Between 1988 and 1990, the Broward county sheriff’s office (BSO) in Florida manufactured and sold crack cocaine as part of a controversial sting operation to arrest people for purchasing the illegal drug. Many of those who are arrested for purchasing the BSO-made drugs were given lengthy prison sentences. The Florida supreme court declared the operation unlawful in 1993, but many people still have criminal charges or convictions on their records.
Now, the Broward county state attorney, Harold F Pryor, seeks to bring justice to those affected by the operation. Last week Pryor, the first Black state attorney in Broward and the first Black man to be elected state attorney in Florida, announced plans to vacate as many as 2,600 convictions linked to the drug sting operation.
“The methods used by law enforcement and society to combat drug dealing in our community have evolved since that era,” Pryor said in a statement. “These records may be a dim memory or an unfortunate part of history to many, but they have had a long-lasting and severe impact on the lives of the people who were arrested – as well as their families and the wider community.”
Before the Fair Sentencing Act of 2010, which reduced the statutory penalties for crack cocaine offenses, five grams of crack cocaine possession resulted in a mandatory minimum prison sentence of five years, and 28 grams of the drug resulted in a mandatory minimum prison sentence of 10 years.
Some buyers, who were disproportionately from vulnerable communities, faced enhanced charges for purchasing drugs within 1,000ft of a school – receiving mandatory prison sentences of at least three years.
“They had detention deputies posing as dealers … These poor people who were addicts were buying it,” the defense lawyer Ed Hoeg, who represented Leon Williams, the man whose appeal led to the supreme court ruling, said to the Sun Sentinel of Fort Lauderdale.
There is no indication, the Broward county state attorneys office said in a statement, that many of the cases were ever formally vacated, which means that people who were swept up in the scheme may still be living with repercussions for the charges.
Pryor sent a letter to the current Broward county sheriff, Gregory Tony, notifying him of his intentions. “These matters were well before our tenures,” Pryor wrote. “However, I am of the opinion that the State has an ethical duty and obligation to correct this injustice before destruction [of old records] is initiated.” Pryor has said that Tony supports the plan.
Due to the number of people affected by the sting, the state attorney’s office is estimating it will take a considerable amount of time to review the paper files and determine people’s eligibility to seal or expunge their records.
In the statement announcing his plan, Pryor said, “It is never too late to do the right thing.”
