Fired Raleigh detective accused of framing men in fake heroin deals is indicted
Former Raleigh Police Detective Omar Abdullah was indicted Tuesday on a felony obstruction of justice charge, Wake County District Attorney Lorrin Freeman announced.
The indictment by a grand jury follows a lengthy investigation, Freeman wrote in an email Wednesday.
It also follows multiple federal lawsuits against the city that name Abdullah and after related calls for him to be charged criminally. Abdullah was fired in October after spending a year on administrative leave.
“From the beginning, we have taken the harm caused with great seriousness,” Freeman wrote in the email to media outlets.
The city of Raleigh has faced three federal lawsuits that accuse Abdullah of fabricating drug charges.
The civil filings center on Abdullah relying on confidential informant Dennis Williams. Their cases faced scrutiny after trafficking charges were dismissed against more than a dozen Black men when the drugs that Williams claimed the men had sold them turned out to be fake.
The first lawsuit was settled in September after the city agreed to pay 15 litigants, which included those who were jailed and others who were affected, $2 million. Two other lawsuits remain active.
Obstruction of justice is a class I felony. If convicted, Abdullah could be sentenced to a minimum sentence of probation or some other community punishment. The maximum punishment he could face on the charge is eight to 19 months in prison, according to the state’s sentencing guidelines.
Freeman said the State Bureau of Investigation is arranging for Abdullah to turn himself in and be processed.
Higher burden
The standard for criminal prosecution is different than that for civil liability, Freeman wrote in the email, and it carries a much higher burden.
“The State Bureau of Investigation and our office has worked diligently to adhere to this burden,” Freeman wrote. Since the case is ongoing, Freeman wrote she can’t comment further right now.
The indictment states that on around May 21, 2020, Abdullah obstructed justice by providing a false statement to a judicial official about a fake and counterfeit substance that he contended was heroin.
Abdullah made the statement while pursuing a drug trafficking charge against Marcus Vanirvin, the court document states.
“This was infamous, was committed with secrecy and malice and was done with deceit and intent to defraud,” the court document states.
In May 2020, Vanirvin’s mother, Robin Mills, received a phone call that Vanirvin, then a father of two, including a newborn, had been arrested in front of his family on a charge of trafficking heroin.
“I said, ‘There is no way,’“ Mills told The News & Observer last year.
Police raided his family’s apartment, Mills said, slashing couch cushions and searching and tossing items throughout their home.
His bail was set at $450,000, she said, but later reduced to about $200,000.
As her son sat in jail, she worried about him catching COVID-19 and whether this could result in a conviction that would take him away from his family for a minimum of 7.5 years.
Her son’s partner eventually paid a bail bondsman about $1,200 to get Vanirvin out of jail after 18 days. The charges were later dropped.
When Vanirvin first returned home he was appreciative of his freedom, she said, but also traumatized by the situation.
“For a week, he sat numb,” she said.
Vanirvin was one of the plaintiffs in the $2 million lawsuit that was settled by the city.
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This story was originally published July 27, 2022 at 3:23 PM.
