
Leaked Documents Reveal Police Department Planted Drugs for Years, DA Complicit - coloneltcb
http://henrycountyreport.com/blog/2015/12/01/leaked-documents-reveal-dothan-police-department-planted-drugs-on-young-black-men-for-years-district-attorney-doug-valeska-complicit/
======
hackuser
It seems like there is a smoking gun in this case (though I didn't review the
evidence thoroughly). Widespread availability of video recording and
distribution has provided many more smoking guns. Certainly, there are many
more incidents where no smoking gun evidence is available.

For a long time, black Americans have been claiming that such things happen
and were widely ignored or disbelieved. It was and is a grave error - I can't
imagine how many victims there are. This raises critical questions:

1) Why did our society make this error?

2) How do we prevent making the same mistake in the future, regarding other
issues?

3) About what issues are we making the same mistake right now?

Also: What do we do about the legions of victims? Ignoring them yet again
would be a crime.

~~~
TheSpiceIsLife
Opinion:

1) Police are corrupt. Maybe not all of them, but enough of them that "police
are corrupt" is true. This will _always_ be the case.

Police don't fight crime, nor prevent it. They create it. If you think this
isn't so you haven't had enough exposure to them.

Maybe my opinion is coloured by my experience: illegal search of person, car,
and house. They ransacked my house, stole money and property from me. It took
27 months to have the case dismissed _nolle prosequi_ and my money returned to
me.

If you see the police, cross the street.

~~~
Frondo
A lot of police are corrupt, and there is an absolute ton of racism in this
country so we believe it when the cop tells a lie that implicates a black guy.

Not racist like we're out in klan hoods on the weekend, and it's definitely
not like we're consciously choosing to be racist--this is just lifetimes of
unexamined biases, media information, etc. We have these little biases that
tell us not to trust the black guy's word and that adds up over time.

Overcoming that shit is _hard_.

~~~
jensen123
I guess you are correct that there is a lot of racism here and there. However,
there is also a lot of rabid anti-racism. For example, you'll never read an
article in the mainstream press about how blacks, on average, have lower IQs
than white people, although this clearly is relevant in the whole crime
debate. Why are blacks more likely to commit crimes than whites? The IQ
explains a lot, but mentioning it is taboo, it seems. What happened here in
Alabama is of course horrible, but it seems unlikely that corrupt and racist
cops is the whole explanation for the high crime rate among blacks elsewhere
in the US.

This shouldn't be necessary, but I probably need to point out that not every
single black person has a lower intelligence than every single white person.
It's just the average. Some black individuals have higher IQs than some white
individuals, of course. Which means that solutions like segregation/apartheid
are ham-fisted and totally unfair to these high IQ blacks.

For more info on the IQ and race thing, I recommend the book IQ and the Wealth
of Nations by Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen.

~~~
Frondo
I have noticed a lot of this "scientific racism" junk creeping into HN lately.
It's a little worrying to see it on a tech forum like this.

~~~
tedks
It used to be that extreme groups kept to themselves and were pretty quickly
ostracized because of their extremism. Most people in San Diego wouldn't join
Heaven's Gate, and the group wouldn't be able to spread very far because the
further it reached, the more pushback it would see.

On the Internet, that isn't really true. There are always enough people who
can be convinced of the merit of an idea, and so extreme groups continue to
grow in size. As they do this, the overlap between any given extreme group and
other groups grows, because the extreme group is growing. This means that
their ideas metastasize out into the population as a whole.

Scientific racism, neo-reactionaryism, monarchism, even just defiant
"political incorrectness" and "I'm no SWJ"-ness. The heightened availability
of all of these ideas produces the same, as group polarization (a technical
term in social psychology) happens on a scale never before seen. This is
hardly limited to the right wing; liberal-identified Tumblr users are more
behaviourally restrictive than most of the anarchist-communists I knew in
college, even though the "safe-space" rhetoric of the current liberal milieu
originates from more radical activist circles.

Expect to see more scientific racism on hacker news; hacker news is a
fundamentally more friendly platform for racist and misogynistic viewpoints
because women and people of color are so underrepresented and the focus on
"objectivity" and "data" mean that a shoddy study that is the very essence of
scientific racism can beat out the stories of however many women or PoC dare
to speak out, only to be shouted down.

Most of the people making these comments would probably be fairly reasonable
had you both been born 20 years earlier (or possibly later, if the world grows
more sane) and met at a party. Few people set out to become a scientific
racist, they just see an article linked (possibly by a Stormfront member, who
knows) that "just makes sense to them"; they believe it and internalize it;
when they see future statements they are more likely to remember those they
agree with and forget those that disagree with their existing outlook;
gradually, they become more and more "awakened" to the "racial reality" of the
world until finally they're posting on Neoreactionary News about how they've
finally realized democracy is degenerate and women should never have been
allowed to vote.

And those people write your software.

Worried is the least you should be.

