through the ranks of the depart­ment, win­ning Investigator of the Year and even­tu­al­ly being pro­mot­ed to the top inves­ti­ga­tor position.

Until this year, the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department did not have any­one assigned full time to han­dle com­plaints. Instead, super­vi­sors were respon­si­ble for inves­ti­gat­ing the deputies they over­saw, accord­ing to four for­mer employ­ees who spoke on the con­di­tion of anonymi­ty because they feared ret­ri­bu­tion from the department.

Among those super­vi­sors were McAlpin and Middleton, who both plead­ed guilty in August for their roles in the assault of Jenkins and Parker.

On Tuesday, Bailey announced that the depart­ment would allow res­i­dents to file com­plaints against deputies on the department’s website.

Beyond the law­suits and com­plaints, there were oth­er obvi­ous signs of the vio­lence, includ­ing injuries that would have been vis­i­ble to jail work­ers and court offi­cials who saw the injured short­ly after their encounters.

Hospital records show that Hobson was treat­ed for a gash over his eye after a 2018 raid in which he says deputies water­board­ed him and punched him repeat­ed­ly. His face is ban­daged in his jail book­ing photo.

Robert Jones, the man who said deputies rammed a stick down his throat, arrived at the jail with a swollen and mud-streaked face after deputies beat him and threw him into a ditch.

Many of the mug shots from the Rankin County jail fea­ture ban­daged faces, swollen cheeks and black eyes asso­ci­at­ed with drug-relat­ed arrests.

But the most glar­ing evi­dence of the vio­lence inflict­ed by deputies has been col­lect­ing in the department’s com­put­er files for more than two decades.

The Taser Logs 

Every time a Taser is fired, the device keeps a record of it. In Rankin County, deputies upload this data to a com­put­er, com­pil­ing detailed depart­men­twide logs that allow super­vi­sors to mon­i­tor deputy Taser use.

The data, reviewed by the Times and Mississippi Today, con­tained tens of thou­sands of Taser trig­gers stretch­ing back 24 years.

The logs sup­port­ed the accounts of nine peo­ple who described being shocked by deputies while hand­cuffed or held down. In all but three of these cas­es, the deputies did not report their Taser use, vio­lat­ing depart­ment policy.

“I don’t believe I’ve ever come across an agency in which it would be accept­able for an offi­cer to deploy a Taser and not report it in some way,” said Ashley Heiberger, a retired offi­cer and an expert in police use of force.

After sev­er­al stud­ies link­ing pro­longed Taser expo­sure to severe med­ical prob­lems and even death, the Police Executive Research Forum devel­oped nation­al guide­lines advis­ing against shock­ing a per­son for more than 15 sec­onds dur­ing an encounter.

The logs con­tain dozens of instances of Tasers being fired for at least dou­ble the rec­om­mend­ed time lim­it over the course of an hour. In April 2016, a device assigned to a deputy who par­tic­i­pat­ed in Goon Squad raids was trig­gered nine times in four min­utes, deliv­er­ing 31 sec­onds of current.

Several experts in police use of force said the logs showed abnor­mal Taser use that was hard to explain. Seth Stoughton, from the University of South Carolina, said the fre­quen­cy of the deputies’ Taser trig­gers sug­gest­ed they were not using the weapons for their intend­ed pur­pose: to quick­ly sub­due a com­bat­ive person.

“It just doesn’t sug­gest that the Taser is actu­al­ly being used to induce com­pli­ance,” he said.

By com­par­ing the logs to depart­ment records, reporters iden­ti­fied four peo­ple who claim they were at the receiv­ing end of Taser shocks record­ed in the data.

In 2016, Deputy James Rayborn fired his Taser for 20 sec­onds over the course of 20 min­utes dur­ing a raid of Samuel Carter’s home.

Carter, 64, an Army vet­er­an, had had pre­vi­ous run-ins with Rankin sheriff’s deputies over alleged drug use. On the night of the raid, he said, deputies dragged him to his bed­room, shocked him and demand­ed that he open a safe where they expect­ed to find drugs and cash.

