A former Mississippi police officer pleaded guilty Thursday to forcing a person who was being booked in jail to lick urine off the floor of a holding cell, the federal prosecutor's office said.
Michael Christian Green pleaded guilty to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law, a spokesperson for the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Southern District of Mississippi said.
A criminal information filed earlier this month alleged that Green, who was a patrolman for the Pearl Police Department, forced someone to lick urine off the cell floor after a December arrest.
The man, who was being booked after a disturbance at a Sam’s Club on Dec. 23, knocked on the door of a holding cell and said he needed to urinate, prosecutors wrote.
After a period of time, the man urinated in a corner, the document states. Green allegedly threatened to beat him with a phone and commanded him to “lick it up,” prosecutors wrote.
Green stood in a doorway while the man, who gagged and later vomited in a trash can, did so, the document says. Green recorded it on his cellphone, prosecutors wrote.
Green was charged by criminal information March 4, but the case was unsealed Wednesday, according to court records. Informations are typically used by the Justice Department to charge in cases where people have agreed to plead guilty.
Green’s attorney did not immediately return requests for comment Wednesday night.
The city of Pearl said it discovered what occurred over Christmas weekend and opened an investigation and sent video to the FBI, a spokesperson for the city said.
Green was relieved of his duties and resigned Dec. 27, according to city officials.
Mayor Jake Windham on Thursday called Green’s behavior “just despicable.”
“If you’re going to be a police officer, you’ve got to do things right and you’ve got to operate within the constitution of the United States. And I feel very strongly about that,” Windham said at a news conference.
“And I apologize to the family of this gentleman that was exposed to just the type of negligent and horrible-type treatment from an officer of the law,” he said.
Windham said if Green had not resigned he would have called a special session of City Council and recommended he be fired.
The city also brought in Candace Gregory, former director of the state attorney general's public integrity division and a former federal prosecutor, to review police policies, procedures and training, the city said.
Green had been with the police department for approximately six months, the mayor said.
"I can't make rhyme or reason of it. I don't understand," Windham, who is a former law enforcement officer in Pearl and the state attorney general's office, said. "I don't understand how you treat someone like that."
Pearl is a city of around 27,000 east of Jackson.
