Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey, whose department faces serious allegations of misconduct, is now actively supporting Mississippi Senator Cindy Hyde-Smith’s re-election campaign.
Senator Hyde-Smith and Sheriff Bailey were seen together at a political breakfast held in Rankin County on March 7, marking a key event in the senator’s bid for a second term.
Earlier this year, in January 2023, a grave incident occurred involving five officers from the Rankin County Sheriff’s Office. They entered a residence without a warrant and subjected two Black men to severe abuse. The victims endured tasing, beatings with a wooden plank, and were forced to endure a sex toy being shoved down their throats. One man’s jaw was shattered when a gun was forced into his mouth and discharged. The victims reported the use of racial slurs by the officers during the attack. Full details of the incident can be found here.
All involved officers have confessed to the charges, including hate crime offenses. However, local residents claim this was not an isolated case of police brutality.
According to a report by The New York Times, numerous Rankin County residents have either witnessed or experienced similar violent acts by the police, often targeting poor or Black individuals. Allegations include a man being repeatedly tasered and forced to ingest a stick until he vomited blood, and another man being threatened with sexual assault using a flashlight after being forcibly removed from his bed at night.
The officers involved allegedly identified themselves as “The Goon Squad.”
Despite these serious allegations, Sheriff Bailey expressed surprise and claimed ignorance of the incidents, though some residents reported having directly informed his office about the abuses. He stated, “I have 240 employees, there’s no way I can be with them each and every day,” in an interview with The New York Times.
Senator Hyde-Smith has not publicly addressed the January incident or the subsequent court proceedings. Her past actions include opposition to a bipartisan police reform bill and making remarks considered racially insensitive, as reported here and here.
Bailey has faced additional accusations. In 2016, he was alleged to have unlawfully obtained a subpoena to access the phone and text records of an ex-girlfriend, although no charges were pressed. This incident, along with others, was reportedly covered up by local officials, as detailed here.
More recent allegations involve Bailey using inmates from the Rankin County jail for personal labor on his mother’s chicken ranch. Some inmates reported receiving cash or meals as compensation, while others claimed they were unpaid. Bailey has also been accused of misappropriating county funds for personal farm equipment and using county machinery for private farmwork, as discussed in this report.
In the upcoming November election, Hyde-Smith will face Democratic challenger Scott Colm, a local district attorney known for his involvement in prosecuting a sheriff’s office on charges of inmate exploitation, detailed here.
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