Mississippi deputies shot off suspect’s tongue, routinely used excessive force: study

A new study shows that Mississippi sheriff’s deputies routinely used excessive force in violent encounters with suspects.

The findings — based on police and court records in Rankin County obtained by the Associated Press — showed that cops killed two men since 2019 and shoved a gun in the mouth of another suspect, pulling the trigger and blowing off the man’s tongue.

The revelations came as the county’s sheriff’s department was under federal investigation for possible civil rights violations amid a nationwide reckoning with racially biased police brutality.

Several deputies from the department’s Special Response Team tactical unit were involved in all four encounters, according to the AP investigation.

A similar street crimes unit was disbanded in Memphis earlier this year after Tyre Nichols, a black man, was savagely beaten by four black members of a special unit during a January traffic stop.

Nichols died in the days after the brutal encounter, and the Department of Justice opened a probe into other special police units around the country after the incident, sparking nationwide protests reminiscent of the aftermath of the 2020 Minneapolis police murder of George Floyd.

One of the police-involved killings of a suspect in Rankin County invoked the Floyd murder, as a mother of the dead suspect claimed a deputy kneeled on her son’s neck while he told them he couldn’t breathe.

Damien Cameron, a 29-year-old man with a history of mental illness, was tased and punched by Deputy Hunter Elward during a vandalism call at his mother’s house in July 2021, according to an incident report.

While grappling with Cameron to get him into the squad car, Elward wrote that he tased his legs again before the suspect became unresponsive. The officer said he pulled Cameron from the car and performed CPR, but the man later died at the hospital.

Monica Lee, Cameron’s mother, said she witnessed the encounter and saw Elward kneel on her son’s back for several minutes after subduing him before Deputy Luke Stickman kneeled on his neck to handcuff him while the man complained of having trouble breathing.

Before the cops were set to transport Cameron to the police station, Lee said she went outside to check on him.

“I walked outside to tell him goodbye and that I loved him, and that I would try to see him the next day. That’s when I noticed they were on the driver’s side of the car doing CPR on him,” Lee said. “I fell to the ground screaming and hollering.”

The cops were not indicted in the case after a grand jury declined to press charges, but Elward was also on the scene when a man’s tongue was shot by an officer at point-blank range on Jan. 24.

Michael Corey Jenkins said six white deputies stormed into his friend’s house where he was visiting, and one put a gun in his mouth. Jenkins said he did not know which cop pulled the trigger, but said Elward was there and had pointed a gun at him.

Cops had claimed that Jenkins had pointed a gun at them but police officials declined to say if a weapon was found on the scene. Jenkins’ lawyer Malik Shabazz refutes that accusation.

“They had complete control of him the entire time. Six officers had full and complete control of Michael the entire time,” Shabazz said. “So that’s just a fabrication.”

Jankins and his friend Eddie Terrell Parker have announced their intent to file a lawsuit over the incident, in which they claim they were repeatedly beaten, Tased and forced to lie on their back while deputies poured milk on their faces over a 90-minute period.

Automated Taser records obtained by the AP found that deputies first deployed a stun gun at 10:04 p.m., and fired at least three more times over the next 65 minutes. Redacted records show Tasers were turned on and off or used by deputies dozens more times during that period.

The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation found that a cop fired the shot in Jenkins’ mouth at 11:45 p.m. — 99 minutes after the first Taser was deployed. It did not identify the deputy who pulled the trigger.

Hospital records showed that Jenkins suffered a lacerated tongue and broken jaw and parts of his tongue had to be sewn back together. He still has trouble eating as a result of the injuries.

Cops said they raided the home after reports of drug activity and ultimately charged Jenkins with possessing less than 10 grams of methamphetamine and assaulting an officer. Parker was charged with possession of paraphernalia and disorderly conduct.

In another incident, Carvis Johnson alleged in a 2020 lawsuit that deputies in the special unit had jammed a gun in his mouth during a 2019 drug bust. No shots were fired at that time.

An emeritus professor of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska said the thuggish tactic is unacceptable under any circumstance for an officer and the fact that it allegedly happened twice was not a coincidence.

“If there are incidents with the same kind of pattern of behavior, they have their own set of rules,” Samuel Walker said. “So these are not just chance experiences. It looks like a very clear pattern.”

Elward was also linked to a second death of a suspect in the predominantly white county of 160,000 outside the mostly black city of Jackson.

The deputy said he fired at Pierre Woods eight times after he said Woods pointed a gun at him and ran towards him. Cops said a gun was recovered at that crime scene.

Christian Dedmon, another deputy who shot at Woods, was also at the drug raid that left Jenkins’ tongue blown off, court records showed.

Chancery Judge Troy Farrell Odom ordered the department to turn over documents related to four deaths in 2021 after a lawsuit was filed by Insider.

“(The) day that our law enforcement officers start shielding this information from the public, all the while repeating, ‘Trust us. We’re from the government,’ is the day that should startle all Americans,” Odom wrote.

Rankin County sheriff’s officials refused to comment on the AP investigation or to make the cops involved in the violence available for interviews. It was unclear if any deputies had been disciplined in connection with the incidents.

With Post Wires