~~~
Frondo
Wow. Well said.

------
datashovel
Keep the leaks coming world!

The joke is that anyone who is truly qualified to run for office doesn't want
the job.

I hope that the more leaks like this that come out, more qualified people will
realize they can't just stand by idly thinking the system will just fix
itself.

I imagine Snowden leaks alone have gotten far more "qualified" people engaged
in civic activities than we'll ever truly comprehend, and have taken a bit of
the "fear of rebellion" out of those who might not have spoken up in the past.

~~~
jacquesm
> I imagine Snowden leaks alone have gotten far more "qualified" people
> engaged in civic activities than we'll ever truly comprehend, and have taken
> a bit of the "fear of rebellion" out of those who might not have spoken up
> in the past.

You wish. The reactions vary from 'oh, I knew that all along' to 'well, no
matter what I do, the spying will continue' and a whole bunch of shades in
between. Then there are those that see Snowden as the great evil (yes, let's
shoot that messenger) and would like to see him suffer.

On the whole the effect of Snowden's revelation is a big disappointment, I
thought _far_ more would happen because of them but maybe I'm just too
impatient.

~~~
datashovel
I imagine most who were changed by Snowden leaks are not necessarily trying to
be vocal about it. Instead I figure they're just doing something about it.
These are the people who, even if they were part of the "I already knew what
was happening" bunch, probably wouldn't have done anything about their beliefs
since they were only that. Hunches without enough evidence to warrant digging
too deeply about, and certainly not enough concrete data to warrant dedicating
one's life to.

It's a far different thing to call out your government and demand something
when there's no concrete evidence to support your claims in the first place.
Now governments must take citizen demands seriously, and people can now pursue
these things without fear they're just spinning their wheels, because we've
seen real evidence.

It's these kind of people, the ones who realize it means nothing to talk about
something unless you're actually going to do something about it, who I'm
talking about. My belief is leaks like this have the power to change enough
people to make a real difference in the future of civilization on Earth.

And keep in mind. I didn't mention in my original comment, but Snowden leaks
are something that as far as I'm concerned could warrant being required
reading in undergraduate history textbooks (core curriculum). I think it was
the kind of historical event that will continue to affect Earth's inhabitants
centuries after we're all gone.

------
cjslep
Is it bad that this honestly doesn't surprise me? In 2005 my 15 year old self
was passing through Northern Georgia to see grandparents, and we hit traffic
at the only town stoplight because a Grand Wizard and lots of KKK members were
rallying in the streets celebrating running the last minority out of the
county. As a white middle class guy, that was quite the contemporarty class on
race relations.

Racism is alive and well in the South, and it is slow to change because the
communities are small and not super interested in the internet justice
movements.

~~~
calstad
Yep racism is only a problem in the South

~~~
epistasis
That's not what he said, nor is it even implied by the comment.

~~~
jessaustin
OP could have mentioned visiting the grandparents without mentioning which
state that was. Yes the South has a problem, but drawing lines like this is a
way for the rest of us to pretend that we don't. I seem to recall that some
issues have arisen in some Midwestern cities recently?

~~~
cjslep
Sorry if my comment drew lines, that was not my intention. I just wanted to
highlight a particularly vivid memory I had at a very impressionable age which
has helped contribute to my desensitized reaction to this - the lack of which
I am a little worried about.

