When Andrea Dettore-Murphy first moved to Rankin County, Mississippi, she didn’t believe the stories she heard about how brutal the sheriff’s department could be when pursuing suspected drug crimes.
But in 2018, she learned the hard way that the rumors were true. A group of sheriff’s deputies raided the home of her friend Rick Loveday and beat him relentlessly while she watched.
A few years later, Dettore-Murphy says deputies put her through another haunting incident involving her friend Robert Grozier. She was just the latest in a long line of people who said they witnessed or experienced torture by a small group of deputies, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad.”
For nearly two decades, these deputies roamed Rankin County at night, beating, tasing, and choking suspects accused of drug crimes until they admitted to buying or selling illegal substances. Their reign of terror continued unabated until 2023, when the deputies were finally exposed.
“Rankin County has always been notorious,” says Garry Curro, one of the Goon Squad’s many alleged victims. “They don’t follow the laws of the land. They make their own laws.”
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/11/mississippi-goon-squad-drug-crimes-torture-police/