Are you tired of Kings? We have several. IT is up to us to stop them, no one is coming to help.
OUR SHERIFF FOR LIFE has refused giving Body Cams to his men to cover up his girlfriends asking for him when they get stopped and other things HE has to keep hidden.
WE are alone.
H
Who Investigates Mississippi Sheriffs? Often No One. – The New York Times (nytimes.com)
By Ilyssa Daly, Jerry Mitchell and Rachel Axon
Photographs by Rory Doyle for The New York Times
The reporters examined dozens of allegations of abuse by Mississippi sheriffs’ offices to report this article, which is part of a series by The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship on the power of the state’s sheriffs.
- Dec. 28, 2023
As Marquise Tillman led deputies on a high-speed chase through rural Mississippi in March 2019, Sheriff Todd Kemp issued a blunt order over the radio: “Shut him down and beat his ass.”
When the Clarke County deputies caught Mr. Tillman, they did just that, he later alleged in a lawsuit. He said they pummeled and stomped on him while he was handcuffed, leaving him with a fractured eye socket and broken bones in his face and chest.
The sheriff denied giving the order. But it was captured on tape and described under oath by four of his deputies.
Sheriff Todd Kemp was recorded ordering deputies to use force. Four of them corroborated it in depositions.
Listen 0:06
ADVERTISEMENT
Such an explosive revelation might have roiled a community elsewhere in the country and led state or federal officials to investigate. But in Mississippi, it was largely ignored, even after the county paid Mr. Tillman an undisclosed amount to settle his claim.
There was no news coverage and no state investigation. In an interview, Sheriff Kemp said he had turned the case over to the state’s police agency. But the agency could find no record of having pursued it.
That is not unusual in Mississippi, where allegations like those leveled against Sheriff Kemp often go nowhere, an investigation by The New York Times and the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting at Mississippi Today has found.
State authorities are responsible for investigating shootings and in-custody deaths involving sheriffs and deputies. But they are not obligated to investigate other potential wrongdoing by sheriffs’ offices, and may not even know about it: The sheriffs’ offices are also not obligated to report incidents to them.
ADVERTISEMENT
The Times and Mississippi Today examined dozens of publicly available federal lawsuits that described severe brutality and other abuses of power, reviewing thousands of pages of court records and interviewing people involved in cases across the state.
At least 27 claims do not appear to have led to a state investigation, including accusations of rape, brutal assault and retaliation against sheriffs’ enemies.
Many of the lawsuits depicted incidents that had eyewitnesses or significant physical evidence. Some included transcripts of deputies admitting under oath to troubling conduct. All but five of the cases were settled, according to court files that do not disclose the financial terms.
Mississippi has a long history of powerful rural sheriffs breaking the law with little consequence. This year, The Times and Mississippi Today revealed how sheriffs and deputies dodged accountability after allegations that they had sexually abused women in their custody, tortured people for information or misused subpoena power to spy on others.
ADVERTISEMENT
The lawsuits underscored how many similar allegations have been leveled in the state over the past decade, especially in small-town jails. A man in Itawamba County said that in 2020 his jailers tied him to a chair, choked him and squeezed his genitals until he vomited. A woman in Bolivar County said that in 2016 a deputy held her arms behind her back and raped her in her cell. A man in Simpson County said that the sheriff in 2012, Kenneth Lewis, choked him and slammed his head against a cell wall until he passed out.
All of their lawsuits were settled. Attempts to reach former Sheriff Lewis for comment were unsuccessful.
Officials with the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation and Attorney General Lynn Fitch’s office said they could find no records indicating that either office had investigated any of the 27 allegations. Jim Hood, who was attorney general during most of these cases, did not respond to requests for comment.
Reporters also reached people familiar with 12 of the claims, including plaintiffs, their family members and their lawyers. All said they were not aware of state investigators asking about the cases.
Editors’ Picks
5 Health Lessons We Learned in 2023Your Top Health Questions of 2023, AnsweredThe Fine Art of the Paperback Makeover
In a statement responding to The Times and Mississippi Today’s findings, the state’s public safety commissioner, Sean Tindell, said he was working toward more oversight. He said he would ask the legislature to empower Mississippi’s law enforcement licensing board, which he oversees along with the bureau of investigation, to investigate abuse allegations and consider revoking law enforcement officers’ licenses, an approach some states use aggressively.
ADVERTISEMENT
Sheriffs are elected and not required to hold licenses, however. And it would not change how cases are investigated criminally.
The lack of investigations troubled experts who reviewed some of the cases.
James Tierney, a former Maine attorney general who now lectures at Harvard Law School, said the lawsuits described “corrupt” and “criminal” behavior that should have been investigated by the attorney general.
“This wasn’t one renegade cop or a renegade D.A. There is a systemic problem here,” he said.
In Mr. Tillman’s case, the accused deputies all denied beating him. They do not appear to have faced any consequences. “I don’t think there was any wrongdoing,” Sheriff Kemp said in an interview.
“Everybody kept their job,” recalled Mr. Tillman’s aunt, Kristy Tillman.
Mr. Tillman is serving 12 years in prison for crashing into deputies during the high-speed chase. Sheriff Kemp is retiring at the end of this month after 24 years in office. His elected successor, Anthony Chancelor, is one of the deputies accused in the beating.
ADVERTISEMENT
Trails of Evidence
Across Mississippi’s 82 counties, candidates for sheriff are not required to have law enforcement experience or police training. Once in office, sheriffs can launch investigations, direct the use of force and put people in jail, where they control virtually every aspect of an inmate’s life.
“There is no transparency for what happens inside these local jails, and we know that abuse thrives in dark places,” said Michele Deitch, the director of a center at the University of Texas at Austin that studies jail oversight and operations. She said the allegations of brutality described in the lawsuits were a window into a world that sheriffs have been allowed to conceal.
Many of the lawsuits examined by The Times and Mississippi Today included trails of evidence — video footage, medical records, eyewitness accounts — ready for an investigator to follow.
