Mississippi Today
Days after Rankin’s ‘Goon Squad’ tortured two men, supervisors gave the sheriff a pay boost

A dozen days after five Rankin County deputies known as the “Goon Squad” tortured, tased and sexually abused two Black men, the Rankin County Board of Supervisors gave Sheriff Bryan Bailey a $21,059 raise.
On Feb. 6, supervisors officially appointed him director of the Safe Room, a task he has carried out for years.
This means Bailey, a Republican incumbent unopposed in the Nov. 7 election, now earns $140,059 — what appears to be the highest pay for a Mississippi sheriff. It’s far more than the $122,160 salary Gov. Tate Reeves collects.
State Rep. Becky Currie, R-Brookhaven, said she believes the bonus circumvented the will of the state Legislature, which capped sheriffs’ salaries in counties of more than 100,000 population at $119,000. “We had just given sheriffs a big raise,” she said. “It’s just not right.”
The state’s legislative watchdog told her the raise was legal, but she said she still thinks the act “takes advantage of the taxpayers. I’m shocked the board of supervisors went along with it.”
Greta Kemp Martin, the Democratic candidate for Mississippi attorney general, said Sheriff Bailey has “proven himself to be unfit for the job” and should resign.
In addition to the Goon Squad’s actions, she pointed to reporting by The New York Times and Mississippi Today, which revealed the sheriff repeatedly used grand jury subpoenas to gather the text messages and phone call logs of his married girlfriend and a man he suspected she was seeing.
Before giving Bailey the raise, Rankin County supervisors sought an attorney general’s opinion, wanting to know if the sheriff could also be paid “for overseeing the FEMA safe room,” another name for the county’s severe weather shelter.
A written opinion from the attorney general’s office, which isn’t legally binding, concluded state law limiting the sheriff’s salary “would not apply to the compensation for his or her second job.”
What Rankin County officials didn’t mention to the attorney general’s office was that the sheriff had been in charge of the Safe Room for years.
The 16,400-square-foot facility hosts far more events and parties than storm evacuations. Most of the Rankin County policies for the Safe Room, built at a cost of $2.8 million to taxpayers, center on how groups can use the room for events ($50 an hour, plus a $250 deposit).
“Event themes must be approved by the Rankin County Sheriff and-or his designee and must be consistent with promoting community culture, recreation and education,” the policies read. “The Rankin County Sheriff’s Department accepts cash, checks and purchase orders made payable to Rankin County.”
U.S. Rep. Bennie Thompson, D-Miss., past chairman of the House Committee on Homeland Security, noted that the position over the Safe Room is usually held by a county’s emergency management director rather than a sheriff.
Brian Adam serves as emergency management director for Hancock County, which has five shelters. When those shelters open to the public, the Red Cross operates them, he said.
He doesn’t know of any sheriffs who manage shelters.
Asked why the Rankin County sheriff was getting paid now for a task he had done for years, Craig Slay, an attorney for the supervisors, responded that Bailey undertook that responsibility “voluntarily” and it “does not fall within his duties as Sheriff.”
While Bailey’s pay has skyrocketed, the number of employees at the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department is falling.
Current and former deputies say morale is plummeting, and more than two dozen people have left the office in recent months. They say they feel they lack the support of the sheriff, who said from now on, he had to “verify” their work.
After Rankin County Undersheriff Paul Holley resigned Oct. 2, Bailey sent out an email asking those in the office to “be patient during this transition. I have always tried to be a good leader but have my shortcomings. …
“I want to recover all that has been taken from us, especially our name and reputation. I cannot do it alone. I need our team to do it. If we all do our part and do our job, we can regain what was stolen from us.”
Weeks after five deputies and a Richland police officer pleaded guilty to torturing two Black men and planting a gun and drugs on them, citizens from the community appeared before the county supervisors.
“Those who are supposed to protect and serve have been serving out a brand of justice that is outside the boundaries of human dignity and decency,” resident Joe Brazeal told supervisors. “How long do you really think this has really been going on in our county?”
Someone in the audience answered, “Decades.”
Brazeal called for an investigation “going back as far back and as long ago as these officers who were carrying a badge.”
He asked the supervisors, “How many are incarcerated now or have been banished from this county because of planted evidence? This is your responsibility. Some of you were on watch.”
Supervisor Steve Gaines responded that the deputies’ crimes surprised him. “I’m sorry this happened,” he said. “I believe the sheriff is sorry this happened. Let’s respect our law enforcement and not let a few bad apples ruin everything.”
In response to those calling for Bailey’s resignation, Slay told the crowd that when people called on supervisors to remove the sheriff, those calls should go to the governor.
Mississippi law gives the governor the power to remove a county elected official if he or she receives a petition of 30 percent or more of the qualified voters.
“This board does not have the power to remove any county elected official,” Slay told the audience.
Bailey, first elected a dozen years ago, has rejected calls to resign. At a press conference following the officers’ guilty pleas, he denied having any prior knowledge of the deputies’ actions or even the existence of the Goon Squad, despite the fact that challenge coins for the Goon Squad were stamped with the seal of the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department.
