Practically 60 felony instances can be dropped in a small Alabama city as a result of they had been compromised by what a grand jury referred to as a “rampant culture of corruption” within the native police division, in accordance with an announcement on Wednesday.
The grand jury decided that 58 felony prison instances had been tainted by corruption within the Hanceville Police Division in northern Alabama, after 4 officers and the police chief had been indicted on a wide range of fees associated to mishandling or eradicating proof from the division’s proof room.
Safiyah Riddle / AP
The indictment included a suggestion that the division be “immediately abolished.”
The case roiled the city of roughly 3,200 individuals about 45 miles north of Birmingham.
Cullman County District Legal professional Champ Crocker stated that even one compromised case “is too many” however that “the Grand Jury had no other recourse,” in an announcement on Wednesday evening. He added that many of the instances had been drug-related and just a few had been private crimes with victims.
The 58 tossed instances had been chosen primarily based on an audit carried out by the Alabama State Bureau of Investigations.
The audit discovered that almost 40% of all 650 proof luggage and nearly a 3rd of all firearms weren’t documented earlier than being saved within the proof room. There was additionally a big selection of proof that gave the impression to be lacking, together with firearms, money and illicit medication.
Hanceville Mayor Jimmy Sawyer positioned the entire division on depart in February, after which following weeks of polarized debate, introduced in March that the division could be disbanded and rebuilt from scratch.
A spokesperson for Hanceville’s municipal authorities didn’t instantly reply to an emailed request for touch upon Thursday afternoon.
Riddle is a corps member for The Related Press/Report for America Statehouse Information Initiative. Report for America is a nonprofit nationwide service program that locations journalists in native newsrooms to report on undercovered points.
