PEARL, Miss. (WJTV) – A Pearl police officer pled guilty after a video showed the officer bullying an arrestee into licking his own urine off the floor.
According to officials with the City of Pearl, the U.S. Attorney’s Office unsealed criminal information against former patrolman Michael Christian Green, 26, on Wednesday, March 13.
The charge relates to a December 23, 2023, video the city provided to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
Although court documents did not mention race, a Pearl spokesperson said Green is white and the man he arrested is Latino. The charging document said Green arrested the man after a disturbance at a store in Pearl.
Security footage in the Pearl jail showed that once the man was in a jail cell, he knocked on the cell door and tried to tell Green that he needed to urinate, according to the court document. After waiting for some time, the man went to the back of the cell and urinated in a corner, the document said.
The man who was arrested is identified in the court document only by his initials, B.E. The security camera footage showed Green telling B.E. that he would beat him with a phone.
“You’re fixin’ to go in there and you’re going to lick that p—— up,” Green said, according the court document. “Do you understand me?”
Green took the man back into the cell and told him to get on the ground and “suck it up,” then used his phone to take videos of B.E. while the man got on the ground and licked his own urine, the document said. After the man gagged multiple times, Green told him, “don’t spit it out,” according to the document.
“Green did not have a government interest or law enforcement purpose in ordering B.E. to lick his urine,” the federal charging document said.
Pearl officials said when the city discovered the disturbing incident, they opened an internal investigation. By December 27, 2023, Green was relieved of his duties.
The city engaged Attorney Candace Gregory, a former federal prosecutor and Director of Mississippi’s Public Integrity Division, to supplement the city’s internal investigation. Officials said Gregory is in the process of reviewing the police department’s policies and procedures and providing training assistance.
“We have a no tolerance for things of this nature. So, we’re going to continue to have a no tolerance of this nature. And then, yeah, it’ll take the citizens to regain some trust. But there’s a lot of good police officers at the Pearl Police Department, men and women that do their job every day,” said Pearl Mayor Jake Windham during a news conference on Thursday.
Windham said Green had worked for the Pearl Police Department for about six months after having worked at other law enforcement agencies in the Jackson area.
Green appeared before Magistrate Judge Andrew S. Harris Thursday afternoon. He pled guilty to a charge of deprivation of civil rights, and his bond was set at $10,000. Green is scheduled to be sentenced on June 12, 2024, and faces a maximum penalty of 12 months in prison.
The judge ordered Green to surrender his law enforcement certificate in the state of Mississippi.
Pearl is in Rankin County, where six white former law enforcement officers — including some who called themselves the “Goon Squad” — pleaded guilty last year to federal charges in a racist assault on two Black men.
Windham said Thursday that the Pearl Police Department handled its own investigation quickly.
“I think there’s a stark contrast between the Pearl Police Department in this incident and the Goon Squad,” Windham said.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.