Three former Camden County jailers were indicted Thursday in the September beating of a detainee. The incident was captured on video.
A grand jury indicted Mason Garrick, Braxton Massey and Ryan Biegel on battery and violation of oath charges stemming from the violent encounter with Jarrett Hobbs inside a small cell.
Footage of the beating drew national attention when an attorney posted a video showing several sheriff’s office employees struggling with the 41-year-old North Carolina man last year.
The deputies were fired and arrested after the GBI got involved. Hobbs is Black; the law enforcement officers who were fired and charged are white.
Massey had worked for the sheriff’s office six months, Garrick for 18 months and Biegel for three years, Camden County Sheriff Jim Proctor said after firing them.
Hobbs was arrested in Camden County for allegedly speeding, driving with a suspended license and possession of a controlled substance. In February, the Brunswick Judicial Circuit confirmed prosecutors had dropped all charges against Hobbs, including the battery, assault and obstruction counts brought against him as a result of the jailhouse scuffle.
Attorneys for Hobbs also said they reached a “significant settlement” with the sheriff’s office.
In a statement released after Thursday’s indictment, Hobbs’ attorneys said their client was “mercilessly beaten” and criticized the sheriff for not acting sooner.
“This indictment further demonstrates that the people will not tolerate this kind of abuse just because the abusers wear a badge,” civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Bakari Sellers wrote in a joint statement. “Sheriff Jim Proctor did his best to ignore this incident and his deputies’ crimes and sweep them under the rug. In fact, it wasn’t until we released this video that anything happened at all.”
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