The Justice Department will determine if allegations of widespread violence and improper searches amount to a pattern of discrimination in the department.

"Put simply, the concerns about the Rankin County Sheriff's Department did not end with the demise of the Goon Squad."

Six former officers, who were members of a self-proclaimed "Goon Squad," were sentenced to decades in prison for torturing two Black men.

The Justice Department has launched a civil rights investigation into the sheriff’s department in Mississippi’s Rankin County after several of its deputies – including some who were in a self-styled “Goon Squad” – abused and tortured two Black men in a racially charged home raid last year.

Authorities said the civil rights probe would examine whether officers systemically targeted minorities with excessive force.

The racist attack included beatings, repeated use of stun guns and assaults with a sex toy before one of the victims was shot in the mouth, officials said.

Nearly two years after Michael Corey Jenkins and Eddie Terrell Parker survived hours of a sadistic torture plot conjured up by six white former Mississippi law enforcement officers, the U.S. Justice Department has launched a pattern or practice investigation into Rankin County,

The U.S. Justice Department on Thursday launched a civil rights probe into the Rankin County Sheriff’s Department in Mississippi after several of its former officers known as the “Goon Squad” were prosecuted for torturing and sexually abusing two Black men.