Movies present Rankin County jail guards mocking intellectually disabled inmate

Jerry Mitchell, Brian Howey, Mukta Joshi and Nate Rosenfield are reporters for Mississippi Today. They have been analyzing the facility of sheriffs’ places of work as a part of The New York Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. This story was additionally supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism, the Alicia Patterson Foundation and The Pulitzer Center.

Two newly found movies taken contained in the Rankin County jail present officers mocking and laughing at an intellectually disabled inmate, the identical man guards had filmed days earlier being shocked in an electrified vest after he requested for a Coke.

Former division workers stated the movies, recorded in 2018, have been shared extensively on an encrypted WhatsApp group chat. The footage gives a deeper look into the tradition of the jail, the place a recent investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times revealed that guards and jail directors routinely beat inmates.

In one video, Larry Buckhalter stands earlier than the digicam in his jail jumpsuit and a celebration hat and sings “Happy Birthday” to “Barry,” an obvious reference to Barry Vaughn, the previous head of the jail who’s now undersheriff.

In the second video, somebody off digicam instructs Buckhalter to “tell him you love him.” 

“I love you, Barry!” he says, and gleefully proclaims it’s his final day in jail. 

As he speaks, a person in uniform standing behind him slams a plastic signal to the ground. Startled, Buckhalter jumps and screams as individuals off digicam chortle.

The movies have been created days after Buckhalter had requested jail guards for a Coke in October 2018. Shortly after his request, the guards strapped him into an electrified vest, meant to maintain violent inmates below management. Then they filmed him screaming and convulsing whereas they shocked him.  

“Now you get a Coke!” a feminine guard says on the finish of the video. “It’s all over! I’m so proud of you, Larry!”

In an e-mail, division lawyer Jason Dare stated that Buckhalter, who died in 2021, had a crack cocaine drawback, however was “never found to be mentally incompetent by a court or health care professional.” 

“Larry celebrated countless birthdays and life achievements at the Rankin County Jail,” Dare wrote. “He never went hungry and was never brutalized, both of which he claimed were regular occurrences in the free world.”

Dare continued: “Although Larry could not give his side of the story for your article, these videos perfectly show his genuine affection for the RCSD. The fact you try to spin it as mockery is shameful.”

Laquanda Anderson and Derrick Shoto, Buckhalter’s niece and nephew, reviewed the movies and Dare’s response. They stated their uncle lived with an apparent mental incapacity.

“Everybody knew he had a mental issue,” Anderson stated. “And when people find that out, they take advantage of it.”

Buckhalter by no means talked about these incidents, they stated, however he informed them he was afraid to return to the jail, saying that guards there referred to as him “Crying Larry.” 

“He hated it at the jail,” Shoto stated, including that within the movies, “they’re clearly treating him like a puppet.”

Last week, Sean Tindell, commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Public Safety, referred to as the video of Buckhalter being shocked “appalling and utterly unacceptable.”

Mississippi Bureau of Investigation brokers have been assigned to analyze the incident, he stated.

Last week, The New York Times and Mississippi Today revealed that for years, jail officers had beaten and whipped inmates who broke jail guidelines or inconvenienced guards. 

More than 70 former inmates, together with former deputies and jail guards, described experiencing, witnessing or taking part within the violence. Their allegations have been supported by medical information, images of accidents and division studies together with the cellphone recording of guards surprising Buckhalter.

After seeing the video of Buckhalter that accompanied the unique investigation, two former deputies informed reporters that extra movies of guards mocking Buckhalter had circulated over encrypted group messages. 

“They made the rounds,” stated one of many two former deputies, Christian Dedmon.

Dedmon was one in all 5 former Rankin County deputies and an area police officer — a few of whom have been a part of a patrol shift referred to as the “Goon Squad”— who have been sentenced to federal prison final yr for torturing three males. 

A 2023 investigation by Mississippi Today and The Times revealed that almost two dozen residents skilled related brutality from deputies throughout drug raids over almost 20 years.

Last yr, reporters additionally uncovered an encrypted WhatsApp group chat the place members of the Goon Squad shift traded pictures of rotting corpses and joked about rape and surprising individuals with Tasers.

One former Rankin deputy, who requested to stay nameless as a result of they feared retaliation from the division, shared the 2 new recordings of Buckhalter with reporters.

That former deputy, together with two former guards, stated the video exhibiting Buckhalter being shocked and the video of him singing Happy Birthday have been each filmed within the workplace of Amanda Thompson, who was a jail lieutenant on the time and nonetheless works on the division. 

The former workers additionally stated the third video was filmed within the workplace of Kristi Pennington, Sheriff Bailey’s spouse, who additionally works on the division.

“ When you have authority over people, you have a responsibility to take care of them,” Derrek Shoto, Buckhalter’s nephew, stated. “No matter who you’re over, you’ve got to treat them with respect.”

This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished right here below a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.