At the end of February, AL.com ran a story about Etowah County, Alabama Sheriff Todd Etrekin. It seems that over a three year period Etrekin had personally taken in three-quarters of a million dollars in “unused” prison food fund money—and he now owned a $740,000 beach property. You see, Alabama has a nice little corruption-incentive law that allows that sheriffs to keep the “excess” prison inmate food money. According to AL.com, this law has been in effect since before World War II and the state’s lawmakers clearly have no plans on dealing with this issue.
"It is obvious that the challenges facing Alabama's penal system on both the state and local levels require us to look into issues like inmate food allowance," said Alabama House Speaker Mac McCutcheon in an email.
"With so few days remaining in the session, however, it's unlikely we could adequately study possible solutions, draft legislation, and pass a bill before final adjournment, especially given that this issue also involves budgetary decisions made by local commissions and law enforcement."
The fact of the matter is that the issue of corruption and ill-treatment of Alabama prisoners seems to always involve this law.
In 2005, a Mobile County grand jury indicted Sheriff Jack Tillman for taking food funds to start a retirement account for himself. Tillman later pleaded guilty to perjury and an ethics violation and gave the money back. [...]
In 2009, a federal judge briefly jailed Morgan County Sheriff Greg Bartlett after he pocketed $212,000 from the fund while feeding prisoners a truckload of old corn dogs he bought for $500. Breakfast, lunch and dinner -- for three months.
Even though Morgan County remained under a federal court order to spend its jail food money on jail food, Bartlett's successor, Ana Franklin, stroked herself a $150,000 check which she invested in a shady used car lot run by a felon previously convicted of bank fraud. Franklin was held in contempt of court for violating the federal consent decree and fined $1,000.
Entrekin’s corruption is a touch more special however, as he’s clearly adding some more vindictive abuse of power to it. A week after AL.com originally wrote the story that outed Entrekin’s shady use of an even more dubious law, Entrekin seems to have decided to make an “example” of the whistleblower.
A 20-year-old man was arrested last week and charged with drug trafficking four days after AL.com published comments he made criticizing Etowah County Sheriff Todd Entrekin.
Matthew Qualls questioned why Entrekin paid him to mow the lawn at his personal home in 2015 using taxpayer funds allocated for the feeding of inmates in the county jail. Entrekin confirmed that he personally pocketed some of the funds.
As Techdirt’s Tim Cushing points out, while another police department seems to have done the dirty work, Entrekin’s officers were on the scene and have added some over-the-top charges to Qualls’s arrest.
What the drug unit actually found bears almost no resemblance to the charging sheet. Qualls possessed marijuana butter, but rather than use the actual amount of marijuana contained in the apartment (and the butter) -- which would have been less than 20 grams -- Entrekin's department decided to declare all of the butter to be marijuana, raising the total weight to 2.3 pounds. This conveniently clears the 2.2 pound bar needed to charge someone with drug trafficking. The chief of the Rainbow City Police, whose officers performed the arrest, says the Sheriff's weight calculations are "inaccurate."
Even stranger, Qualls is being charged even though it may not even be his marijuana. The arrest warrant shows a completely different address for Qualls. Qualls says he lives in Gadsen, while the warrant pinpoints his residence as Centre. The arrest took place in Rainbow City.
Cushing is referencing a “felony drug trafficking” charge that carries potentially horrendous sentences. Rainbow City Police Capt. John Bryant, the police department that actually arrested Qualls—on a phone “tip”—only charged Qualls with second degree possession.
"Our guys just charged him with possession," Bryant said Monday. "You wouldn't add the butter with that. It should be just the amount of marijuana ... You can't add the butter, it would just be the marijuana alone."
Phil Sims, deputy commander of the Etowah County Drug Enforcement Unit, said Monday that the unit has a different take.
"Once that marijuana was mixed with the butter then the whole butter becomes marijuana, and that's what we weighed," Sims said.
That’s corruption.