Alabama city leaders vote to replace and rebuild 'corrupt' police department
The Hanceville City Council voted unanimously Monday to suspend department operations and search for a new chief who will build out the force.
Mayor Jim Sawyer placed the department's entire staff on administrative leave last month after the grand jury determined that it 'operated as more of a criminal enterprise than a law enforcement agency' and that it is 'an ongoing threat to public safety.'
The Cullman County Sheriff's Office will continue to handle law enforcement duties in Hanceville, about 45 miles north of Birmingham, until the new force is operational, officials said.
Former police chief Shane Marlin, four officers and one of the officers' wives were indicted on charges that included mishandling or tampering with evidence and using performance-enhancing drugs. The six are scheduled to be arraigned this month.
Marlin, 51, could not be reached for comment Tuesday, and phone numbers listed for him appear to have been disconnected.
The police department employed about 12 people, officials said.
The grand jury's findings were prompted by the death of Christopher Michael Willingham, 49, a 911 dispatcher who was found dead at work.
The Alabama Department of Forensic Sciences ruled his death an accidental overdose from fentanyl and other drugs. The grand jury did not charge the officers in connection with his death.
Cullman County District Attorney Champ Crocker said at a news conference last month that the death was 'the direct result' of the police department's 'negligence, lack of procedure, general incompetence and disregard for human life.'
He also said that there had been unfettered access to the evidence room, that some evidence was unusable and that any pending cases would go through a review process.
At the news conference, Crocker showed photos of a hole in the wall of the room and a broomstick that he said was used to jimmy open the door.
Crocker released preliminary results Monday of an audit of the evidence room. Among the missing items were: 1.5 grams of cocaine, 67 oxycodone pills, 4 Adderall pills, 0.5 grams of heroin, a .25-caliber handgun and about 30 undocumented firearms, according to a copy of the audit obtained by NBC News.
'These results of the evidence audit are shocking but not surprising,' Crocker wrote to the mayor in a letter Monday. 'The security camera footage revealed how unsecure the evidence room was — with various individuals going in and out, routinely sticking a broomstick through the hole in the wall to gain access.'
Crocker also wrote in the letter that after Willingham's death, he recommended that Marlin, who was still the police chief, call the State Bureau of Investigation for assistance. But Marlin declined to do so, he said.
Crocker said he then asked the State Bureau of Investigation to review Willingham's death.
At the City Council meeting Monday night, some people said they welcomed the decision to rebuild the department. Others said it was unfair to employees who had done nothing wrong.
Cullman County Sheriff Matt Gentry said the policing provided by his office costs $25,000 a month.
This article was originally published on NBCNews.com
Hashtags

Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles


Los Angeles Times
6 days ago
- Los Angeles Times
Aaron Phypers accuses Denise Richards of addiction, affair amid turmoil over divorce, report says
Aaron Phypers has accused estranged wife Denise Richards of having an addiction to the painkiller Vicodin and an 'ongoing' affair, according to Page Six, which obtained a letter written by Phypers that reportedly contains the allegations. The allegations come in the wake of Phypers filing for divorce from 'The Bold and the Beautiful' actor on July 7 and Richards obtaining a temporary restraining order against him early last week. The letter, said to be addressed to friends and family, alleges that the former Real Housewife is addicted to Vicodin and Adderall and combines the drugs with tequila. He also said that he and his parents have been mistreated since his divorce filing. 'This isn't just a relationship breaking down. It's a cry for help,' he alleges, per Page Six, and asks for prayers for Richards. A representative for Richards didn't respond immediately to The Times' request for comment. 'Some of you know this has been an issue for over 20 years. She's no longer eating real meals, and I've witnessed her pass out from substances — putting herself and others in danger, including while driving with our daughter,' Phypers wrote. He also claimed he had 'never, ever' physically harmed Richards, despite her allegations in last week's restraining order application. And, he wrote, per Page Six, that he found evidence earlier this year that she was having an affair. He said Richards denied having an affair, despite alleged 'explicit messages' he said he had discovered. Richards' allegations in her restraining order request were more dramatic. 'Throughout our relationship, Aaron would frequently violently choke me, violently squeeze my head with both hands, tightly squeeze my arms, violently slap me in my face and head, aggressively slam my head into the bathroom towel rack, threaten to kill me, hold me down with his knee on my back to the point where I would have to plead with him to get off me so that he would not kill me,' she alleged in her filing. She included photos of herself with a black eye and alleged Phypers regularly called her profane and demeaning names and periodically threatened to kill her or himself. The temporary stay-away order was granted immediately, with a hearing scheduled for Aug. 8 to make the restraining order permanent. Richards adopted daughter Eloise, now 14, as an infant in 2011; she and Phypers started dating in 2017 and married in September 2018, a month after his divorce from Nicollette Sheridan was final. Richards shares two adult daughters, Sam and Lola, with ex-husband Charlie Sheen. Phypers' legal slate is filling up lately. In addition to his divorce filing and Richards' restraining order, he was sued in January for alleged fraud linked to verbal claims he made about the efficacy of a stem-cell treatment available at his Malibu wellness center. The lawsuit was brought by the husband of a woman who died from cancer after Phypers allegedly told her in 2023, according to People, that she would be cured, or at least much improved, by his $126,000 treatment.