Instead, deputies found a tub of cake frost­ing he had stashed in the safe to hide from house­guests with a sweet tooth.

Carter said they became enraged and shocked him again until his leg began to bleed.

Down the hall, Christopher Holloway, a 26-year-old who had been help­ing Carter main­tain his prop­er­ty, was beat­en and shocked until he defe­cat­ed on him­self, he said. Then they dragged him out­side and threat­ened to push him, hand­cuffed, into Carter’s pool.

Holloway and Carter were charged with para­pher­na­lia and drug pos­ses­sion — Holloway for mar­i­jua­na, Carter for sev­er­al grams of methamphetamine.

Like many peo­ple tar­get­ed by Rankin deputies, Carter said the first raid was just the begin­ning. Three months lat­er, deputies arrest­ed him again, this time for drink­ing in front of his home, Carter said. He was arrest­ed four more times over the next year, depart­ment records show, most­ly for drug or para­pher­na­lia possession.

Ballooning legal fees left Carter unable to pay his bills.

“They had the pow­er,” he said. “And they used it.”

‘I Lost My Life’ 

The Goon Squad has left a long trail of shat­tered lives in its wake. Some peo­ple who said they were bru­tal­ized are jolt­ed awake by night­mares after their encoun­ters with deputies. Four said they fled the coun­ty for good. Several are serv­ing lengthy prison terms.

In 2015, Ron Shinstock was strug­gling with a metham­phet­a­mine addic­tion, even as he raised a fam­i­ly with his wife and ran a mechan­ic shop with his brother.

Everything changed, he said, after McAlpin led a vio­lent raid of his home, hold­ing his chil­dren at gun­point and forc­ing him to strip naked in his back­yard. The arrest led to a 40-year prison sen­tence for a $260 meth sale with­in 1,500 feet of a church.

Shinstock’s wife left him. He is sched­uled to be released in 2056, two months before his 82^nd birthday.

“I lost my fam­i­ly, I lost my home,” Shinstock said. “I lost my life.”

Andrea Dettore, a for­mer res­i­dent of Rankin County, wit­nessed deputies bru­tal­ize three peo­ple in two inci­dents. She said she was there in 2018 when the Goon Squad attacked Loveday, the for­mer deputy, and Hobson.

During a raid on her own home in January, she said, she heard deputies beat her friend, Robert Grozier, behind a closed door, and saw a deputy, Christian Dedmon, shove a sex toy into his mouth, threat­en­ing to shock him with a Taser if he spat it out.

Dettore and Grozier were each fined sev­er­al hun­dred dol­lars, and she has since left Rankin County. Hobson sat in jail for six months before his charges were dropped, and Loveday lost his job as a sheriff’s deputy. Court records show he was nev­er con­vict­ed of a crime.

After McAlpin arrest­ed Loveday and accused him of con­sort­ing with drug deal­ers, he ordered him to leave town. Loveday fled the state, fear­ing he would be tar­get­ed again. He couldn’t for­get that night.

“If they did that to me, how many oth­er peo­ple have they done it to?” he wondered.

Before he left Mississippi, Loveday said, he called Bailey per­son­al­ly to warn him about his deputies’ behavior.

But Bailey wouldn’t lis­ten, he said. He called Loveday a dirty cop and accused him of secret­ly record­ing the call.

Then, Loveday said, “He hung up on me.”

FROM: The New York Times Company

A woman who was shocked in the back with a Taser while lying on the ground in Pueblo, Colorado, last year is suing the police offi­cer who stunned her and the city’s police chief, accus­ing the police depart­ment of fail­ing to report exces­sive force by the offi­cer to state regulators.

