Six officers known as the ‘Goon Squad’ plead guilty to torturing two Black men, using a sex toy on them and shooting one of them

"Using a sex toy on them" When are we going to start referring to sexual assault of men as what it is?
- Because just referring to it as sexual assault, might portray that these cops where gay, and we can't have none of that.
  /s
  
  Yeah we all know how masculine the police in the US are. What’s more manly than a bunch of men compensating for their small penises by randomly killing civilians!
- I mean, it's sexual assault obviously, but in this case, "using a sex toy on them" provides a bit more context than just generically labeling it as "sexual assault". Sexual assault could be many different things.
  The article also goes on to describe that they put the sex toys in the men's mouth. I think the "used a sex toy on them" is just more descriptive in this situation, because if they used "sexual assault", people would not be able to decipher what these POS officers actually did.
  I do agree that the media can be terrible about minimizing sexual assault on men, but in this case I think the headline is more descriptive. Also , fuck these racist rapist cops.
  
  You "use a sex toy" on a partner.
  It's not a sex toy when you don't consent; at that point, it's just being raped with a foreign object.
  
  "Raped with a sex toy" is more descriptive and accurate and almost the same length (shorter even) as "used a sex toy on them."
  
  He wasn’t raped. He was subjected to enhanced interrogation. Besides, they sprinkled some crack on him so it’s all good.

Had to stop reading. I have no words.
- Insane. Fucking disgusting.
  They didn’t include it in the article, but this fuckin “good squad” was called to the place because “two black men were staying with a white woman.” Thats was the call.
  Who the fuck made that call? They obviously knew this type of outcome was likely, because that’s not fucking illegal. No one makes that call without knowing these types of fucking scum would be responding. So where the fuck is that indictment.
  
  This means the Goon Squad already had a reputation as this town’s KKK.
- I heard an NPR piece on it last week, and that was more than enough for me. When are we going to start holding law enforcement to a higher standard than everyone else? Instead of qualified immunity, we should start saying that an officer found guilty of a crime gets double the punishment of a regular citizen. Yes, that means fewer people will want the job - I'm okay with that.
  
  They should be forced to carry malpractice insurance just like a doctor.
  Many cops make up to 300k a year with overtime. They can afford it.
- jfc. I hope they go to prison for the maximum. That shit was hard to read.
  
  Unfortunately, I suspect there is no way they agreed to a guilty plea without an offer on the table.

"raped" they raped him. Even by americas fucked up definition of rape. Raped him. Why can't news just say 'they raped the man' always with weird innuendos.
The police are rapists. So easy to type. Almost flows off the keys.
- <s> Men can’t be raped, haven’t you heard? </s>
  
  Woah woah woah. Let's not jump to any conclusions about everyone yet. Let's wait it out until we get all the facts before we say something so profound. Even if they did something of that nature there must be a good reason, they wouldn't make choices like that without good reasons.
  /s I think this is obvious, but just in case
- After reading it I feel the rape part is by far not the worst part of what they did. How long were these fucking criminals getting away with this shit. If he hadn't shot him (reads like he meant for it to not fire the second time he pulled the trigger with his gun in his mouth) then we wouldn't even know about this and they would still be out there posing as police officers
- Your last paragraph is a delight to read, thank you!
  
  It's almost a haiku. Six, five, six. Explains the flow. ¯(ツ)_/¯

Before reading: “Wow, what a sensationalist headline!”
After reading: “Somehow that headline underplayed it.”
- The article doesn't even mention that the shooting happened during a forced game of Russian roulette.
  
  It kinda does, but it doesn't make sense:
  After removing a bullet from the chamber of his gun, Elward stuck a gun into Jenkins’ mouth and pulled the trigger. The gun clicked. Then he racked the slide, only this time, the gun fired a bullet
  Usually Russian Roulette involves removing all of the bullets except one. This shitbag removed just one bullet. But most importantly, Russian Roulette is done with a revolver and the mention of a slide indicates it wasn't a revolver.
  So... I don't know what happened here. Did this Elward shithead say he was going to do a Russian Roulette thing but didn't understand how any of that works?

