Photo Courtesy of WRAL-TV
Omar Abdullah was fired from the Raleigh Police Department on October 28, after the city reached a $2 million settlement with 15 Black men who were framed by the narcotics cop.
The News and Observer reported that Raleigh police confirmed Abdullah’s termination in a brief statement on November 1, which read, “Omar Abdullah was terminated from the Raleigh Police Department on October 28, 2021.”
According to the suit, Abdullah wrongly arrested the group of men between December 2019 and May 2020 for heroin trafficking after claiming that an informant reported the men had sold him the drug.
However, the truth came to light after evidence in the cases showed multiple times that the substance was brown sugar instead of heroin when tested. The men’s suit also claimed Abdullah’s other officers knew the frame-ups.
Abdullah paid informant Dennis Williams Jr. several times, who often gave officers intel on drug dealers but was often missing essential information.
Some of the evidence he provided included “videos and audio recordings of drug buys with critical clips missing and a substance that lab tests revealed months later wasn’t drugs at all,” Abdullah even went as far as to fabricate evidence by planting it himself.
According to attorneys representing the plaintiffs, the group of men served a combined nearly 2.5 years in prison before their charges were dismissed.
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“Many Plaintiffs lost their jobs, missed birthdays and funerals, others had their homes and children investigated by Child Protective Services, and others were unable to continue to pay their bills and were forced to move during the COVID-19 pandemic,” reads a letter from the group’s attorneys, Tin Fulton Walker & Owen, written to Raleigh Police Department Chief Estella Patterson and Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman.
“All were traumatized because of their wrongful detention or incarceration and the fabricated allegations against them,” it continued. “The RPD VICE unit’s actions also resulted in the unlawful detention of numerous women and children and at least one illegal SWAT (SEU) raid of a family’s home.”
DA Freeman’s office is not planning on pressing charges at the moment. In a text
obtained by News and Observer, she said, “We want to ensure that every detail has been considered prior to closing the matter due to the serious nature of the allegations.”It continued, “As I’ve stated previously, a conclusion that there is insufficient evidence of criminal intent by Detective Abdullah is not the same thing as saying there are not grave concerns by me of the way this matter unfolded.”
Neither Abdullah nor any other Raleigh police officers have been charged in the case.