He blamed his deputies for lying to him. “The only thing I’m guilty of is trusting grown men that swore an oath to do their job correctly,” he said. “I’m guilty of that.”
Instead, he blamed others at his office. “The complaint has to come in,” he said. “The reports have to come in. Something has to come in that I’ve been notified. That’s what I’ve got supervisors for.”
In response to questions about the crimes carried out by his deputies, the sheriff told reporters, “The system works.”
He said investigators for the Mississippi Bureau of Investigation “came in. They saw the red flags. Today, we have five former deputies in jail because they [MBI] came in and did their job.”
Greta Kemp Martin, whose father serves as police chief for the town of Tishomingo, said if Bailey had taken full responsibility for what happened, she might feel differently.
“Kicking the can to his supervisors is cowardly,” she said. “This was more than roughing up someone. This was torture.”
Martin, whose grandfathers also worked in law enforcement, said what the Goon Squad did “puts good cops at risk, because it deflates the public trust.”
Ilyssa Daly examines the power of sheriffs’ offices in Mississippi as part of The Times’s Local Investigations Fellowship. Jerry Mitchell, co-founder of the Mississippi Center for Investigative Reporting that’s now part of Mississippi Today, is an investigative reporter who has examined civil rights-era cold murder cases in the state for more than 30 years.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons license.
Mississippi Today
Jim Hood’s opinion provides a roadmap if lawmakers do the unthinkable and can’t pass a budget
On June 30, 2009, Sam Cameron, the then-executive director of the Mississippi Hospital Association, held a news conference in the Capitol rotunda to publicly take his whipping and accept his defeat.
Cameron urged House Democrats, who had sided with the Hospital Association, to accept the demands of Republican Gov. Haley Barbour to place an additional $90 million tax on the state’s hospitals to help fund Medicaid and prevent the very real possibility of the program and indeed much of state government being shut down when the new budget year began in a few hours. The impasse over Medicaid and the hospital tax had stopped all budget negotiations.
Barbour watched from a floor above as Cameron publicly admitted defeat. Cameron’s decision to swallow his pride was based on a simple equation. He told news reporters, scores of lobbyists and health care advocates who had set up camp in the Capitol as midnight on July 1 approached that, while he believed the tax would hurt Mississippi hospitals, not having a Medicaid budget would be much more harmful.
Just as in 2009, the Legislature ended the 2025 regular session earlier this month without a budget agreement and will have to come back in special session to adopt a budget before the new fiscal year begins on July 1. It is unlikely that the current budget rift between the House and Senate will be as dramatic as the 2009 standoff when it appeared only hours before the July 1 deadline that there would be no budget. But who knows what will result from the current standoff? After all, the current standoff in many ways seems to be more about political egos than policy differences on the budget.
The fight centers around multiple factors, including:
- Whether legislation will be passed to allow sports betting outside of casinos.
- Whether the Senate will agree to a massive projects bill to fund local projects throughout the state.
- Whether leaders will overcome hard feelings between the two chambers caused by the House’s hasty final passage of a Senate tax cut bill filled with typos that altered the intent of the bill without giving the Senate an opportunity to fix the mistakes.
- Whether members would work on a weekend at the end of the session. The Senate wanted to, the House did not.
It is difficult to think any of those issues will rise to the ultimate level of preventing the final passage of a budget when push comes to shove.
But who knows? What we do know is that the impasse in 2009 created a guideline of what could happen if a budget is not passed.
It is likely that parts, though not all, of state government will shut down if the Legislature does the unthinkable and does not pass a budget for the new fiscal year beginning July 1.
An official opinion of the office of Attorney General Jim Hood issued in 2009 said if there is no budget passed by the Legislature, those services mandated in the Mississippi Constitution, such as a public education system, will continue.
According to the Hood opinion, other entities, such as the state’s debt, and court and federal mandates, also would be funded. But it is likely that there will not be funds for Medicaid and many other programs, such as transportation and aspects of public safety that are not specifically listed in the Mississippi Constitution.
The Hood opinion reasoned that the Mississippi Constitution is the ultimate law of the state and must be adhered to even in the absence of legislative action. Other states have reached similar conclusions when their legislatures have failed to act, the AG’s opinion said.
As is often pointed out, the opinion of the attorney general does not carry the weight of law. It serves only as a guideline, though Gov. Tate Reeves has relied on the 2009 opinion even though it was written by the staff of Hood, who was Reeves’ opponent in the contentious 2019 gubernatorial campaign.
But if the unthinkable ever occurs and the Legislature goes too far into a new fiscal year without adopting a budget, it most likely will be the courts — moreso than an AG’s opinion — that ultimately determine if and how state government operates.
In 2009 Sam Cameron did not want to see what would happen if a budget was not adopted. It also is likely that current political leaders do not want to see the results of not having a budget passed before July 1 of this year.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
1964: Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party was formed
April 26, 1964

