Washington, D.C. – Raphael Warnock’s stories are not lining up again.
Warnock often tells the tale of his unjustly incarcerated brother, thrown in jail for a non-violent drug offense. Well, it turns out that’s not quite the full story. Read more:
Raphael Warnock Blames Brother’s Drug Conviction On Systemic Racism. Court Records Tell a Different Story
Washington Free Beacon
By: Alana Goodman
When he talks about racism in the U.S. justice system, Sen. Raphael Warnock (D., Ga.) often cites the case of his older brother—a “first-time,” “nonviolent” drug offender who was sentenced to life in prison due to a “pandemic of racism,” according to the senator.
Warnock has compared his half-brother, whose full name is Keith Coleman, to black victims of police shootings, attributed his imprisonment to the “stigma of color and criminality,” and praised his early release in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic as a day of “hope” for the justice system.
But hundreds of pages of court records reviewed by the Washington Free Beacon tell a more complicated story: Coleman was a cop with the Savannah Police Department when he was convicted of facilitating a cross-country cocaine trafficking operation in 1996 and 1997—and once warned that he could send a drug dealer’s “black ass” to prison if the dealer didn’t pay Coleman more money.
The details conflict with Warnock’s accounts, which omit that Coleman was a police officer and portray him as a victim of law enforcement corruption rather than a participant in it.
…
In November 1995, the FBI launched an undercover sting campaign called “Operation Broken Oath” to investigate whistleblower tips about dirty cops within the Savannah Police Department, according to a pretrial investigative report by the bureau. The probe ensnared nearly a dozen police officers who agreed to provide paid security for undercover FBI agents and informants posing as cocaine traffickers.
One of these officers was Coleman, who quickly became a ringleader in the illegal scheme, using his police-issued handgun and car to escort the purported drug dealers as they drove kilos of cocaine to airports, hotels, and warehouses, according to prosecutors.
Coleman reportedly recruited four fellow cops to provide security, boasting to them the operation was bringing in cocaine by the “goddamn truckloads.”
“I know my guys,” Coleman told one undercover agent, referring to the officers he recruited. “They loyal to me and they gonna do whatever I tell them.”
Coleman negotiated and distributed the illegal payoffs for the security services, often pocketing portions of the money that was intended to go to the other cops, according to prosecutors.
Coleman “continued to push for more work and more money.” He demanded higher payments after an undercover agent posing as a drug dealer offered him $1,500 for one cocaine-trafficking job.
“If I knowed I was fucking with a motherfucker off the corner who can’t afford [to pay me] no more than $1,500, his black ass would be in prison,” said Coleman, according to an audio recording cited in the court records.
Coleman later demanded that the purported drug traffickers place the payments in envelopes instead of handing him stacks of cash, arguing that this was a better way to avoid detection.
“No counting by the car,” he told them. “[Some witness] might want to mail some shit to 60 Minutes. … ‘I saw police taking some money by a car. Why would he be doing that?’”
Prosecutors allege Coleman received $46,000 in dirty payments and helped traffic a total of 28.2 kilograms of cocaine between November 1996 and March 1997.
On Nov. 21, 1997, Coleman was convicted by a jury of conspiring and attempting to aid and abet the distribution of cocaine, and with carrying a firearm during a drug trafficking offense. He was sentenced to life in prison, and two of his co-conspirators were sentenced to 17 years and 19 years, respectively.
Read more at the Washington Free Beacon
###
