JACKSON, Miss. (AP) — A former Mississippi police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to a federal misdemeanor charge after authorities said he forced a Latino man he had arrested to lick urine off the floor of a jail cell.
Michael Christian Green, 26, lost his job as a Pearl Police Department patrol officer in late December, four days after security cameras showed the violent encounter in Pearl, a suburb of the capital city of Jackson.
Green—who has a large cross tattooed on one arm and the word “Blessed” tattooed on the other—stood calmly before a federal magistrate judge Thursday and did not dispute any of the accusations read aloud by a federal prosecutor.
When Judge Andrew Harris asked how Green was pleading on the charge of deprivation of civil rights, he responded: “Guilty, sir.”
Earlier Thursday, Pearl Mayor Jake Windham held a news conference and condemned Green’s brutality against a person in detention.
“I don’t understand how you treat someone like that,” Windham said.
Although court documents did not mention race, Green is white and a Pearl spokesperson said the man he arrested is Latino.
A charging document was issued March 4 and unsealed Wednesday. It says Green arrested the man Dec. 23 after a disturbance at a store in Pearl.
Security footage in the police department showed that once the man was in a holding 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
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