- Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey is not short on controversy.
- Baily has overseen a department known for its violent attacks on Black men.
Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey is never short on controversy.
The Mississippi sheriff has overseen a department in which five deputies were convicted of torturing Black men. They called themselves the "Goon Squad" for their willingness to secretly use excessive force. Separately, five people also died after violent interactions with Rankin deputies over an eight-month period in 2021.
Now, it seems the local district attorney in 2014 investigated Bailey for trying to subpoena his own girlfriend's phone records, which would be illegal.
Rep. Michael Guest, now the chair of the House Ethics Committee, was the district attorney in Rankin County in 2014. According to an investigative report obtained by The New York Times in conjunction with the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today, Guest began investigating claims that Bailey was using illegal subpoenas after a tip.
According to the report, Bailey requested subpoenas against his girlfriend, Kristi Shanks, a total of seven times in 2014 — all for her phone records. Shanks was an administrative assistant in the sheriff's department who had begun a relationship with the sheriff while she was still married.
After finding that Bailey had requested potentially illegal subpoenas, Guest decided to investigate the case further for a possible conflict of interest. Former Mississippi Attorney General Jim Hood told The Times he asked one of his senior attorneys to review the case but did not pursue charges.
Fred Shanks, who was married to Kristi Shanks when she started dating the sheriff, told The Times he started dating Kristen Liberto, an investigator in the Rankin Sheriff's Office, after their relationship ended.
Liberto said she was harassed at work and discovered a tracking device on her car. Then, in October 2015, Bailey told her she needed to resign or be arrested for filling out false time cards, Liberto told The Times.
After she resigned, Liberto said that Bailey asked for his tracker back.
Fred Shanks told The Times that the FBI has recently interviewed him.
The Rankin County Sheriff's Office did not immediately return a request for comment from Insider.
History of violence in Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey's department
The department overseen by Bailey — who is up for re-election unopposed in November — has a disturbing history of violence.
Five Rankin sheriff's deputies, all part of the so-called "Goon Squad"," pleaded guilty on August 3 to federal charges related to an attack on two Black men earlier in the year.
Without a warrant, the group broke into the home of Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker in Braxton, Mississippi on January 24. The officers then beat and sexually assaulted the two men before one officer — Hunter Elward — eventually shot Jenkins in the mouth, according to court documents obtained by Insider.
The Sheriff's Department is also being sued by 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's shooting in 2019, according to the lawsuit.
Insider 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 Insider police beat and 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 Insider. 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.