Rankin County sheriff's deputies allegedly shot and waterboarded a Black man. Now the FBI is investigating the department.
- The FBI has launched a civil rights investigation into the Rankin County Sheriff's Office in Mississippi.
- A Black man alleged that he was beaten, tased, and shot by deputies last month.
The US Department of Justice announced Wednesday that it is investigating Rankin County, Mississippi's sheriff's department for possible civil rights violations, months after Insider sued the same department to obtain records related to a string of deaths.
The investigation was prompted when a deputy shot Michael Corey Jenkins during a January 23 nighttime raid.
Attorney Malik Z. Shabazz, who has been identified by the Southern Poverty Law Center as an extremist, is representing Jenkins.
He says that a Rankin County deputy put a gun in the mouth of 32-year-old Jenkins, after he was already handcuffed, and fired — nearly killing him.
In a "notice of claim," which comes ahead of filing a federal lawsuit, Shabazz wrote that Jenkins and another Black man, Eddie Terrell Parker, were at a home in Braxton when six white deputies forced their way inside without presenting a warrant and immediately restrained the men.
Shabazz said at a press conference Wednesday that the deputies then proceeded to punch, kick, and waterboard the men during a 90-minute "torture session" in which they called the men the n-word on several occasions.
Eventually, when the deputy put the gun in Jenkins' mouth, he pulled the trigger "intending to kill him," said Shabazz. Jenkins was hospitalized for several weeks as a result, according to Shabazz.
Shabazz said Jenkins and Parker plan to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the deputies.
The allegations made by Jenkins and Parker are vastly different than what the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation initially said happened at the raid.
In a January 25 news release obtained by Insider, the bureau said the deputies were conducting a drug investigation when they entered the home. They said the shooting occurred after someone "displayed a gun toward the deputies."
The Rankin County Sheriff's Office provided Insider with a heavily redacted incident report from the night of the shooting.
The report, less than a page long, was nearly entirely blacked out.
The unredacted portion includes the address that deputies visited to investigate "narcotics activity," Jenkins' full name, and the phrase "two bags containing what appeared to be Methamphetamine."
After several more paragraphs that were entirely redacted, the office left the sentence "I noticed a firearm" unredacted, followed by a few sentences about calling an ambulance to transport Jenkins to the hospital, and that Parker had been transported to jail for possession of drug paraphernalia.
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On Wednesday, the FBI Jackson field office issued a statement acknowledging the civil rights investigation but released no details on the case.
"The FBI Jackson Field Office, the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi have opened a federal civil rights investigation into a color of law incident involving the Rankin County Sheriff's Office," the statement said.
A message seeking comment from the Rankin County Sheriff's office was not immediately returned Thursday.
A string of deaths
The Rankin County Sheriff's Department has been on Insider's radar for more than a year now.
Insider has sought information from the department related to the 2021 deaths of Damien Cameron, Trevor McKinley, Cory Jackson, Robert Rushton, and Adam Coker.
Rushton and McKinley were shot to death during confrontations with Rankin County sheriff's deputies, while Cameron, Jackson, and Coker died in RCSD custody.
Rankin County officials largely stonewalled Insider's efforts to obtain public records, including incident reports, related to the five men's deaths.
Jason Dare, an attorney representing the RCSD, told Insider that the department couldn't turn the reports over until after the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation finished investigating the incidents or at the "conclusion of any criminal proceedings."
Insider had received just two incident reports by June 2022, prompting attorneys for the outlet to file a lawsuit against the department on the basis that there is "no exception recognized" under the Mississippi Records Act that allows the RCSD to withhold incident reports.
That lawsuit remains active.
Since Insider filed its lawsuit, Rankin County has slowly released more and more of the records Insider initially sought, but only after each case went in front of a grand jury and the officers involved were not charged.