| On March 3, 2008, 20-year-old Angelo Shenault Jr. was at the Ida B. Wells public housing development in Chicago, Illinois when he was arrested by Chicago police officers working with Sgt. Ronald Watts.
The officers said they confiscated 14 baggies of heroin and five baggies of cocaine. Shenault contended that he was in the apartment of a friend talking about getting his car fixed when police came in. He said a man he didn’t know who was in the apartment tried to swallow some drugs and was arrested. Shenault said he was arrested as well, even though he didn’t have any drugs.
At the same time, Watts and other officers rounded up five other people in the lobby of the building. Ultimately, three of them were released and two others-- Darnell Harris and Trinere Johnson--were also charged with possession of narcotics.
This was not the first time Shenault had been arrested by Watts and his team. On April 4, 2006, Shenault, then 18 years old, was arrested with 23-year-old Christopher Scott at the same housing development. Even then, Shenault knew Watts because they had arrested Shenault in the past for trespassing. On one occasion when they tried to charge him with possession of narcotics, Shenault escaped by running away.
Scott was familiar with a scheme that Watts and his officers operated in which they searched people and apartments for drugs and then had cooperating residents solicit customers for them. The officers, dressed in civilian clothes, would sell the drugs from a second floor apartment to unwitting customers, who would then be arrested when they walked downstairs.
So when Scott and Shenault heard they were coming, they ran. However, the officers caught them and charged them with selling drugs. Two others stopped by the officers later signed sworn affidavits saying that neither Scott nor Shenault were selling or possessed drugs.
On May 24, 2006, Scott, unable to make bond, pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court to possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to two years of probation.
On July 19, 2006, Shenault had pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court to possession of narcotics. He had been sentenced to four years in prison and was released on parole on February 8, 2007.
And so, having been arrested again on March 3, 2008, Shenault pled guilty on April 22 2008, to possession of narcotics. He was sentenced to two years and six months in prison. He was released on parole on December 2, 2008.
On June 4, 2008, Johnson pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court to possession of cocaine. She was sentenced to two years on probation.
On July 1, 2008, Harris pled guilty in Cook County Circuit Court to possession of a controlled substance. He was sentenced to two and a half years in prison.
Shenault was arrested again on July 16, 2009. On that day, Shenault was walking on 43rd Street near the public housing development, when Watts and other officers pulled up and arrested him. Shenault said the officers demanded that he reveal the location of some drugs. When Shenault said he didn’t know, the officers arrested him and said that they saw Shenault throw 22 baggies of heroin into nearby bushes.
Shenault pled guilty a third time on January 4, 2010 to a charge of possession of narcotics. He was sentenced to two years in prison and was released on parole on January 11, 2011.
In 2012, Watts and fellow officer Kallatt Mohammed were caught on tape stealing money from a man they believed was a drug courier, but who was in fact working as a confidential FBI informant. In 2013, Watts and Mohammed pled guilty in U.S. District Court to taking money from the informant. Mohammed was sentenced to 18 months in prison, and Watts was sentenced to 22 months in prison.
Federal prosecutors said Watts “used his badge and his position as a sergeant with the Chicago Police Department to shield his own criminal activity from law enforcement scrutiny. He recruited another CPD officer into his crimes, stealing drug money and extorting protection payments from the drug dealers who terrorized the community that he [Watts] had sworn to protect.”
In 2006, Ben Baker was convicted twice—once alone and a second time with his wife, Clarissa Glenn, on charges of narcotics possession based on false testimony from Watts. In 2015, Joshua Tepfer, an attorney at the Exoneration Project at the University of Chicago Law School, filed a petition to vacate Baker’s first conviction, citing the corruption of Watts and his unit. The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed in January 2016 that Baker’s first conviction should be vacated, and the petition was granted. Later in 2016, a petition filed on behalf of Baker and Glenn also was granted. In December 2016, Tepfer and attorney Joel Flaxman filed a motion for a new trial on behalf of Lionel White Sr., another defendant who claimed he had been falsely convicted based on the corruption of Watts and his team. “The full known scope of the corrupt, more-than-decade-long criminal enterprise of Sergeant Watts…shows that Sergeant Watts led a tactical team of Chicago police officers that engaged in systematic extortion, bribery, and other related crimes…from as far back as the late 1990s through 2012,” the motion said.
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office’s Conviction Integrity Unit agreed that White’s conviction should be vacated and dismissed the charge.
Flaxman also sought dismissal of Shenault’s convictions. On February 13, 2018, the Cook County State's Attorney's conviction integrity unit dismissed Shenault’s 2006 conviction. On April 16, 2018, the prosecution dismissed Shenault’s 2008 and 2010 convictions.
Shenault was subsequently granted certificates of innocence for all three convictions, resulting in an award of $97,075 in compensation from the state of Illinois. He also filed a federal civil rights lawsuit seeking compensation from the city of Chicago.
By 2018, more than 50 convictions tainted by Watts and members of his unit had been dismissed.
– Maurice Possley
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