Several members of a special unit of a Mississippi sheriff’s department that’s being investigated by the U.S. Justice Department for possible civil rights violations have been involved in at least four violent encounters with Black men since 2019 that left two dead and another with lasting injuries, an Associated Press investigation found.
Two of the men allege that Rankin County sheriff’s deputies shoved guns into their mouths during separate encounters. In one case, the deputy pulled the trigger, leaving the man with wounds that required parts of his tongue to be sewn back together.
In one of the two fatal confrontations, the man’s mother said a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he complained he couldn’t breathe.
Police and court records obtained by the AP show that several deputies who were accepted to the sheriff’s office’s Special Response Team — a specialized tactical unit whose recruits are chosen by existing members and are supposed to receive advanced training — were involved in each of the four encounters.
In three of them, the heavily redacted documents don’t indicate if they were serving in their normal capacity as deputies or as members of the unit.
Source: yorknewstimes.com