Mississippi State Auditor Shad White confirmed Friday that he has opened an investigation into allegations that Rankin County Sheriff Bryan Bailey used his position to enrich himself and his family during most of his 13-year tenure.
The announcement came one day after Mississippi Today and The New York Times published allegations by four former inmates and a former deputy that Bailey had for years supplemented his family farm’s workforce with trusted jail inmates and used taxpayer-purchased equipment and resources to tend to his property.
“We’re all aware of the reporting,” said Jacob Walters, communications director for the state auditor. “We read the article, and Auditor White ordered an investigation to begin yesterday morning when we became aware of the story.”
White has alerted federal prosecutors of the allegations, Walters said.
Bailey was already under pressure to resign after five of his deputies, dubbed the “Goon Squad,” pleaded guilty to federal civil rights charges after it was revealed they tortured two Black men in their home, shooting one in the mouth. A subsequent investigation by The New York Times and Mississippi Today found that those deputies had employed similar brutal tactics for nearly two decades against those they suspected of using or dealing drugs.
Bailey denied knowledge of the abuses, but local civil rights leaders weren’t buying it.
“You’ve been knowing these men almost a lifetime … and you didn’t know that they were capable of this, that in of itself is a lie,” said Angela English, president of Rankin County’s NAACP chapter.
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