Boston Globe
17-07-2025
- Boston Globe
Saugus man facing federal charges for trafficking fake pills containing fentanyl, other drug, in Essex County
Between December 2024 and April, Krabey sold thousands of counterfeit pills containing methamphetamine and fentanyl to a confidential informant who secretly recorded the transactions, according to a statement from the office of Leah B. Foley, US Attorney for Massachusetts. Advertisement Krabey's going rate for 1,000 counterfeit Adderall pills laced with methamphetamine was $1.50 per pill, charging documents said. Krabey and the informant met at restaurants in Saugus, including Kowloon Restaurant on Route 1, and Tens Show Club in Salisbury, to make their transactions, according to the complaint. On April 21, federal investigators arranged for a State trooper to pull over a vehicle Krabey was riding in, records show. During the traffic stop in Danvers, police found a Nike shoe box in the back seat with five plastic bags inside of it containing 5,296 pills laced with narcotics, the complaint said. At Krabey's initial appearance hearing on May 13 in federal court in Boston, the judge assigned a federal public defender to represent Krabey. Advertisement Krabey agreed to voluntary detention, court records show. His next court date has not yet been scheduled. Krabey's lawyer could not be reached for comment Wednesday evening. Tonya Alanez can be reached at

15-07-2025
DEA chief says meth surge 'frightens' him, especially meth-laced pills targeting college-age adults
As federal authorities continue to crack down on the spread of fentanyl across the country, the Drug Enforcement Administration is warning about a surge in the use of methamphetamine, with DEA officials expressing particular concern over meth-laced pills being sold as drugs like Adderall to college-age adults. "What we've seen here recently, that frightens me," acting DEA administrator Robert Murphy told ABC News' Chief Justice Correspondent Pierre Thomas in an exclusive interview. Murphy said the DEA expects its seizures of methamphetamine to nearly double this year compared to last year. The DEA has so far seized about 70,000 pounds of the drug this year, already nearly matching the numbers reached in all of 2024, Murphy said. "Methamphetamine is by far the most coveted drug," Murphy said. "This is what people want." The DEA has become so concerned about the continuing boom of methamphetamine use that it's planning to hold a press conference on Tuesday to draw attention to it. "In the first six months of this year, we've already seen more than ... what we seized last year," Murphy told ABC News. "And we project ... we're going to double what we seized last year." Murphy said that one of the most disturbing things about methamphetamine is that "Mexican cartels control 100% of it." "They control production, the smuggling, the distribution in the United States, and obviously the actual collection of monies and getting the money back into Mexico," he said. And cartels are growingly increasingly creative in how they try to smuggle meth across the U.S.-Mexico border -- from hiding packages of meth pills among green onions to disguising meth shipments as loads of celery. In one location during the week of July 4, the DEA discovered hundreds of boxes of cucumbers that had been lined with several hundreds pounds of meth, worth nearly $4 million. And in May, with assistance from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, federal authorities arrested six people who were allegedly bringing liquid meth into the United States and driving it to Kansas by hiding it in the septic tank of a charter bus. Authorities became suspicious after realizing that the bus rarely had any passengers. "They're only limited by their imagination," Murphy said of the smugglers. "And they have a very broad imagination." Murphy called it "a cat and mouse game." He said cartels now have a "huge focus" on pills, which he said have less of a stigma than injectable drugs. As a result, Murphy said, turning meth into pill form makes it more marketable, and therefore more easily sold as something it's not, such as fake Adderall or fake MDMA -- the active ingredient in ecstasy. "[It's] all of the drugs that that are wanted by our college-age kids, and younger," he said. "They're actually getting meth, and they don't know this." According to the most recent statistics from the Centers for Disease Control, drug overdose deaths in the United States sharply decreased by almost 27% last year. But while fentanyl and other opioid-related overdoses dropped the most -- by more than a third -- overdoses related to meth and other psychostimulants dropped the least -- by nearly 22%. "You're buying a pill off the street nowadays, you're taking your life in your own hands," Murphy warned, saying that that "almost everything" the DEA is now seizing turns out to be "fake." "And as an investigator, our men and women have a hard time distinguishing between what's real and what's not," Murphy said. "So there's no way the average user is going to be able to do that."