A Mississippi police officer has pleaded guilty on Thursday to forcing a man in custody to "lick" urine off the floor of a holding cell. Michael Christian Green pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under colour of law, a spokesperson for the US Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi confirmed in a press release.
Security cameras in the Pearl Police Department's booking area and holding cell captured disturbing events on December 23rd. This footage prompted a federal investigation by the FBI.
According to a city press release, Pearl officials provided the recordings to the federal agents.
"To treat somebody like that is just despicable," Pearl Mayor Jake Windham said at a press conference on Thursday.
According to court documents obtained by People, Green responded to a report of a family disturbance at a local Sam's Club in December. The officer arrested the man, identified in the criminal information only as B.C, and later shifted him to the police department for booking.
Green placed the man in a holding cell, where the man relieved himself in a corner when officers ignored his request to use the bathroom. After learning that the man in the holding cell had urinated, he ordered him to, "go suck it up right now," per the allegations outlined in court documents by U.S. Attorney Todd W. Geen.
The officer told the man after discovering the urine on the floor, "Let me tell you somethin', You see this phone? I will beat your f- - - - - - a- - with it. You're fixin' to go in there and you're gonna lick that piss up. Do you understand me?"
As the man knelt on the floor to comply with the officer's orders, Green took his cell phone from his duty vest and filmed the man.
"Don't spit it out," the officer said when the man gagged, court documents said.
After returning to the booking area, the man repeatedly vomited in the trashcan.
"Green did not have a government interest or law enforcement purpose in ordering B.E. to lick his urine," the U.S. attorney wrote in the criminal information, in which he argued that Green had "willfully deprived" the man of his Constitutional right "not to be deprived of liberty without due process of law, which includes the right of a pre-trial detainee to be free from conditions of confinement that amount to punishment."
The mayor informed in the press conference that Green was earlier employed by the Jackson Police Department and law enforcement in Flowood, Miss. - and had joined the Pearl Police Department in June 2023 with a clean record.
"There were some personnel issues," Windham said of the officer's six months on the job. "But nothing like this."
Green resigned on December 27 following a prompt internal investigation and is slated for sentencing on June 12, 2024.
