Buzzby

Former Law Officer Gets Nearly 5 Years For Drug Trafficking
Eddie R. Cole | Mobile Register | 07/27/2006

A former deputy of the Fulton County, Ga., Sheriff's Department was sentenced Tuesday in Mobile to 57 months in federal prison.

Dwayne Turner, a Mobile native, received the sentence from U.S. District Judge Charles R. Butler on a count of conspiracy to distribute marijuana.

Turner, while serving as a deputy, was arrested in Montgomery by FBI agents on Oct. 12, 2005, on drug trafficking charges stemming from an investigation involving the sale of marijuana and cocaine in the Mobile area.

He sold drugs more than a half-dozen times to a Mobile man who was arrested in April 2005, according to a criminal complaint filed in federal court. Turner, who worked at the Fulton County Jail in Atlanta, sold an estimated eight pounds of marijuana over a span of six occasions and sold cocaine to a convicted drug dealer named Damon Hatch, according to the affidavit.

According to the criminal complaint, Hatch identified Turner as his supplier. He told authorities in his affidavit that he met Turner in 2000 through their common interest in dogs.

Additional counts brought against Turner related to alleged conspiracies to possess and distribute cocaine were dismissed.

"Sadly, this law enforcement officer betrayed the public trust and sold out to the lure of drug money," said U.S. Attorney Deborah Rhodes in a statement issued by the U.S. Department of Justice. "His conviction and sentencing show that no one is above the law, and we will act to maintain the highest integrity of and confidence in our public servants."

Prior to his arrest, Turner had been in trouble within the Fulton County Sheriff's Department. He was a supervising officer when he, and four other deputies, allowed a work-release inmate and rap artist to shoot a music video in the maximum security wing of the downtown Atlanta facility, according to a June 2004 Associated Press report.