Greene resigned on Dec. 27 following a swift internal investigation.
A Mississippi police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a man in custody to “lick” urine from the floor of his holding cell. A spokesman for the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi confirmed in a press release that Michael Christian Greene pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under the color of law.
Security cameras in the Pearl Police Department’s booking area and holding cell captured the disturbing incident on Dec. 23. The video prompted a federal investigation by the FBI.
Pearl City officials provided the recordings to federal agents, according to a city news release.
“It’s despicable to treat a human being like this,” Pearl Mayor Jack Windham said at a news conference Thursday.
According to court documents obtained peopleIn December, Green responded to a report of a domestic disturbance at a local Sam’s Club. Officers arrested the man, identified only as BC in the criminal information, and handed him over to the police station for booking.
Green placed the man in a holding cell, where he defecated in a corner when officers ignored his requests to use the bathroom. According to charges outlined in court documents by U.S. Attorney Todd W. Geen, after being informed that a man in a holding cell had urinated, he ordered him to “go suck it off right now.”
After discovering urine on the floor, the officer told the man, “Let me tell you something, have you seen this phone? I’m going to beat you with it. You’re going to walk in there and you’re going to lick that piss clean.” .Do you get me?”
As the man knelt on the floor and complied with the officer’s orders, Greene pulled his phone from his duty vest and filmed the man.
When the man gagged, the officer said, “Don’t spit it out,” court documents say.
After returning to the booking area, the man vomited in the trash can multiple times.
“There was no government interest or law enforcement purpose for Greene to order BE to lick his urine,” the U.S. attorney wrote in the criminal information, in which he argued that Greene “intentionally deprived” the man of his constitutional right “not to lick him.” of urine”. Deprivation of liberty without due process of law, including the right of pretrial detainees to be free from conditions of imprisonment that amount to punishment. “
Greene was previously employed by the Jackson Police Department and law enforcement in Flowood, Mississippi, and joined the Pearl Police Department in June 2023 with a clean criminal record, the mayor said at a news conference.
“There were some personnel issues,” Windham said of the officer’s six months on the job. “But there is no such thing.”
After a swift internal investigation, Green resigned on December 27 and is expected to be sentenced on June 12, 2024.
