Trigger Warning: This piece contains descriptions and images of extreme police violence, including Damien Cameron’s body after deputies left him swollen, bruised, and unrecognizable. If you need to brace yourself before seeing the reality of what Mississippi did to him, do that. I’m showing the truth because they keep trying to hide it.
On July 26, 2021, Damien Cameron (a 29‑year‑old Black man living with bipolar disorder and schizophrenia) ended up face‑down, swollen, bloody, and barely breathing after two white Rankin County deputies chased him, tased him, wrestled him, and knelt on his neck and back. His mother, Monica Lee, watched her child say he couldn’t breathe while grown‑ass white men in badges pressed the life out of him.
The white deputies wrote a different story, of course. They always do.
Their reports claim Damien “swung” at Deputy Hunter Elward, ran, resisted, fought, fell, and somehow ended up unresponsive in the back of a patrol car. Convenient. Clean. Sanitized. And missing the part where witnesses, including Damien’s own grandfather, saw a deputy’s knee on his neck.
Mississippi doesn’t require body cameras, so there ain’t any footage. And don’t get it twisted, Mississippi choosing not to require body cameras is deliberate as hell. This is the same state where police helped violent white mobs beat, torture, and murder Black folks during Jim Crow. Mississippi has never been confused about how to protect white violence. They just updated the methods.
And the wildest part? On July 3, 2023, Hunter Elward tortured another Black man, Michael Jenkins (stuck a gun in that man’s mouth and pulled the damn trigger), and Mississippi STILL didn’t fire him for that. They didn’t fire him for kneeling on Damien. They didn’t fire him for lying in reports. They didn’t fire him for planting evidence. They didn’t fire him for covering up crimes.
Elward kept his badge as if nothing fucking happened (kept working, kept wearing that uniform) until the federal government dragged the truth into daylight. Mississippi didn’t remove him; the feds did. Mississippi was perfectly fine letting a white man who shot a Black man in the mouth stay on payroll.
That ain’t oversight.
That is fucking endorsement.
This state protects white violence like it’s fucking tradition. Because it is.
By the time Damien reached the medical examiner’s office, his face was swollen beyond recognition. Internal bleeding along his neck told the truth the deputies refused to write down. And yet Chief Medical Examiner Dr. Staci Turner stamped his death as “undetermined.” Not homicide. Not asphyxia. Not the truth. Three national forensic pathologists reviewed the evidence and said what Mississippi refused to say: Damien Cameron was killed. Full stop.
“There’s really nothing to be undetermined about,” Dr. Zhongxue Hua said.
But Mississippi has a long history of calling Black death “unclear” when the killer wears a badge.
What happened to Damien wasn’t an accident, and it damn sure wasn’t a one‑off. Rankin County has a documented pattern (a whole damn lineage) of white deputies brutalizing Black people and walking away untouched. Damien’s death sits inside a racist system that’s been running the same play for years.
Rankin County deputies have been tied to at least nine deaths since 2014. Nine Black men who never made it out of encounters with the same department. Nine Black families forced to swallow whatever lie the sheriff’s office printed on paper. Nine Black cases where Mississippi shrugged and called white violence “unclear,” “accidental,” or “undetermined.”
And here’s where the pattern snaps into focus: The Goon Squad. Five Rankin County deputies and one Richland police officer (all white) broke into the home of two Black men, tortured them for two hours, sexually assaulted them, and shot Michael Jenkins in the mouth. They planted drugs. They planted a gun. They destroyed security footage. They falsified reports. They acted like a white‑supremacist militia with badges.
And Mississippi didn’t uncover this. Mississippi didn’t stop this. Mississippi didn’t even fucking blink.
The truth only came out because the federal government stepped in, because Rankin County damn sure wasn’t going to hold its own people accountable. The same department that brutalized Damien was harboring a whole squad of violent white officers who treated Black bodies like targets.
This is not a broken system. This is a system doing exactly what it was built to do.
Rankin County has been operating like a generational enforcement arm of white violence; and Mississippi has been co‑signing it with silence, with “undetermined,” with “no further investigation,” with every bureaucratic trick designed to disappear Black pain. This is the pattern. This is the lineage. This is the violence Mississippi keeps pretending is “complicated.”
It ain’t complicated.
It’s intentional.
Wake the fuck up.
Mississippi didn’t just produce Rankin County; Rankin County is what Mississippi looks like when you stop pretending. This state has a long, unbroken lineage of disappearing Black suffering, protecting white violence, and calling it “procedure,” “policy,” or “undetermined.”
