In Jackson, Mississippi, two white former sheriff’s deputies, who belonged to a group that described itself as the “Goon Squad,” were sentenced to lengthy prison time for raiding a home and torturing two Black men in January 2023. Hunter Elward received a 20-year prison sentence; Jeffrey Middleton was sentenced to 17-and-a-half years. Both pleaded guilty to multiple felony federal and state charges last August, along with four other former law enforcement officers. The six men burst into a home and then beat, handcuffed, waterboarded and tasered Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker. The officers also sexually abused them with a sex toy while shouting racial slurs. One of the officers put a gun in Jenkins’s mouth for a “mock execution” and pulled the trigger. The bullet lacerated Jenkins’s tongue, broke his jaw and exited through his neck. The officers then planted drugs at the scene in an attempt to cover up their act. One of the officers, Hunter Elward, was also sentenced for his role in a separate assault, just two weeks earlier, when another member of the “Goon Squad” repeatedly tased a man and pressed his genitals against him.