As the nation continues to digest the ongoing controversy surrounding Chicago's maddeningly (and seemingly deceptive) mishandling of the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, leaked documents included in a new report from the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) and the Alabama Justice Project once again reveal that the public's growing distrust of police across the nation is most certainly well-informed. "A group of up to a dozen police officers on a specialized narcotics team were found to have planted drugs and weapons on young black men for years," the report asserts. "They were supervised at the time by Lt. Steve Parrish, current Dothan Police Chief, and Sgt. Andy Hughes, current Assistant Director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama."
Current evidence, brought forward by other officers and released via the Henry County Report, also alleges that all of the accused officers were reportedly members of a neo-Confederate organization that the SPLC categorizes as "extremists." The group, according to the whistleblowers, believes that the civil rights movement is a Jewish conspiracy and that all black people "should return to Africa." Though the current push to make these reported atrocities public is relatively new, the department's alleged behavior goes all the way back to at least the mid 1990s:
Beginning in early 1996, the Dothan Police Department received complaints from black victims that drugs and weapons were being planted. Specifically young black men who had clean records were targeted. Police Chief, John White, allegedly instructed senior officers to ignore the complaints and they willingly complied.
It is now believed that there are currently "nearly a thousand" wrongful convictions resulting in felonies, with many victims still in prison. The officers, however, were subsequently promoted and "are in leadership positions in law enforcement." The anonymous whistleblowers hope the leaked documents, many of which are available here, will benefit from the "mood of the country" by quickly attracting the attention of the Department of Justice.
