The corruption in this story is so vile it's hard to know where to begin. The Alabama Justice Project reported that it has documents revealing that a district attorney in Alabama covered up a Dothan police department internal investigation that found that a "group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on [nearly a thousand] young black men" since the mid-1990s.
Some of these wrongly-convicted men are still in prison.
The police officers who reportedly planted the drugs and guns are part of a Neoconfederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center labels “racial extremists.” This group claims that the civil rights movement was a Jewish conspiracy and that blacks have lower-than-average IQs.
The leaders of the narcotics team, Steve Parrish and Andy Hughes, currently have high ranking positions in Alabama law enforcement. Parrish is the Dothan Police Chief and Hughes is the Asst. Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama. Both men are pictured above at a Neoconfederate meeting with other narcotics officers. The district attorney is still in office. From Henry County Report:
The documents shared reveal that the internal affairs investigation was covered up to protect the aforementioned officers’ law enforcement careers and keep them from being criminally prosecuted.
Several long term Dothan law enforcement officers, all part of an original group that initiated the investigation, believe the public has a right to know that the Dothan Police Department, and District Attorney Doug Valeska, targeted young black men by planting drugs and weapons on them over a decade. Most of the young men were prosecuted, many sentenced to prison, and some are still in prison. Many of the officers involved were subsequently promoted and are in leadership positions in law enforcement. They hope the mood of the country is one that demands action and that the US Department of Justice will intervene.
The group of officers requested they be granted anonymity, and shared hundreds of files from the Internal Affairs Division. They reveal a pattern of criminal behavior from within the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department and the district attorney’s office in the 20th Judicial District of Alabama. Multiple current and former officers have agreed to testify if United States Attorney General Loretta Lynch appoints a special prosecutor from outside the state of Alabama, or before a Congressional hearing. The officers believe that there are currently nearly a thousand wrongful convictions resulting in felonies from the 20th Judicial District that are tied to planted drugs and weapons and question whether a system that allows this can be allowed to continue to operate.
