![]() ![]() WLBT reported the boys’ names as suspects in the August shooting, prior to their arrests. Despite the fact that the boys are minors, numerous local outlets printed stories with their full names, and some included their mug shots. ![]() The boys are presumed innocent until proven guilty, but law enforcement agencies and media, including local outlets that covered the arrest, aren’t framing them as such. The Canton shootings in August - for which both boys have been charged, along with a 17-year-old who is the brother of one of the boys, and another 24-year-old man - resulted in the deaths of two people, including a 6-year-old boy, and injured another man. Mainstream national media have so far demonstrated little interest in the case, potentially because of the severity of the allegations and charges against the boys. “The issue here is not the validity of the warrant, it’s the way the warrant was carried out,” Blackmon told The Intercept. Blackmon and national civil rights attorney Ben Crump are representing the Harrises. Lawrence Blackmon, the attorney for Harris and her son, said he believed that a warrant existed but that officers acted improperly by not producing it at the time of the arrest. The Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, United States Attorney Office and the FBI have opened an investigation, and if the investigation reveals prosecutable violations of any federal criminal statutes, the Department will take appropriate action.” Marshals Service takes any allegation of misconduct by our personnel or task force partners seriously and we are currently gathering information regarding the incident. Marshals Service is aware of an incident that occurred involving members of our multi-agency Gulf Coast Regional Task Force (GCRTF) in Mississippi,” Justice Department Office of Public Affairs spokesperson Aryele Bradford said in a statement to The Intercept. Both women say that the officers never produced an arrest warrant for the boys. She is the godsister of Cawanda Harris, the mother of one of the teens, and asked not to be named by the press. The woman in the video, who was housesitting at the time of the arrest, said officers hit her in the head and pointed guns at her before shoving her to the ground in handcuffs and verbally berating her. According to the mother of one of the boys, at least one major national network had the full video footage but has not pursued a story. The Intercept obtained more of the footage, which shows officers further berating both boys, as well as a middle-aged woman, then taking what appears to be the green extension cord with them from the scene. The day after, Jackson’s local CBS affiliate WJTV reported on a segment of the footage in which an officer hits and yells at one boy, and the boy calls into the security camera for his mother, who was out of town at the time. The September arrest was instead captured on a Ring doorbell camera. Their conferred status provides them with privileges including the ability to work across jurisdictions and make arrests without warrants. Established in 2006, the task force operates in Alabama and Mississippi and deputizes state and local officers as marshals, offering them expanded powers to target people wanted for violent crimes. Marshals Service Gulf Coast Regional Fugitive Task Force, a federally funded unit that shot and killed a 20-year-old man in Memphis, Tennessee, while serving a warrant for a Mississippi shooting in 2019. The FBI and the Justice Department are investigating the arrest. According to a lawyer representing one of the teens and his mother, both boys have said that officers physically assaulted them while they were handcuffed, including by whipping them with a green extension cord, outside the camera’s view. Footage of the arrest shows one officer leading a shirtless, handcuffed boy past another officer, who reaches out and hits the boy across the face, making a loud noise on impact and leaving him bleeding from his mouth or nose. marshals arrested two boys, ages 17 and 16, in Jackson, Mississippi, on September 16 on charges related to August shootings in the nearby city of Canton. ![]()
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