Former police officer sentenced for making an arrestee lick urine off the holding cell floor
By Jade Gordon, Anissa Carby and Navya Shukla, CNN
(CNN) — A former Mississippi police officer was sentenced to a year in federal prison followed by a year of supervised release along with fines and assessments for forcing a man who he arrested to lick urine off the holding cell floor.
Michael Christian Green was sentenced to the maximum penalty for a federal misdemeanor for acting under color of law to deprive a person of their civil rights. The former Pearl Police Department officer plead guilty in March and is scheduled to report to the Federal Bureau of Prisons on July 26.
Green worked for the Pearl Police Department for six months after working at other law enforcement agencies in Jackson, Mississippi. Pearl is in the same county where six White former law enforcement officers, some of whom called themselves the “Goon Squad,” were sentenced on federal and state charges after pleading guilty to a racist assault on two innocent Black men.
Green responded to a disturbance at a Sam’s Club on December 23, 2023, and arrested a man, according to the complaint. Once the man was booked, security footage from the holding cell showed him trying to tell Green he needed to urinate, the federal prosecutor wrote in the complaint. After not receiving a response, the man urinated in a corner. When Green was later told about the urine, he demanded the arrestee lick the urine, threatening to beat him with a phone, the complaint said.
While standing in the doorway of the holding cell, Green commanded the man to get on the ground and “suck it up,” according to the complaint, then “removed his phone from his duty vest and filmed” the man, who complied. Green resigned on December 27.
Green testified in federal court during his sentencing hearing and took responsibility for his actions and said he regrets what he did.
CNN reached out to Green’s attorney for comment.
“The City of Pearl, while not the sentencing body on this case, is glad to have this part of our recent history put behind us,” the municipality said in a statement. “The actions of Michael Green were reprehensible and inexcusable, and we have been deeply grieved to have been associated with this incident. We hope that this sentencing can help the victim and his family in their healing process, and we’re grateful to our federal partners who helped bring this terrible incident to justice swiftly.”
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