Raleigh fires police officer linked to wrongful arrests in bogus drug cases

A Raleigh police officer has been fired for his role in a number of drug arrests that later had to be dismissed and required the city to settle a lawsuit with the men who were wrongfully arrested.

Detective Omar Abdullah had been on paid leave for more than a year, but officials said Monday that his 12-year tenure with the Raleigh Police Department ended last Thursday.

Abdullah hung up the phone Monday when WRAL News called seeking a comment.

Authorities said that, between December 2019 and May 2020, he used an informant named Dennis Leon Williams Jr. on controlled drug buys that led to 15 Black men being arrested and jailed on drug trafficking charges.

But lab tests showed the "drugs" Williams used in the transactions weren't illegal narcotics. Also, he failed to get the transactions on video.

Charges against all 15 men were dropped, and Williams was charged in August with five counts of obstruction of justice.

Last month, Raleigh officials agreed to pay 13 of the men a total of $2 million to settle a lawsuit over their wrongful arrests.

The lawsuit alleged that Abdullah and Williams conspired to target Black men for arrest. Some of the plaintiffs spent as long as five months in jail before their charges were dropped, and some lost jobs and were separated from their children because of the wrongful arrests, according to the lawsuit.

“They need to answer for stealing people’s freedom and threatening them," Robin Mills said of Abdullah and the seven other Raleigh Police Department employees named in the lawsuit.

Mills' son, Marcus Vanirvin, was a plaintiff in the lawsuit. He spent 18 days in jail before the heroin trafficking charges against him were dropped.

"I think criminal charges need to be filed against all RPD officers actively involved or [who] actively swept it under the rug," Mills said.

Mills also is pushing for policy changes within the department, including a requirement that all drugs be field tested and all drug buys be recorded.

"Do the right thing and really look at the department and ask yourself what needs to be done so this never happens again and change protocol," she said.

Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman said the State Bureau of Investigation is still reviewing how the Raleigh Police Department handled the cases, but so far, there's no evidence showing that Abdullah was aware that Williams wasn't using actual drugs in the deals.

The Raleigh Police Protective Association is representing Abdullah through any potential appeals of his firing. The department declined to comment when asked if Abdullah had appealed, calling it a personnel matter.