------
banku_brougham
If this story is not picked up in the larger media I will be disgusted, but
I'm happy to see this come to light. Trust is a huge part of the
police/citizen relationship, and it's in a bad state.

~~~
umanwizard
Anecdotally, this is blowing up on my Facebook feed. My guess is it will get
coverage.

------
dragonwriter
Note that as well as the DA being complicit, the involved supervising officers
are the current department _chief_ and the _state_ Director of Homeland
Security.

------
NN88
This is explosive. The white supremacist implications here are undeniable.
Director of AL homeland security? Good god

This is LITERALLY as bad as it looks.

The evidence is astounding.

------
aagha
A ton of the comments below are about how cops are abusing their power. The
other group that seems beyond the reach of justice are district attorneys.

The system is setup so that DA's watch out for cops' backs and the cops for
the DA's. Cops would be less likely to engage in bad behavior if they knew
that DA's were less willing to support it.

Oh, and then there's the private prison system...

------
dre85
I just read the title and it immediately reminded me of Dave Chapelle..."just
sprinkle some crack on them and leave".

------
NN88
Here are the documents referred to as evidence in case the site goes down:

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144475/dothan-police-
depar...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144475/dothan-police-department-
internal-affairs-memo-exhibit-1)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144476/dothan-police-
depar...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144476/dothan-police-department-
internal-affairs-complaint-exhibit-2)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144477/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144477/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-memo-exhibit-3)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144479/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144479/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-report-exhibit-5)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144480/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144480/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-report-exhibit-6)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144481/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144481/dothan-police-dept-officer-
s-letter-to-city-commissioner-don-clements-exhibit-7)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144482/dothan-police-
chief...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144482/dothan-police-chief-john-
white-s-letter-to-city-manager-exhibit-10)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144490/dothan-police-
offic...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144490/dothan-police-officers-
handwritten-letters-to-us-attorney-exhibit-12-14)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144478/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144478/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-polygraph-test-exhibit-4)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144483/dothan-police-
chief...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144483/dothan-police-chief-john-
white-s-deposition-exhibit-11)

------
pipermerriam
This is an honest question.

Realistically, how do we dismantle the police state. It seems like the NSA,
FBI, and some not insignificant percentage of the police forces have gone
entirely rogue or lost track of their mission entirely.

It feels hopeless. So much outrage but so little actual ever changes. Does
anyone have any ideas because I'd love to hear them.

~~~
bcoates
The police are as much members of society as anyone else, and they require the
active cooperation of you and the rest of society to survive.

You can be part of the solution by depriving them this support: Do not
cooperate with them in their job. Do not call them. Decline to speak with them
if they contact you. Do not associate with them officially or socially. Do not
permit them to shop at your place of employment, do business with you, or join
your social organizations. Do not permit their children to be friends with
yours.

~~~
saiya-jin
very narrow-minded suggestions, some outright illegal. if "non-significant"
part of police force is actually gone "rogue", it means rest is +- still OK
normal human beings. These actions will alienate also these, fostering "us vs
them" mentality.

Good job, you just proposed how to make things even worse.

------
cygnus_a
Another reason to decriminalize drugs in favor of self-help programs.

~~~
dragonwriter
> Another reason to decriminalize drugs in favor of self-help programs.

Decriminalizing drugs may change _which_ crimes are available to use to frame
members of a disfavored group, but it is unlikely to change whether bigots in
power seek to frame members of their disfavored groups for crimes.

~~~
sophacles
While I agree with this statement - I would like to point out that drug
possession is particularly easy to frame someone for, and it has a high payout
(that is, long and severe punishment, easy to re-frame someone, etc) compared
to other crimes. Making drugs legal would put a huge dent in a lot of
problems.

------
markman
I'm reading these comments somewhat in disbelief. Put the torches down people.
You know it took me the better part of 40 years to realize that if one is the
greatest guy in the world 95% of the time and a complete asshole 5% of the
time guess what that makes you? A complete asshole. Especially ally to the
people that only see you during that 5%.

Well the same holds true for the police. These travesty could and probably is
only perpetrated by a tiny percentage of officers yet Now with the release of
this story(has anyone -confirmed it's legitimacy?) at least those commenting
have already confirmed judged and condemned the bulk of every police
department in the nation as shoot to kill monstrous overlords. I'm sorry but
that's just not the case.

------
gravypod
I hope that there will be an investigation into who has been effected by this.

I look forward to seeing the details from the future court dates that result
from these findings.

------
tptacek
The SPLC has retracted their links to this story amidst doubts about its
veracity.

[https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/672466511886422018](https://twitter.com/splcenter/status/672466511886422018)

------
Zigurd
At some point the limits of immunity have to be tested. Can a DA operate with
such malintent and get away with it? The cops? At what point can they be
stripped of immunity and pursued by their former employer for creating a huge
liability?

------
agf
Dan Quan, a co-worker of mine, spoke about his experience as a police officer,
and the mentality he saw from other officers, in his talk at Rocky Mountain
Ruby, "Policing and Pairing: An Unlikely Preparation"
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGaO92oIGg](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgGaO92oIGg)).
While not the main subject of the talk, it's an interesting first-person
perspective.

------
williamle8300
The website was down. Here's the wayback link:

[https://web.archive.org/web/20151201191638/http://henrycount...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151201191638/http://henrycountyreport.com/blog/2015/12/01/leaked-
documents-reveal-dothan-police-department-planted-drugs-on-young-black-men-
for-years-district-attorney-doug-valeska-complicit/)

------
cheez
Thank god for whistle blowers.

