When the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department agreed to a $2.5 million settlement after “Goon Squad” officers tortured two Black men, the department’s attorney said he hoped it would provide closure for the victims.

But at a breakfast Saturday sponsored by the sheriff and his former father-in-law, Irl Dean Rhodes, county officials struck a much different tone.

Two days after the announcement of the settlement, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines said the department’s attorney, Jason Dare, “beat the pants off of those guys — the dopers, the people that raped and doped your daughters. He beat their pants off.”

Gaines was referring to Eddie Parker and his friend, Michael Jenkins, who were beaten, tased and sexually assaulted by the deputies before they shot Jenkins in the mouth during a mock execution. The deputies tried to plant a BB gun and drugs on the men to cover up their crimes, but they were ultimately convicted and sent to federal prison for decades.

Parker has one felony conviction in Rankin County is for failing to “stop vehicle pursuant to officer’s signal,” according to court records. In Alabama, he had a 2019 conviction for drug possession with intent to distribute. Jenkins has no felony convictions listed in Rankin County. Neither has a conviction in neighboring Hinds County.

Gaines declined to comment about his remarks.

LISTEN: Two days after the $2.5 million “Goon Squad” settlement, Rankin County Supervisor Steve Gaines praised the sheriff’s department’s lawyer, Jason Dare, and talked about the two Black men whom deputies beat, tortured and sexually abused. Click the link to hear what he said at the Saturday breakfast hosted by Sheriff Bryan Bailey.

The two men’s lawyer, Trent Walker, said Gaines’ remark fits the racist trope of falsely accusing Black men of raping white men’s daughters.

That remark, Walker said, makes obvious “that attitudes like this permit rogue police to prevail and allow for the conditions in which officers have been able to carry out their unlawful agenda against other citizens of the state of Mississippi.”

An investigation by Mississippi Today and The New York Times exposed a decades-long reign of terror by 20 Rankin County deputies, several of whom routinely tortured suspected drug users to elicit information and confessions.

Many people have filed lawsuits alleging abuses by deputies, or say they filed complaints with the department or reported these incidents directly to Bailey, but the sheriff has denied any knowledge of these alleged abuses.

Gaines, who worked for three decades as an agent with the Office of Inspector General, praised Bailey for enduring the scandals that have wracked his department and prompted investigations by the Justice Department and the state auditor’s office regarding Bailey’s alleged misuse of taxpayer money equipment and supplies used at his mother’s commercial chicken farm.

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“It made me cry at night that Sheriff Bailey, my friend, was absorbing this,” he said. “I’m gonna tell you, he has weathered the storm, and we are back.”

Bailey thanked the county’s leaders for their support. “For the past 28 months through all of this,” he said, “my board of supervisors have stood behind me 110%.”

The sheriff said he was ready to quit several times, but Rhodes urged him to stay and run again for sheriff. “He kept pushing me,” Bailey said. “He’s still pushing me.” 

Rhodes has long been regarded as “kingmaker” in Mississippi politics with many seeking his support in their campaigns. In the early 1980s, he was convicted and fined on multiple counts of felony tax evasion.

Gaines praised other Rankin County officials, citing the county’s smooth roads and relatively low crime rates, and expressed concern about the county’s growing pains, such as students from other counties attending Rankin schools. 

“ How do you feel about paying the taxes that you pay and people from across the river coming over here and putting their kids in your school?” he told the nearly all-white crowd, referring to the Pearl River that separates Hinds and Rankin counties. “They’re gonna pay taxes maybe one year or maybe not at all.”

Rankin County is 72% white, while Hinds County is 72% Black.

Angela English, president of the Rankin County branch of the NAACP, said there is no mistaking Gaines’ words as a racial reference. “That’s the kind of toxic environment that we have in Rankin County,” she said.

A lifelong resident of Rankin County, English helped integrate Florence schools with her sisters. “It’s always good to know where he [Gaines] stands, whether you agree with him or not,” she said. “I’d rather know who I’m dealing with than to be caught by surprise.”

His remark, she said, “alludes to the kind of people who are upholding Bryan Bailey.”