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In the Cullman County town of Hanceville, the sheriff and district attorney on Wednesday announced that the police chief, five officers, and an officer’s wife were arrested.
The announcement came after the coroner said the Aug. 23, 2024 death of a dispatcher in his office was the result of a drug overdose and an 18-member grand jury said the department operated under “a rampant culture of corruption” and should be abolished.
Hanceville, a town of 3,200 people best known as the home of the main campus of Wallace State Community College, suddenly found itself in the center of unwanted national news attention.
People across Alabama questioned what had happened to the department and what will come next.
Here’s what we know today:
What are the officers accused of?
The allegations include on-duty drug injections, misuse of criminal databases and distribution of controlled substances to each other and to others, according to the indictments.
Hanceville’s police chief, 51-year-old Jason Marlin, is charged with two counts of failure to report ethics crime and tampering with physical evidence. He retired from the Birmingham Police Department where he worked at the South Precinct.
The indictments against Marlin allege that, as the head of the police force, he had a duty to report ethics violations of his officers to Alabama Ethics Commission and failed to do so.
Marlin, according to court documents, also removed or mishandled evidence from the property room.
All six, including Officers Cody Alan Kelso, 33, Drew Shelnutt, 39, Jason Wilbanks, 37, Eric Michael Kelso, 44, and his wife, 63-year-old Donna Kelso, surrendered to the Cullman County Jail Wednesday, and were released on bond.
Eric Kelso is accused of selling, furnishing, giving away or delivering Adderall to someone who is not charged in the indictments, and also providing hydrocodone and performance enhances anabolic steroids to Officer Wilbanks.
He also, according to the indictment, provided anabolic steroids to Cody Kelso.
Eric Kelso’s wife, Donna Kelso, is also accused of providing steroids repeatedly to Wilbanks and Cody Kelso.
Wilbanks, charging documents state, traveled while on duty to receive the “unlawfully distributed” steroids from Donna Kelso.
The indictment also alleges Wilbanks of accessing the a records management system to obtain information on an unnamed woman and an unnamed man and providing that information to other officers.
He also illegally used the Law Enforcement Tactical System (LETS) to obtain a vehicle’s tag information for Eric Kelso, according to the indictment.
Wilbanks is also accused of removing and/or mishandling evidence from the property room.
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