(CNN) — The Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into the sheriff’s department in Mississippi’s Rankin County after several of its deputies – including some who were in a self-styled “Goon Squad” – abused and tortured two Black men in a racially charged home raid last year.
The federal investigation will examine whether the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department engages in unconstitutional patterns or practices of using excessive force, racially discriminatory policing of Black residents and conducting unlawful stops, searches and arrests, US Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a news release Thursday.
The civil rights investigation is the 12th pattern or practice probe of law enforcement misconduct launched during the Biden administration. Rankin County is located just east of Jackson, the state’s capital…