Civil rights activists started the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party to challenge the state’s all-white regular delegation to the Democratic National Convention.
The regulars had already adopted this resolution: “We oppose, condemn and deplore the Civil Rights Act of 1964 … We believe in separation of the races in all phases of our society. It is our belief that the separation of the races is necessary for the peace and tranquility of all the people of Mississippi, and the continuing good relationship which has existed over the years.”
In reality, Black Mississippians had been victims of intimidation, harassment and violence for daring to try and vote as well as laws passed to disenfranchise them. As a result, by 1964, only 6% of Black Mississippians were permitted to vote. A year earlier, activists had run a mock election in which thousands of Black Mississippians showed they would vote if given an opportunity.
In August 1964, the Freedom Party decided to challenge the all-white delegation, saying they had been illegally elected in a segregated process and had no intention of supporting President Lyndon B. Johnson in the November election.
The prediction proved true, with white Mississippi Democrats overwhelmingly supporting Republican candidate Barry Goldwater, who opposed the Civil Rights Act. While the activists fell short of replacing the regulars, their courageous stand led to changes in both parties.
This article first appeared on Mississippi Today and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
Mississippi Today
Mississippi River flooding Vicksburg, expected to crest on Monday
Warren County Emergency Management Director John Elfer said Friday floodwaters from the Mississippi River, which have reached homes in and around Vicksburg, will likely persist until early May. Elfer estimated there areabout 15 to 20 roads underwater in the area.
“We’re about half a foot (on the river gauge) from a major flood,” he said. “But we don’t think it’s going to be like in 2011, so we can kind of manage this.”
The National Weather projects the river to crest at 49.5 feet on Monday, making it the highest peak at the Vicksburg gauge since 2020. Elfer said some residents in north Vicksburg — including at the Ford Subdivision as well as near Chickasaw Road and Hutson Street — are having to take boats to get home, adding that those who live on the unprotected side of the levee are generally prepared for flooding.



“There are a few (inundated homes), but we’ve mitigated a lot of them,” he said. “Some of the structures have been torn down or raised. There are a few people that still live on the wet side of the levee, but they kind of know what to expect. So we’re not too concerned with that.”
The river first reached flood stage in the city — 43 feet — on April 14. State officials closed Highway 465, which connects the Eagle Lake community just north of Vicksburg to Highway 61, last Friday.

Elfer said the areas impacted are mostly residential and he didn’t believe any businesses have been affected, emphasizing that downtown Vicksburg is still safe for visitors. He said Warren County has worked with the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and the Mississippi Emergency Management Agency to secure pumps and barriers.
“Everybody thus far has been very cooperative,” he said. “We continue to tell people stay out of the flood areas, don’t drive around barricades and don’t drive around road close signs. Not only is it illegal, it’s dangerous.”
NWS projects the river to stay at flood stage in Vicksburg until May 6. The river reached its record crest of 57.1 feet in 2011.




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