~~~
kingkawn
Aka people with souls

------
anvil_jones
What is the Alabama Justice Project. 99% reliability on a POLYGRAPH test?

I wish I could read more of the article since it seems to be down and google
webcache isn't the best. How come none of these cases have been covered by any
other organization? Wouldn't a pending lawsuit against the police organization
be news?

Surely there is corruption/racism in the police department. But is this
article valid?

~~~
rrego
Also to consider is the ridiculous police letter. Which is probably the second
most farcical part of this article.

I do hope this story is true. It is going to drive the narrative of police
corruption for a while, since it's big enough. I do have doubts about its
authenticity however.

------
DanielBMarkham
Try googling "Alabama Justice Project", which is the group responsible for
this release.

I got three news items, 2 from today. One empty blog set up months ago. Poking
around some more, I get Jon Carroll, the author of "The Henry County Report",
breaking the story from the Alabama Justice Project, which he is also involved
in. I see the Southern Poverty Law Center mentioned in a couple of the dozens
of copy-links from this story, but nothing on their site.

I'm not saying this report is fake, or even trying to discredit Carroll. But
you gotta admit this is a really weird way to break a story of such huge
magnitude. Sure would be nice to have some other outlet check the facts on
this. There are a lot of people implicated in this article, and the author
uses phrases such as "slam shut case" which leads me to think he has an
agenda. Combine that with the weird provenance? I get uneasy. We got one lone
wolf and 47-thousand mainstream news outlets copying what he's putting out.

News ain't what it used to be.

------
cryoshon
Systemic severe racism over the course of 20 years? A cover up by the police?
Par for the course in the USA, and it's disgusting. The justice system in this
town has been an injustice system for as long as some of the people who live
there can remember.

There may be riots because of this. They will be justified.

------
lectrick
Someone whose very job demands a high standard of integrity, acting in this
fashion... This is what a horrible human is.

Michael Magrino, cited in that article many times, seems to be the person
behind [http://mandmprivateeye.com/](http://mandmprivateeye.com/) so perhaps
he's already moved on from straight-up police work to private investigations.

------
Kinnard
I hope everyone who has heard the cry of a victim claiming to have been framed
and ignored it reflects on having done so.

------
xexers
Is there a better source for this story?

------
NN88
Heres all the documents:

[http://imgur.com/a/ODRMh](http://imgur.com/a/ODRMh)

------
rdlecler1
This is terrible and it undermines The entire justice system. This is treason
against the constitution.

------
inthewoods
I can't see the article when I click through - anybody got a mirror?

