Federal authorities are investigating if the Mississippi sheriff who oversaw the 'Goon Squad' helped a fellow cop get out of a DUI

• Feds are probing Sheriff Bryan Bailey's role in an officer's DUI dismissal, Mississippi Today reported.
• Bailey won reelection in Rankin County, Mississippi, this month after facing calls to resign.

Federal authorities are looking into whether or not Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey had a role in getting another cop's DUI dismissed.

The Mississippi county gained national notoriety after five officers from the department were convicted for torturing Black people earlier this year.

On March 12, state troopers arrested officer Steven Frederick on a charge of driving under the influence, Mississippi Today reported.

Frederick — who is dating Bailey's daughter — ran over three road signs before crashing a state-owned vehicle into a ditch, the outlet reported.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Rankin Sheriff's Department did not immediately return Business Insider's requests for comment.

Highway patrol video reviewed by Mississippi Today showed that Frederick had a blood alcohol level of 0.15 at the time of the crash and refused medical attention at the scene.

Covington County Sheriff Darrell Perkins ordered Frederick to be released to Sheriff Bailey without bond less than an hour after he arrived at the Covington County Jail, the local outlet reported.

Perkins told Mississippi Today that Bailey said he took Frederick to the hospital.

On August 9, a Covington County Justice Court judge dismissed the case against Frederick after state trooper Daniel Loftin failed to appear in court, Mississippi Today reported.

After the hearing, authorities learned that Bailey had contacted a prosecutor and asked what would happen if a trooper failed to appear at a DUI hearing, to which the prosecutor replied that the case would be dismissed, Mississippi Today reported.

Frederick is an officer for Mississippi's controversial Capital Police division. In March, the state legislature voted to expand the division's patrol area to include the entire city of Jackson. The expansion was a "centerpiece of efforts" for majority-white Republican state officials to have more control over law enforcement in the majority-Black capital city led by Democrats, NBC News reported.

History of violence in Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey's department

Bailey — who won re-election this month after running unopposed — has resisted repeated calls to resign over his department's history of violence.

On August 3, five Rankin sheriff's deputies, all part of the so-called Goon Squad, pleaded guilty to federal charges related to an attack on two Black men earlier in the year.

The group broke into the home of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in Braxton, Mississippi, on January 24 without a warrant. The officers then beat and sexually assaulted the two men before one deputy — Hunter Elward — shot Jenkins in the mouth, according to court documents obtained by BI.

The sheriff's department is also facing a lawsuit the family of Pierre Woods, a Black man who deputies shot to death in February 2019 outside his home. Two of the convicted "Goon Squad" officers, Elward and Christian Dedmon, were also present during Woods' shooting in 2019, according to the lawsuit.

BI also previously reported the deaths of Damien Cameron, Cory Jackson, and Trevor McKinley.

Cameron, a Black man, died while in the custody of the sheriff's department in July 2021. Cameron's mother told BI that police beat him, Tased him, and knelt on his back for 15 minutes while he complained he could not breathe.

Jackson died in May 2021 after a sheriff's deputy arrested him while he was experiencing hallucinations and refused to take him to the hospital, his family told BI.

In August 2021, deputies shot McKinley, Cameron's high-school classmate, inside his grandparents' home.

In December 2021, while responding to a call of a drug overdose, deputies also shot and killed Robert Rushton, who police said was armed with two knives.

A fifth man, Adam Coker, died in the Rankin County Jail in September 2021.