US: In Prison 6 Former Police Officers in Mississippi State for Torture 2 African-Americans · Global Voices

Six ex-girlfriends in the state of Mississippi are sentenced to serve prison sentences for torturing two African Americans. Sentences of 10 to 40 years of imprisonment were sentenced to serve four former U.S. Mississippi police officers for the horrific torture they subjected to two African Americans in January 2023. The total six white ex-cops of this state of the American South involved in the case confessed their guilt in August. They tortured the victims for nearly two hours, using a penis, taser, sword, and eventually pistol. One of them came to the point of putting his service gun into one’s mouth and firing, causing him to fracture his jaw. This policeman, Hunter Elward, 31, was sentenced Monday to serve a 20-year sentence. His colleague Jeffrey Middleton, 46, was sentenced to serve 17.5 years in prison. Two others, Christian Dentmon, 2 years old, and Daniel Updike, 28 years old, were sentenced the other day Wednesday to serve corresponding 40 and 17 years of imprisonment. The first was sentenced to the heavier penalty for committing the worst torture of a sexual nature. Brett McAlpin, 53, and Joshua Hartfield, 32, were in turn sentenced yesterday Thursday to serve imprisonment respectively 27 and 10. Federal authorities will guarantee “that police officers who violate constitutional rights and betray citizens’ trust will be accountable,” he stressed earlier this week in a press release released by his services Minister of Justice Merrick Garland. In January 2023, the six police officers, members of a notorious group for its brutality, invaded a house in Braxton, a small town in Mississippi, where suspicious activity had been denounced, according to documents. When they found two black men inside, they were handcuffed and exuded with “racist” characterizations. Rape and shooting According to the indictment, they raped the one with the dummy and managed 17 electric discharges to the victims with the tasers they brought. They humiliated the men by forcing them to swallow alcohol, cooking oil, milk, and other fluids, repeatedly causing virtual drowning. The torture, which lasted almost two hours, culminated when Hunter Elward put his service weapon in one of the two. To scare him, he first pulled the trigger after removing a bullet from the chamber. But when he pulled the trigger again, the gun went off. The missile disbanded the victim’s jaw and exited his neck, according to a forensic report included in the indictment. Then the police let their victims lie in pools of blood for a while, without calling an ambulance, discussing outside what house they would cover up their actions. The group destroyed the closed surveillance circuit installed at home, the bullet casing, and attempted to burn the victims’ clothes to alter the evidence, always according to the indictment. He also placed a gas and meth gun inside the house to justify the invasion of the house. Then the police filed false reports and repeatedly lied to their colleagues and prosecutors who handled the investigation into the case. Media research New York Times and Mississippi Today indicated that African-Americans in Rankin County, where the case unfolded, often suffer police brutality. In response, the state Congress approved last year a draft law allowing the removal of the license to practice police officers charged with racist offences and other violations, even if they do not face criminal prosecutions.