~~~
tslug
I also get nothing. Was it taken down?

~~~
pmh
It's working fine for me (and I have ad blocking + noscript on). Perhaps try
the Google cache version:
[http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahenry...](http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache%3Ahenrycountyreport.com%2Fblog%2F2015%2F12%2F01%2Fleaked-
documents-reveal-dothan-police-department-planted-drugs-on-young-black-men-
for-years-district-attorney-doug-valeska-complicit%2F&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8)

------
icewater0
Hmm. I cannot reach the site.

------
idibidiart
Bring the motherblowers down!

------
fencepost
(reposting a comment I put elsewhere with direct links to exhibit documents)

The Internet Wayback Machine has it from today

Archive.org has
[https://web.archive.org/web/20151202021559/http://henrycount...](https://web.archive.org/web/20151202021559/http://henrycountyreport.com/blog/2015/12/01/leaked-
documents-reveal-dothan-police-department-planted-drugs-on-young-black-men-
for-years-district-attorney-doug-valeska-complicit/) , this is just one of the
versions they picked up today.

The article links to a variety of scanned documents hosted elsewhere, which
look like excerpts from a full document dump. Exhibits 8 & 9 do not appear to
be linked from the Henry County Report page.

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144475/dothan-police-
depar...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144475/dothan-police-department-
internal-affairs-memo-exhibit-1)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144476/dothan-police-
depar...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144476/dothan-police-department-
internal-affairs-complaint-exhibit-2)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144477/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144477/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-memo-exhibit-3)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144478/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144478/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-polygraph-test-exhibit-4)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144479/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144479/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-report-exhibit-5)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144480/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144480/dothan-police-dept-
internal-affairs-report-exhibit-6)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144481/dothan-police-
dept-...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144481/dothan-police-dept-officer-
s-letter-to-city-commissioner-don-clements-exhibit-7)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144482/dothan-police-
chief...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144482/dothan-police-chief-john-
white-s-letter-to-city-manager-exhibit-10)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144483/dothan-police-
chief...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144483/dothan-police-chief-john-
white-s-deposition-exhibit-11)

[https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144490/dothan-police-
offic...](https://www.hashdoc.com/documents/144490/dothan-police-officers-
handwritten-letters-to-us-attorney-exhibit-12-14)

(edit: note that the documents numbered 144484-144489 are unrelated, mostly
Italian?)

------
policestate101
America is a police state, ruled by a corrupt elite Willing to break laws,
rewrite them if possible, create secret ones when needed, they will torture,
murder, commit war crimes, this the country Americans reside in, only they do
not want to except this increasingly glaring truth.

What happens instead is people who speak out are ignored, derided, and
silenced.

~~~
saiya-jin
actually, what stroke me hard when I went from Europe to US in 2003 for summer
student work was how much more repressive the whole system felt. For example
coworkers (in central Hollywood) openly afraid of cop cars going in opposite
direction, because they had forgotten an unscrewed bottle of alcohol which was
not in the trunk.

It might very well be we'll be in similar place in 10 years here, but it was
quite a shock to experience back then.

~~~
hsod
Maybe it's just my American blinders, but I don't see how "you can get
arrested for driving with an open container of alcohol" is particularly
repressive.

------
krapp
Huh. I see someone posted an article about police corruption to Hacker News...

\- declaration that the US is a police state? Check.

\- assertion that all police are criminals? Check.

\- call for the repeal of all drug laws? Check.

\- argument about whether or not black people are genetically predisposed to
violence and criminality? check.

Now all this thread needs is a tangential discussion about the Second
Amendment and I'll have bingo.

------
dzhiurgis
After the collapse of Soviet Union, in my country there was explosion of
mafia. Police were incapable and this is exactly how police dealt with them.
Draconian drug laws meant that cops could easily put gangsters to jail for a
long time.

Basically if thugs play dirty, cops are playing dirty as well.

~~~
jacobolus
Are you suggesting that the hundreds of black men falsely convicted and
imprisoned by corrupt white supremacist police and prosecutors were culpable
because they are “thugs playing dirty”?

WTF?

~~~
dzhiurgis
I was stating the fact that happened in my country ruled by gangsters who were
extorting innocent people.

Why you are reading something that is not there?

~~~
jacobolus
Your three-sentence story was about police battling the “explosion of mafia”
using underhanded tactics, and makes no mention of innocent people.

The case under discussion is police planting drugs and guns on people who were
wrongly arrested and who had no prior criminal record or connection to
gangsters, because the police were hateful racists.

Since those two scenarios seem completely unrelated, my inference was that
either (a) your comment is totally off topic, or else (b) you are trying to
suggest that the situations are similar. Option (b) seems more likely
considering your statement “basically if thugs play dirty, cops are playing
dirty as well” is in a separate paragraph, and the obvious implication is that
it applies to both your first paragraph and to the original article. Hence my
question.

~~~
dzhiurgis
Rather than inferring that all thugs are black, you should have inferred that
mafia isn't there to help people.

Anyhow, sorry if my story isn't interesting.

~~~
pkinsky
'thug' has some really bad associations right now. It's basically the latest
euphemism for 'black person', so people read your initial comment as
explicitly intended to compare the situation in your country to the situation
here.

