Brian Howey

The F.B.I. and a Mississippi sheriff investigated complaints about brutal assaults, but the deputies accused remained on the force and never faced charges. By Nate Rosenfield and Mukta Joshi Nate Rosenfield and Mukta Joshi are reporters for Mississippi Today. They examined the power of sheriff’s offices in the state as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship Department records and interviews with a former F.B.I. agent show that the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department had evidence of deputies’ violent acts long before the abuses of the “Goon Squad” came to light in 2023. Credit…Rory Doyle for The New York Times July 10, 2025 For nearly two years, the embattled sheriff of Rankin County, Miss., has tried to distance himself from brutality in his department, saying he was unaware of assaults like those carried out by deputies who called themselves the Goon Squad. But department records and interviews with a former F.B.I. agent reveal that the sheriff, Bryan Bailey, had evidence of his deputies’ violent acts going back to his earliest days in office. In 2012, the year Mr. Bailey became