This is the same Mississippi where police helped violent white mobs beat, torture, and murder Black folks during Jim Crow. The same Mississippi that perfected lynching, perfected chain gangs, perfected “officer‑involved deaths,” perfected every fucking bureaucratic trick designed to make Black death look like a mystery.
Mississippi has never been confused about how to protect white violence.
They just modernized the tactics.
You see it in Damien’s case.
You see it in the Goon Squad.
You see it in every “undetermined” stamped on a Black body.
Mississippi doesn’t require body cameras; not because they “can’t afford it,” not because they “haven’t implemented it yet,” but because no footage means no accountability. Darkness protects the white people doing the damn harm. Mississippi knows exactly what it’s doing when it chooses silence over documentation. And Damien’s death sits in the same lineage as:
Nolan Xavier Wells: “accidental drowning,” throat withheld from independent autopsy.
Demartravion ‘Trey’ Reed: found hanging, evidence that didn’t fit the suicide ruling.
Channon Wilson: 13 years old, declared “accidental drowning” without an autopsy, embalmed without consent.
Different counties. Different circumstances. Same outcome: Black families told not to ask questions.
Mississippi doesn’t just mishandle Black death; it manufactures confusion around it. It weaponizes ambiguity. It uses “undetermined” the way past generations used “no foul play suspected.” It is the same violence, dressed in paperwork. And when you zoom out, the pattern is unmistakable: Mississippi protects white violence like it’s tradition. Because it is.
This is the soil Damien died in.
This is the system that let the Goon Squad thrive.
This is the state that keeps choosing silence over justice, confusion over truth, and white protection over Black life.
Mississippi did not fail Damien.
Mississippi performed exactly as designed.
Let me be real fucking clear: this ain’t the first time I’ve talked about Dr. Staci Turner, and it damn sure won’t be the last. Every time Mississippi tries to bury a Black death under paperwork, her name pops up like it’s part of the ritual. She ain’t a mistake, ain’t an outlier, ain’t some “neutral professional.” She is a gatekeeper in a system built to disappear us.
When Damien’s body reached Staci’s office, his face was swollen beyond recognition. His neck showed internal bleeding. His body carried every sign of a violent restraint; the kind the DOJ condemns, the kind witnesses said those white deputies used, the kind that keeps killing Black people over and over again.
And Staci Turner looked at all that and stamped his death “undetermined.”
Not homicide.
Not asphyxia.
Not the truth.
She claimed she “lacked access to information,” but somehow had enough information to avoid calling it what three national forensic pathologists later said it clearly was: a homicide. “There’s really nothing to be undetermined about,” Dr. Zhongxue Hua said. And he’s right, unless your job ain’t truth. Unless your job is protecting white supremacist violence. Unless your job is making sure Mississippi’s white violence stays clean on paper.
Because let’s stop pretending: Staci Turner has a pattern. I’ve talked about her before. I’ll talk about her again. She keeps showing up in cases where Black families are fighting for answers, and Mississippi is fighting to hide them. “Undetermined” is her favorite trick, the bureaucratic version of “no foul play suspected.” It’s how Mississippi launders police violence. It’s how they disappear accountability. It’s how they turn Black homicide into a puzzle instead of a crime scene.
And people across the country are done.
There is a Change.org petition demanding the revocation of her medical license, and let’s be clear: my activism is the reason that petition is taking off. My platform. My voice. My refusal to shut the hell up about this woman. I’m the one dragging her into the light, and folks are responding because they’re tired of watching her turn Black death into administrative fog. Folks are responding because I am the Black liberator these white supremacists are terrified of.
Because people ain’t just angry; they’re fucking exhausted.
Exhausted by the same damn pattern.
Exhausted by the same damn cover‑ups.
Exhausted by watching this white woman do the same harm over and over again.
Tired of watching her shield law enforcement.
Tired of watching her rulings stall lawsuits.
Tired of watching her shut down grand juries.
Tired of watching her protect violent white officers.
Mississippi didn’t just let the deputies kill Damien. Mississippi let Staci Turner bury the evidence.
This is the system, y’all. This is the machinery. This is the white violence dressed up as “procedure”, the exact shit I’ve been calling out for years. And trust: I ain’t done talking about her. Not today, not tomorrow, not ever; not as long as she keeps helping Mississippi disappear Black truth.
Mississippi thinks they are slick, acting like these are “isolated incidents,” like Damien’s death was a tragic misunderstanding, like the Goon Squad was some shocking anomaly, like Staci Turner just “needed more information.” But when you line the facts up, the pattern is loud as hell.
