America once again facing its demons. Six white Mississippi police officers have admitted to torturing two African American men for two hours with a dildo, tasers and a sword, going so far as to shoot one of the victims in the mouth, the US Department of Justice announced Thursday .
This case is a “horrifying and striking example of bad police behavior, which has no place in our society”, lambasted the ministry’s representative Kristen Clarke before the press, denouncing acts “motivated by racial prejudice and hatred”.
The six agents, some of whom have admitted to belonging to a team nicknamed the “Thugs Brigade” and renowned for its brutality, are currently being prosecuted and are no longer in office.
Call of neighbors
The two victims were in this house belonging to a friend, and neighbors contacted one of the police officers, on the pretext of “suspicious behavior”. The agent then sent a text message to colleagues in the brigade, asking them if they were available for “a mission”.
In January, the police entered a house in Braxton, a small town in the southern US state, “without warrant or justification” to torture the two black men who were there, according to a statement from the ministry. . The police handcuffed them and subjected them to a torture session by uttering “racial slurs”, said Kristen Clarke.
According to the prosecution, the officers sexually assaulted their two victims with a dildo and inflicted 17 electric shocks on them with their tasers. They also humiliated them by forcing them to swallow alcohol, cooking oil, milk and other liquids. According to Kristen Clarke, one of the two African Americans was hit with “a metal sword, a piece of wood, and a wooden cooking utensil”.
Gun shot in the mouth
This ordeal, which lasted about two hours, culminated when one of the officers put his service weapon in the mouth of one of the two men. To scare him, he first pulled the trigger after removing a bullet from the magazine. On a second attempt, however, the bullet went off and went through the victim’s neck, lacerating his tongue and breaking his jaw.
The police then left their victims in a pool of blood for long minutes, while they concerted to cover up this blunder. The team destroyed the home’s CCTV, one of the shell casings used, and attempted to burn the victims’ clothing to make the evidence disappear, the prosecution said. Officers also planted a shotgun on one of the victims and methamphetamine at the scene to pretend motive.
They then filed false reports and repeatedly lied to investigators. Five of the defendants were Rankin County Sheriff’s officers, while the sixth was from Richland Police.
Three of them also pleaded guilty in another case of police violence, dating back to December. According to the justice, one of the members of the trio used a taser on a white man and shot near his head to extract a confession, without any intervention on the part of the other two.