An Alabama cop already facing a federal indictment for various crimes now faces accusations that he fabricated felony drug charges against two Black men last year, putting both at risk of serious prison time, according to a lawsuit filed last week.
Atlanta attorney Terry Bailey and his driver, Brandon Tatum, had driven from Georgia to Alabama in mid-November where the attorney was expecting to meet a client to advise him on purchasing a gentlemen’s club.
But it turned out to be a ruse from someone with a “personal grievance” against Bailey who “wanted him out their way,” the claim states.
The claim does not name the person behind the setup, but says they recruited Prichard, Alabama, police officer Emanuel Dotch, who orchestrated the arrest by phone with other officers.
After speaking with Dotch by phone, four Prichard police officers pulled into the parking lot of the club and confronted the two Black men sitting in a car waiting for the purported client, turning on their emergency lights and surrounding the rented jeep they were sitting in.
The cops claimed to smell marijuana and insisted on searching the car, but the men did not give them consent. But the cops searched the car anyway, finding no marijuana but finding 124 grams of methamphetamine and 19 grams of a mixture containing fentanyl, the claim states.
Police transported the men to jail, where Bailey spent three days and Tatum spent 14 days.
The Mobile County District Attorney’s Office dismissed the charges 19 days later in early December after reviewing bodycam footage and concluding there appeared to be a civil-rights violation in the search and seizure, the complaint states.
A grand jury indicted Dotch in mid-June and the department fired him later that month. He remains in federal custody, according to court records.
Federal agents had been investigating Dotch since at least 2024, when they recorded him discussing an agreement to move marijuana for a drug trafficker, according to an FBI affidavit.
In the Jan. 5, 2024, recording, Dotch allegedly agreed to transport 15 to 20 pounds of marijuana from Prichard to a designated drop-off point for $2,500 per trip.
The same recording allegedly captured Dotch saying that “seven times out of ten,” police officers lie about smelling marijuana to search a vehicle. The officer later used that claim to search the car Bailey and Tatum occupied in November 2025.
Federal prosecutors also accuse Dotch of concealing video, photos and recorded interviews from a 2021 shooting involving John Fitzgerald McCarroll Jr., whom authorities later convicted in an unrelated murder-for-hire conspiracy.
Agents say they found the missing material in Dotch’s iCloud account in 2026, leading to an evidence-tampering charge. Prosecutors do not accuse Dotch of involvement in the murder-for-hire plot.
But allegations of corruption have followed Dotch since 2013, before he joined the Prichard Police Department in 2014.
“Defendant Dotch had a history of criminality,” the claim states.
“He left the Mobile Police Department in 2013 while under investigation for allegations of a similar nature, and the PPD hired him anyway.”
Dotch is one of eight Prichard cops arrested this year — including its police chief — leaving about 14 cops to patrol the majority-Black city of less than 20,000 people, according to local media reports.
Former Prichard Police Chief Walter Knight allegedly used city-paid work time, equipment and police authority to earn private income from funeral-procession escorts. He pleaded not guilty and faces a Dec. 15 status hearing.