Mississippi keeps choosing white violence, then hiding behind paperwork. Keeps choosing white protection, then calling it “procedure.” Keeps choosing white silence, then pretending the truth is “unclear.” Damien’s death wasn’t a glitch. The Goon Squad wasn’t a surprise. Staci Turner wasn’t an accident.
They are all symptoms of the same white‑supremacist design: a system built to protect white violence and disappear Black pain.
Mississippi has spent generations perfecting this shit. Jim Crow wasn’t just a period; it was a damn blueprint. And the blueprint is still being followed. Closely. You see it in the white deputies who knelt on Damien. You see it in the Goon Squad torturing Jenkins. You see it in Staci Turner laundering homicide into “undetermined.” You see it in every Black family forced to fight the state for basic truth.
Mississippi keeps telling on itself. Every case. Every cover‑up. Every “undetermined.” Every missing body cam. Every Black autopsy that reads like a defense brief for law enforcement.
And now the country is watching, because I made them look. Because I refused to let Mississippi bury Damien. Because I refused to let Staci Turner hide behind her title. Because I refused to let Rankin County pretend this was anything but white supremacist violence with a badge.
This is the system I’m exposing.
This is the machinery I’m dismantling.
This is the violence I’m dragging into the light.
And Mississippi can’t hide from it anymore.
Mississippi keeps pretending accountability is complicated, like they need a task force, a committee, a study, a prayer circle, anything to avoid doing the one thing they’ve never done: tell the damn truth. But the truth is simple. They don’t want accountability because accountability threatens the white violence they’ve been protecting for generations. The white violence that makes their mouths salivate.
And I’m done letting them hide behind that.
Mississippi needs cops with body cameras; real ones, mandatory ones, cameras that stay on, cameras they can’t “accidentally” switch off when they’re choking out a Black person. Cameras that make it impossible for them to lie the way they lied about Damien. Cameras that make it impossible for Staci Turner to pretend she “lacked information.”
But cameras alone won’t fix a damn thing if Mississippi is still allowed to investigate itself. We’ve seen what that looks like. It looks like Damien. It looks like the Goon Squad. It looks like “undetermined” stamped on Black homicide like it’s a default setting.
Mississippi needs independent oversight, and not the fake kind where Mississippi insiders investigate Mississippi insiders. I’m talking about a diverse, out‑of‑state review team. People who don’t owe sheriffs favors. People who don’t have cousins on the force. People who don’t have church ties to the medical examiner’s office. People who don’t have any reason to protect the white‑supremacist machinery that keeps disappearing Black death.
A team that can look at cases like Damien’s and call them what they are, without worrying about who they’re going to piss off at the next stale ass house party.
Because Mississippi has proven, over and over again, that it cannot investigate itself. It cannot police itself. It cannot tell the truth about its own violence. And that’s exactly why my activism is hitting the way it is. Why the petition is taking off. Why people across the country are paying attention. Because I’m naming the demands Mississippi refuses to face, and I ain’t softening a single goddamn syllable.
Mississippi has had centuries to get this right.
They chose violence instead.
So now I’m choosing pressure.
And trust; I’m not done.
Writing these pieces takes work. Real work. Hours of digging, verifying, cross‑checking, and sitting with the same violent pattern that shows me, every damn day, how little this country values Black life. And that kind of work doesn’t just take time; it takes a toll.
Every article means reopening the wound. Reading the details. Holding the contradictions. Carrying the grief of Black families who will never get answers. It means watching law enforcement repeat the same script and knowing exactly how the story will be mishandled before the press release even drops. It means absorbing the trauma of a system that keeps disappearing Black people and expects us to simply endure it.
I keep these articles free because mainstream media ain’t talking about these stories, and they need to stay in the public eye. But free doesn’t mean I ain’t paying a cost. This work drains time, energy, and emotional bandwidth. It chips away at my mental health. It demands resilience that should not be required just to tell the truth about what is happening to our people.
If you want this to continue; if you want these stories visible, documented, and refused, make a donation to my academy so I can keep this activism fueled and this work sustainable.
Daniel’s case has been sitting in silence since the day Mississippi tried to turn his death into paperwork instead of accountability. A “story” that never matched his life, never matched the evidence, never matched what the community saw with their own damn eyes. Mississippi is counting on time, on silence, on confusion, on people getting tired. Sharing this refuses all of that.
Cases like Daniel’s only move when communities push, when we refuse to let the racist state’s paperwork overwrite the truth sitting right in front of us. Visibility is pressure. And pressure is the only thing that has ever forced Mississippi to answer for the violence it keeps trying to hide.
Share this article. Share Daniel’s truth. Share the Change petition to get Staci Turner out of the damn office she keeps using to disappear Black death.
Mississippi is hoping you look away. Don’t.
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