Six Mississippi officers plead guilty to torturing and sexually assaulting two black men

Six former Mississippi law enforcement officers pleaded guilty to the torture of two men.

• On
  Thursday, six former Mississippi law enforcement officers pleaded guilty to assaulting
  two men earlier this year.
• Prosecutors
  say the victims were shocked, racially abused, and sexually assaulted with a
  pistol and dildo.
• The
  victims launched a $400 million civil rights lawsuit against the county over
  the incident.

Six
white former Mississippi law enforcement officers pleaded guilty on Thursday to
federal civil rights crimes for brutally assaulting two black men earlier this
year, prosecutors said.

Federal
prosecutors said the six officers sexually and physically assaulted two
handcuffed black men for more than two hours during a 24 January raid on a
Braxton, Mississippi, home for which they had no warrant. The officers carried
out mock executions on one of the men and shot him in the face, critically
injuring the man.

As
the victim was bleeding on the floor, the former officers did not provide
medical aid, but instead gathered outside the home to devise a false cover
story and took steps to corroborate it, including by planting a gun and
destroying surveillance video, the Justice Department said.

The
officers pleaded guilty to 16 felonies including civil rights conspiracy,
discharge of a firearm during a crime of violence and conspiracy to obstruct
justice, among others. As part of their federal pleas, the men are also
scheduled to plea guilty to state charges on 14 August, federal prosecutors
said.

Both
black men were repeatedly shocked with tasers, called racial slurs, made to
strip naked, and sexually abused with a pistol and a dildo, prosecutors said.

The
officers then tried to burn the clothes of the victims in an attempt to cover
up their crimes and planted methamphetamine in the house.

Attorney
General Merrick B. Garland said in a written statement “the defendants in
this case tortured and inflicted unspeakable harm on their victims, egregiously
violated the civil rights of citizens who they were supposed to protect.”

Five
of the men who pleaded guilty are former sheriffs deputies for Rankin County
and they include Hunter Elward, 31; Christian Dedmon, 28; Brett McAlpin, 52;
Jeffrey Middleton, 46; and Daniel Opdyke 27. The sixth person who pleaded was
Joshua Hartfield, 31, a former police officer in Richland, Mississippi.

All
of the officers were fired or resigned in recent weeks.

The
Justice Department began its investigation into the case in February.

The
two black men, Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker, filed a $400
million federal civil rights lawsuit against Rankin County in June over the
case.