Grand Jury Recommends Abolishing Police Department After Indicting 5 Officers

An Alabama police department has "recently operated as more of a criminal enterprise than a law enforcement agency," a grand jury wrote.

An Alabama grand jury recommended that a local police department be “immediately abolished’ after indicting a local police chief, four officers and an officer’s spouse as part of a corruption investigation, Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker announced Wednesday.

The grand jury alleged that the “rampant culture of corruption” within the Hanceville Police Department meant that it “operated as more of a criminal enterprise than a law enforcement agency department,” Crocker read aloud from the grand jury recommendations.

The department, which stands accused of compromising evidence in numerous cases, has “abused public trust by its failure of oversight, lack of leadership and negligent training and hiring,” Crocker continued.

The charges against department employees were made public months after Hanceville police dispatcher Christopher Michael Willingham, 49, was found dead in his office in August last year, according to WBMA-LD. Coroners found that he had died from an accidental overdose of drugs including fentanyl, gabapentin, diazepam, amphetamine, carisoprodol and methocarbamol.

No officers were charged in direct connection to Willingham’s death, but the grand jury concluded that his death was a direct result of the department’s negligence, Crocker said.