A sheriff’s department in Mississippi is under investigation after a series of disturbing reports of violent interactions with Black men, including two that were fatal and two separate instances of deputies allegedly shoving pistols into men’s mouths. In one of these encounters, the deputy fired his weapon, wounding victim Michael Corey Jenkins so badly that his tongue had to be sewn back together, and he still has trouble eating and talking, according to reporting by the AP. In the wake of these harrowing incidents—which resulted in two men being killed—the Department of Justice has opened a civil rights investigation into the sheriff’s department of Rankin County, a predominantly white suburb of Jackson, the outlet reports. The deputies involved in all of the encounters were members of the sheriff’s department’s Special Response Team, a tactical division similar to the SCORPION unit in Memphis that was shuttered after its officers brutally beat Tyre Nichols to death in January.