Makes you wonder how often stuff like this happens … it seems that they were only caught because they accidentally shot one of the victims.
I remember seeing a film years ago called Mississippi Burning (set in the 1960s) about how entire communities and institutions condone behaviour just like this - and thinking “thank god such stuff doesn’t happen any more”. That now feels like a remarkably naive attitude.
Pretty grim reading.
- I'm white and I was punched by a cop in front of my house last year that then denounced me of hitting him, falsified a medical report, forced a courier to testify against me and of course has his partner who confirms everything he says. No matter the fact that I recorded with my phone him saying that he hit me (in self defense he says but in the report he wrote there's no mention of a self defense), asking if I had cameras (if not he could tell whatever he wanted), that he pushed me the prosecutor is accepting his version. So fuck the police. I'm disabled by the way.
  
  Only the chosen whites are immune from police brutality. If that’s not you then you’re no better off than me.
  Sorry that happened. ACAB.
  
  Sorry to hear that happened to you. I had cops falsify a report to pin something on me once too.
- Not to twist the knife, but looking at all the cases that have relied on bodycams or bystander phone cams - almost always coupled with a police report that the video proved later to be a lie - makes me shudder to imagine what was going on every single decade before cops had to always worry about likely being on someone's camera.
  I have my concerns about what the increasing proliferation of cell phone cameras, private security cameras, and doorbell cams mean for general privacy, but no doubt this behavior is only going to get harder and harder for cops.
  We'll know we've crossed a turning point when most of the time the video doesn't prove the initial police statement was a lie. Don't think we're there yet, but we'll get there. And frankly it's become clear that police aren't going to change their behavior without being caught a lot more, so at this point I say bring on the cams.
- I mean, it wasn't that long ago that we learned PD's in major cities were running black sites.
- Yep, and there's no way the shariff wasn't aware of them. He should be held equally accountable for keeping them on the force.
- All the time. This is how the police normally operate in the United States. If you meet a cop that doesn’t do this then congrats you’ve found a unicorn.
  Source: I have relatives that are cops 🤮

I don't tend to make generalizations about a whole department but I seriously question if Rankin county is better off without a sheriff's department entirely.
- Im sure most communities would be a lot safer without any police
  ACAB
  /s
  
  CRUMBS

What the fuck did I just read...
- White supremacist gang shit.
- If I saw it in a movie I wouldn’t be able to suspend my disbelief.

This is America.

- The US is a developing country by many metrics, mostly the ones that have to do with health, education and life expectancy.
- Please note that we declared ourselves a first world country. We’re not and never will be. At best, we’ve always been a backwater former European colony with an ego bigger than our landmass.
- What does being allied with the US during the cold War have to do with this?
  Edit: you guys, I UNDERSTAND what this means, I'm just trying to have some humor
  
  Obtuse literalist programmer moment

I mean... is it wrong to hope these goon fucks get what's coming to them in prison?
- "what's coming to them in prison" is just another indictment of our broken society.
- Yes, it's wrong. It's understandable to want retribution, but it doesn't help improve the situation. We need to be better than that, even when our gut reaction is, "to hope these goon fucks get what's coming to them in prison?"
- "Prison was fine, I didn't mind prison. Except for the anal rape part. Yah, that part I didn't enjoy much, that anal rape thing."
  Norm MacDonald
- considering the prison system creates more crime, yes it's wrong

Shades of the Abner Louima case.
- This is revolting.
  Also, his life was heartbreaking too.
  He had been trained as an electrical engineer in Haiti, but in New York, Louima was unable to get a position related to his education. He worked as a security guard in a water and sewage plant in the Flatlands area of Brooklyn."

The sad reality of the name of the newspaper being so true. This is Mississippi today. Not 400 years ago, or 60...today.

I don't often advocate for the death penalty, but fuck these pigs. They don't deserve to live. That or solitary life imprisonment.

on one hand, I wish I wouldn't have to read those headlines because it depresses me
on the other hands, there's no point in muting that information, because people should know those things and should be angry
I thought "we should read good news", and then /r/upliftingnews appeared and it was just a rose-colored glasses thing.
we actually need to hear bad news to make people react.
- I want to hear good news when we actually fix things. I don't want to ignore bad news or to have news mischaracterized as good.

Oh so normal policing in the US. Got it.

Jesus Christ on a cracker. I thought the headline was bad, and the article made it so much worse. I don’t even have words.

Gut these pigs and let em hang.

Hot damn is this real justice happening in Mississippi! Drain the swamp would be used in the proper context here. Monsters dressed as police officers actually being fired and facing time in prison. It's a terrible story, but I'm happy to see the long dick of the federal law is swinging down that far south.