Police in Alabama Set Up and Falsely Arrested Over 1,000 Innocent Black Men

Dothan, AL — 12 police officers in Dothan, Alabama, who were apparently members of a domestic hate group, have been found to have set up and falsely accused over 1,000 Black men with the intention to put them behind bars even though they were innocent.

According to reports, a narcotics team consisting of at least twelve white police officers supervised by Lt. Steve Parrish, who is now Dothan’s Police Chief, and Andy Hughes, Asst. Director of Homeland Security for Alabama, regularly planted drugs and weapons on innocent Black men.

Once arrested and charged, the wrongly accused Black men were not given due process. District Attorney Doug Valeska, who prosecuted in those cases, was apparently aware of the scam and offered protection for the involved officers instead.

More than 1,000 innocent Black men were falsely prosecuted and most of them are still serving their sentences.

Over the years, the families of the wrongly convicted Black men were calling for justice but it has always been ignored. It was only until a group of conscientious White police officers noticed the cases and alerted the Internal Affairs Division that a full investigation ensued.

Authorities confirmed that an investigation on the cases are currently ongoing and a special prosecutor from outside of Alabama is handling the case.

Members of a specialized narcotics team operating in Alabama have been accused of planting drugs and weapons on innocent young black men in a series of wide-ranging abuses spanning nearly two decades.

According to documents obtained by the Alabama Justice Project, up to 12 officers working in the Dothan Police Department’s narcotics squad reportedly participated in the scheme—which began in 1996—and specifically targeted young black men. Most of the young men were subsequently prosecuted and imprisoned, with some still incarcerated. Moreover, the findings indicate that the initial results of an internal investigation

into the abuses were suppressed by ranking officers among the police department’s leadership, including former Police Chief John White, current Police Chief Steve Parrish, then-Sgt. Andy Hughes, who is now the assistant director of Homeland Security for the State of Alabama, as well as District Attorney Doug Valeska.

For his part, Valeska appears to have been unperturbed by written statements from police officers attesting that evidence against the defendants had been planted. He nevertheless plowed forward with his wrongful prosecutions and failed to share any such information with defense attorneys.

The misconduct allegedly committed by Dothan Police Department is also overshadowed by the looming specter of racism which, the Henry County Report suggests, may have affected decision-making at the highest levels. The article notes, in fact, that the officers allegedly involved in the criminal misconduct belonged to a neo-Confederate organization that the Southern Poverty Law Center has described as being “hostile towards democracy” and exhibiting “an understanding of race that favors segregation and suggests white supremacy.”

“The group has advocated for blacks to return to Africa, published that the civil rights movement is really a Jewish conspiracy, and that blacks have lower IQ’s,” continues the article, adding that both Parrish and Hughes held “leadership positions in the group.”

Leaked by active Dothan police officers who have requested anonymity, the documents have since been shared with the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division in the hope that U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch will appoint a special prosecutor to investigate.

“The documents,” the Henry County Report concludes, “serve as irrefutable evidence of criminal activity at the highest levels of the Dothan Police Department.”