BOSSIP Exclusive: Alabama Sheriff Arrests Blacks To Bring In Profits

Sheriff Abston told BOSSIP that he didn’t want to talk about the “War on Drugs,” the arrestee’s allegations or conditions in the Pickens County Jail.

“It’ll be in court,” Abston, who employs his wife as an investigator and whose annual salary and benefits total nearly $107,000, told BOSSIP. “I’ll comment in court.”

Paul Daymond, the spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Birmingham office, said the FBI was aware of the situation in Pickens County, but declined to comment further. A spokeswoman for the Alabama State Attorney General said the office’s policy was not to confirm if they are or are not investigating the Pickens County arrests. The Justice Department did not return BOSSIP’s numerous requests for comment.

Sheriff Abston repeatedly ignored BOSSIP’s public records requests on the revenue the “War On Drugs” made for the department and the Pickens County Jail.

But Pickens County’s budget records show that court fees—the biggest revenue generator after taxes— jumped nearly 10 percent this year to $104,195 from 2014.

That money may have helped pay for the nearly $70,000 the county allocated for it’s three-member “Drug Task Force,” which claimed responsibility for the arrests in the sheriffs department’s press releases. That same fund was in arrears to the tune of $162,397 in 2012, according to an independent state audit.

None of the county’s commissioners would respond to BOSSIP’s request for an accounting of the “War On Drugs” finances.

The lion’s share of the “War On Drugs” arrests centered on Aliceville and Pickensville, small, predominantly African-American towns sandwiched between the city of Tuscaloosa and the Mississippi state line.

Aliceville resident Sandi Zacharias told BOSSIP Sheriff Abston showed up at her house looking for an ex-boyfriend, and threatened her with a taser when she asked to see a warrant. She said he claimed to have one but wouldn’t show it to her. She was later arrested for drug distribution, and when she got to jail, she said, the jailers gave her a mop bucket to relieve herself in. She said she had to stand in front of another female inmate as the inmate urinated in the bucket in view of incarcerated men.

“She was afraid that the men would see her,” Zacharias, who wrote her account in an affidavit NAACP officials said they sent to the Justice Department.

“But after about four hours, who would be expected to hold their pee?”

Zacharias, a nurse’s aide and mother of two, said she’d never been arrested in her life, but she was arrested and charged with “Unlawful Distribution of a Controlled Substance,” and “Penalty Enforcement,” for allegedly selling synthetic marijuana. Her bail was set at $50,000. Since getting out, she said sheriffs deputies told her she has to report to the department for random drug tests, and she lost her job at an area nursing home after sheriff’s officers notified her employer of the arrest. Zacharias said she’s now relying on food stamps and child support to make ends meet. Her ex-boyfriend’s mother ponied up $1,500 for a bail bonds man to get her out. She’s now making $150 monthly payments to the bail bonds man.

“My whole life is literally flushed down the toilet,” Zacharias told BOSSIP. “It’s like they’re using us for revenue. They’re trying to get money out of us.”