The fed­er­al law­suit filed Sunday by Cristy Gonzales, who was sus­pect­ed of steal­ing a vehi­cle, says the police depart­ment found Cpl. Bennie Villanueva used exces­sive force against Gonzales and anoth­er per­son sev­er­al weeks lat­er. However, it says the agency with­held the infor­ma­tion from a state board which over­sees who is qual­i­fied to serve in law enforce­ment. If it had been report­ed, Villanueva would have lost his cer­ti­fi­ca­tion to work as a police offi­cer for at least a year, the law­suit said. Gonzales was sus­pect­ed of steal­ing a truck in February 2022, and did­n’t stop for Villanueva, accord­ing to a police inves­ti­ga­tion. Eventually the vehi­cle ran out of gas, accord­ing to the lawsuit.
After she got out of the truck, Villanueva pulled up and ordered her to get onto the ground, accord­ing to body cam­era footage released by Gonzales’ lawyer. After anoth­er offi­cer grabbed one of her arms, she got down on her knees and then appeared to be pushed to the ground, when Villanueva deployed his Taser into her back.

According to the law­suit, Gonzales was hit with two probes in the small of her back near her spine. It says she con­tin­ues to have numb­ness and dif­fi­cul­ty using her right hand since the Taser was used on her. Telephone mes­sages left for Pueblo police Chief Chris Noeller and the city’s police union were not returned Monday. Villanueva could not be locat­ed for com­ment. After see­ing the video of Gonzales’ arrest, the assis­tant dis­trict attor­ney pros­e­cut­ing the vehi­cle theft filed an exces­sive force com­plaint, prompt­ing an inter­nal police inves­ti­ga­tion, accord­ing to the law­suit. After the inves­ti­ga­tion, Noeller issued a let­ter of rep­ri­mand against Villanueva for his con­duct in the Gonzales case as well as for vio­lat­ing depart­ment poli­cies in two oth­er cas­es. In the let­ter, pro­vid­ed by Gonzales’ lawyer, Kevin Mehr, Noeller said Villanueva appeared to use the Taser on Gonzales “for no appar­ent rea­son.” However, he also said that the use of the Taser appeared to be “a result of your reac­tion to a high­ly stress­ful call for ser­vice after hav­ing been away from patrol duty work for sev­er­al years.” In a sec­ond case, Noeller said Villanueva deployed his Taser on a sus­pect a sec­ond time appar­ent­ly acci­den­tal­ly while attempt­ing to issue a “warn­ing arc” to get the sus­pect to com­ply. In a third case cit­ed in the let­ter, Villanueva threat­ened to use a Taser on a sus­pect in cus­tody who was not coop­er­at­ing with med­ical per­son­nel but he did not end up deploy­ing it.

Each year, police depart­ments are required to report to Colorado’s Peace Officer Standards and Training board whether their offi­cers have had any “dis­qual­i­fy­ing inci­dents”, includ­ing a find­ing of exces­sive force, that would dis­qual­i­fy them from being cer­ti­fied to work as police offi­cers in the state, accord­ing to the law­suit. It claims the Pueblo Police Department did not report any such inci­dents for any of its offi­cers in 2022. “The Pueblo Police Department lied to the POST board, just plain and sim­ple,” Mehr said.

Former Minneapolis police offi­cer Derek Chauvin, who was con­vict­ed of killing George Floyd, was stabbed in prison on Friday and is seri­ous­ly injured, the Associated Press report­ed, cit­ing an unnamed source. The Bureau of Prisons con­firmed to the AP that an inmate was assault­ed at FCI Tucson around 12:30 p.m., though the agency did not name the inmate. The BOP also said prison employ­ees per­formed “life-sav­ing mea­sures” and that the inmate was tak­en to a hos­pi­tal. The Bureau of Prisons did not imme­di­ate­ly respond to Business Insider’s request for com­ment on Friday evening.

Chauvin was con­vict­ed in Minnesota in 2021 of mur­der and manslaugh­ter in the death of George Floyd, and sen­tenced to 22.5 years in prison. Floyd died after Chauvin knelt on his neck for more than nine min­utes dur­ing a 2020 arrest that sparked nation­wide out­rage and wide­spread racial-injus­tice protests. Chauvin also lat­er plead­ed guilty to fed­er­al charges of vio­lat­ing Floyd’s civ­il rights. He was sen­tenced to 21 years and trans­ferred to a fed­er­al prison in Tucson, Arizona. On Monday, the Supreme Court declined to hear Chauvin’s appeal of his Minnesota conviction.

