A man who was brutalized by Rankin County Sheriff’s deputies during a traffic stop filed a federal lawsuit against the county Tuesday evening. 

Alan Schmidt, who filed the lawsuit, said Rankin County deputies beat and sexually assaulted him in late 2022. Three of the involved deputies were sentenced to federal and state prison terms last year, in part for their role in the incident. They are also defendants in the lawsuit.

In the lawsuit, which represents one side of a legal argument, Schmidt alleged that the department was responsible for a pattern of misconduct by deputies and jail guards, listing several other lawsuits against deputies and county jail guards. 

While he’s seeking an unspecified amount of compensation for his own pain and suffering, he said he is also filing the lawsuit on behalf of everyone who has been abused by the sheriff’s department.

“There are many things that go on in this county that have gone on for many years,” Schmidt said. “I want justice for everyone that has been wronged.”

The department did not respond to a request for comment. 

In December 2022, deputies pulled Schmidt from his car and beat him while he was handcuffed, the lawsuit alleges. One deputy pressed his arm into an anthill, and former narcotics investigator Christian Dedmon fired a gun near Schmidt’s head while interrogating him about the location of stolen tools he believed Schmidt had taken. 

Dedmon punched Schmidt and shocked him several times with Deputy Hunter Elward’s Taser, then pulled out his own genitals and attempted to rub them in Schmidt’s face, the lawsuit claims.

Dedmon pleaded guilty to violating Schimdt’s constitutional rights, but has since denied the sexual assault. Former deputies Hunter Elward and Daniel Opdyke pleaded guilty to failing to stop the beating, according to court documents.  

The deputies also pleaded guilty to a separate late-night raid of the home of Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker, two Black men who were tortured and called racial slurs for hours by five deputies and a Richland police officer in early 2023. 

Schmidt’s lawsuit is the latest in a series of allegations from people who say they were brutalized by Rankin County sheriff’s deputies and guards at the county jail, which is run by the sheriff’s department. 

An investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times found that the Rankin County deputies, some of whom referred to themselves as the Goon Squad, had been torturing people they suspected of using drugs for nearly two decades. 

The Justice Department launched an investigation into a potential pattern of civil rights violations at the department last year. That investigation is ongoing. 

Dedmon has since said publicly that the abuses he participated in were part of a widespread practice at the department, where deputies would routinely enter homes illegally, beat people and humiliate them to extract information and scare criminal suspects out of the county.

A recent investigation by the publications found that for years, guards and administrators at the Rankin County jail brutalized the inmates in their care, sometimes enlisting other inmates with special privileges, called trusties, to help them beat inmates who broke jail rules. 

Schmidt’s attorney, Trent Walker, who has represented several people who say they were brutalized by the sheriff’s department, said Schmidt’s case proves the entrenched culture of violence at the agency. 

“The case puts the lie to any claim that what happened to Michael Jenkins and Eddie Parker was isolated,” he said. “ I want the citizens of Rankin County, specifically, to be able to look at this case and the other cases and say that it’s enough, it’s time for a fresh start.”