Photo: Lauderdale County Sheriff's Office
An Alabama police officer who's being sued for his involvement in a 2021 police dog attack on a Black man will be getting jail time for assaulting another Black man.
According to Alabama Political Reporter, Sheffield Police Lt. Max Dotson was convicted of third-degree assault, menacing, and reckless endangerment in the December 2022 attack on Demarcus Key. He was sentenced to two years at the Lauderdale County Detention Center on Friday, July 21.
Court documents state Dotson struck Key multiple times in the face and mouth and pointed a gun at him. The police officer was reportedly off-duty when this incident happened at a liquor store in Sheffield.
The police lieutenant is one of ten defendants in a federal lawsuit focused on the June 2021 police dog attack of Marvin Long. Police officers and Colbert County sheriff's deputies tackled an unarmed Long on his front porch even though he didn't commit a crime.
During the incident, SPD Sgt. Nick Risner ordered his K-9 to bite Long while he was restrained. Body camera footage of the arrest, which included Long's cries for help, went viral last month. Risner's not named in the lawsuit because he died in an October 2021 shooting incident, reporters noted.
Civil rights attorneys Harry Daniels and Roderick Van Daniel, who are representing both Long and Key, released a statement on Dotson's conviction:
“Let’s be clear. On December 28, Lt. Dotson struck Demarcus Key multiple times in the face, bloodying his nose and mouth, and threatened him with a gun. But Lt. Dotson didn’t get arrested that night. Demarcus Key did. That’s the same kind of brutality and miscarriage of justice we saw when Lt. Dotson and his fellow officers accosted Marvin Long while he was unarmed on his own porch, assaulted him, sicced a police dog on him and, to cover their own crimes, arrested him. Yes, we’re pleased that Lt. Dotson has been convicted. But he isn’t the bad apple. This is a bad tree. Between the Sheffield Police Department and Colbert County Sheriff’s Office, this is a bad orchard and it’s time we did something about it."
Alabama Political Reporter also learned Sheffield Police Chief Ricky Terry has filed paperwork to terminate Dotson.
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