My friend was livid yes­ter­day about the sen­tences hand­ed down in the tri­al of dou­ble mur­der­er Richard Brown, who con­fessed to the killing of Phillip Paulwell’s 10-month-old child and her moth­er, Toshyna Patterson. My friend does not feel that the sen­tence fits the crime; I concur.
The depraved beast had the gall to pen a let­ter to the court claim­ing he was sor­ry for the heinous act he was a part of com­mit­ting with the sole intent of exploit­ing the well-known irra­tional lenien­cy with which the courts mete out sentences.
It worked!!!
Thirty (30) years is absolute­ly not any­one’s idea of a deci­sive sen­tence for a man who, with depraved indif­fer­ence, mur­dered a young moth­er and her 10-month-old infant child.
If you thought the thir­ty-year sen­tence was a slap in the face of our coun­try and the griev­ing fam­i­ly, Richard Brown was addi­tion­al­ly sen­tenced to one year and ten (10) months impris­on­ment at hard labor for the kid­nap­ping of the moth­er and baby.
On the kid­nap­ping alone, he should have been giv­en a life sen­tence, not to men­tion the dou­ble murder.

The sor­did tale of the mur­der of the young 27-year-old moth­er and her infant child has been all over the media like a soap opera. It involved an American National who hap­pened to be a mem­ber of that coun­try’s armed ser­vices, a pow­er­ful Jamaican politi­cian, jeal­ousy, hatred, and young men and women eas­i­ly lured into crime by the specter of easy money.
And so Toshyna Patterson and her infant child became the vic­tims of jeal­ousy and depraved minds who are quite will­ing to ‘kill and col­lect, drink and forget.”
For almost two decades, this writer has writ­ten hun­dreds of arti­cles speak­ing to the lack of real sen­tenc­ing in Jamaica, a phe­nom­e­non that has helped expo­nen­tial­ly to embold­en the nation’s heart­less killers.
Additionally, the fact that US Navy Culinary Specialist Seaman Leoda Bradshaw, who also has an eight-year-old daugh­ter with Paulwell and has been charged in the mat­ter, thought she would get away with con­tract­ing mur­der for hire and sim­ply walk away speaks to how they view Jamaica’s jus­tice system…
But who can blame them for think­ing the Police are dumb or that the judges are in love with mur­der­ers? Brown’s accom­plice, Roshane Miller, was sen­tenced to sev­en-and-a-half years in prison for two counts of acces­so­ry before the fact of mur­der for his role in the crimes. Additionally, he was sen­tenced to two years and ten months impris­on­ment at hard labor for con­spir­a­cy to kid­nap and one year and 10 months at hard labor for mis­prison of a felony. The sen­tences are to run con­cur­rent­ly.

This is jus­tice Jamaican style, and please don’t get me start­ed on the high-priced lawyers that these mon­sters are able to hire when they are caught. Jamaica sim­ply can­not con­tin­ue this way, but this is a won­der­ful oppor­tu­ni­ty for the PNP’s Phillip Paulwell to cham­pi­on leg­is­la­tion in the House to add teeth to crimes exact­ly like these. Paulwell, tongue in cheek, issued a state­ment about being sad at the events. We don’t need Paulwell and the PNP to be sad; we need them to help with leg­is­la­tion with teeth. Stop sup­port­ing crim­i­nals by block­ing tough leg­is­la­tion that would send strong mes­sages that we will no longer tol­er­ate these acts of criminality.
Talk is cheap; this is the oppor­tu­ni­ty for Pualwell to step up or shut up; talk is cheap.
We need manda­to­ry min­i­mum sen­tences of life with­out parole for crimes of depraved indif­fer­ence like this one. We do not need judges hand­ing down sen­tences of ⁷¹⁄₂ years for con­spir­a­cy to mur­der, which in actu­al­i­ty is mur­der. We do not need judges hand­ing down sen­tences of two years and ten months impris­on­ment at hard labor for con­spir­a­cy to kid­nap and one year and ten months at hard labor for mis­prison of a felony.
This is a damn disgrace.….

