Former Officers Indicted For Beating Black Jail Inmate After Video Surfaces

Three former Camden County Sheriff’s officers have been indicted by a grand jury in Georgia after video footage from security cameras showed them jumping 41-year-old Jarrett Hobbs, a Black North Carolina jail inmate arrested after a traffic stop.

According to Fox 5, the white officials, which included ex-deputy Ryan Biegel, and ex-jail officers Braxton Massey and Mason Garrick, were indicted and charged with misdemeanor counts of battery and a felony count for the violation of their oath as officers.

Hobbs was arrested for speeding, driving on a suspended or revoked license, and possessing an illegal drug. The video filmed and shared on social media in Sept. 2022 sparked an investigation after it showed five jail officers beating Hobbs in his jail cell, punching him on his neck and head.

“People will not tolerate this kind of abuse just because the abusers wear a badge,” Hobbs’s attorneys said in a statement addressing the indictment.

“That being said, let’s be clear. The culture of violence and corruption at this detention center and the Camden County Sheriff’s Office do not begin or end with these officers or the beating that occurred on September 3, 2022,” civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Bakari Sellers stated. “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 of the beating that anything happened at all and then, it wasn’t Sheriff Proctor who took action. It was the Georgia Bureau of Investigation.”

In February, The Associated Press reported that prosecutors dropped charges of assault, obstruction, and other counts against Hobbs after reviewing the Camden County Detention Center surveillance footage.

“When the video came out, it was abundantly clear that Mr. Hobbs was not the aggressor,” attorney Daniels said at the time.