Dozens Framed by Corrupt Chicago Drug Squad Demand Exoneration

Dozens of people who say they were framed and had drugs planted on them by a team of officers who worked in the Ida B. Wells Homes public housing complex on Chicago’s South Side in the early 2000s are now seeking dismissal of their convictions in one of Chicago’s biggest police corruption scandals, reports NBC News. The team was led by Sgt. Ronald Watts, who in 2012 was arrested alongside another officer and later pleaded guilty to federal theft of public funds charges, accused of extorting residents and drug dealers in the housing project. Since then, prosecutors at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office have agreed to the exonerations of 87 people wrongfully arrested by the drug squad, but there are still another 88 people with similar claims.

Many of the 88 submitted their claims to the Cook County prosecutor for review years ago, but have gotten no response. They will now file a petition seeking to dismiss their convictions. The cases involving the 88 alleged victims “are indistinguishable” from the drug arrests already deemed wrongful, according to the lawyers representing them. The arrests occurred from 2002 to 2009. All of the people arrested were Black, and all the arrests were made by Watts, who is also Black, or officers working with him. Several of those officers are still working for the Chicago Police Department, including some who have been put on a Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office list of officers deemed too untrustworthy to be called to testify in a criminal case.