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Mike Beckles is a for­mer Police Detective, busi­ness­man, free­lance writer, black achiev­er hon­oree, and cre­ator of the blog mike​beck​les​.com.

Our world is del­i­cate­ly bal­anced on prin­ci­ples; there is no one star­ing down and keep­ing score. Our plan­et is set up on the sim­ple con­cept of ‘what you sow, that you shall reap.’ Those who dis­agree fail to under­stand that the cre­ator’s time com­plete­ly dif­fers from our human con­cept of time. But I digress.(mb)

FBI agents seized elec­tron­ic devices from New York City Mayor Eric Adams ear­li­er this week, days after a raid on the home of his chief cam­paign fundrais­er, accord­ing to an attor­ney for the may­or’s campaign. 
Federal author­i­ties are con­duct­ing an inves­ti­ga­tion into whether his 2021 may­oral cam­paign con­spired with a Brooklyn con­struc­tion com­pa­ny and the Turkish gov­ern­ment to fun­nel for­eign mon­ey into the cam­paign through a straw donor scheme, the New York Times has report­ed. Boyd Johnson, an attor­ney for Adams’ cam­paign, con­firmed on Friday that Adams had pro­vid­ed the FBI with elec­tron­ic devices after agents approached the may­or fol­low­ing an event on Monday night.
Johnson said the FBI request­ed the devices after Adams informed inves­ti­ga­tors of impro­pri­ety by an uniden­ti­fied individual.

“After learn­ing of the fed­er­al inves­ti­ga­tion, it was dis­cov­ered that an indi­vid­ual had recent­ly act­ed improp­er­ly. In the spir­it of trans­paren­cy and coöper­a­tion, this behav­ior was imme­di­ate­ly and proac­tive­ly report­ed to inves­ti­ga­tors,” Johnson said in a state­ment. “The may­or has not been accused of any wrong­do­ing and con­tin­ues to coöper­ate with the inves­ti­ga­tion,” the state­ment said. The FBI declined to com­ment. The devices seized from the may­or — at least two cell­phones and an iPad — were returned with­in a mat­ter of days, the Times said. Johnson did not pro­vide details about the type or quan­ti­ty of devices seized. FBI agents had searched the home of Adams’ chief elec­tion cam­paign fundrais­er, Brianna Suggs, on Nov. 2, and she was ques­tioned by pub­lic cor­rup­tion inves­ti­ga­tors, city offi­cials and local media said.
Law enforce­ment offi­cials have inves­ti­gat­ed sev­er­al oth­er asso­ciates of Adams in recent months. 
In July, Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg announced the indict­ment of six peo­ple he said had used a straw donor scheme to ille­gal­ly gen­er­ate pub­lic match­ing funds for Adams’ 2021 elec­tion cam­paign. All six men have plead­ed not guilty.

Adams, who was not accused of any wrong­do­ing in the indict­ments, has said he and his cam­paign team had no knowl­edge of or involve­ment in the alleged scheme. Adams’ 2025 elec­tion cam­paign has paid Suggs’s con­sult­ing firm, Suggs Solutions, about $98,000 so far, pub­lic records show. Suggs has worked for Adams since start­ing out in 2017 as an intern in his office when he was the Brooklyn bor­ough pres­i­dent, accord­ing to her pro­file on the LinkedIn social media net­work. While rais­ing dona­tions for Adams’ elec­tion cam­paign, Suggs had also been paid to lob­by his admin­is­tra­tion on behalf of a Manhattan prop­er­ty own­er seek­ing an exten­sion on his lease of a shop­ping com­plex in a city-owned build­ing, the New York Daily News report­ed in April.
Adams, a Democrat, had trav­eled to Washington on Nov. 2 for meet­ings with U.S. gov­ern­ment offi­cials about the city’s shel­ter cri­sis for asy­lum seek­ers and oth­er recent­ly arrived migrants but abrupt­ly can­celed those meet­ings to return to New York. (Credit Reuters)