Seventeen years later on, Rasaan Shannon still feels the bolt of dread that strike him when his court-appointed law firm advised him he confronted up to 3 decades in jail for a drug cost he states was orchestrated by a corrupt Chicago police officer.

He also remembers the relief he felt following staying provided a plea offer that would land him in a boot camp for younger offenders for four months. He took it, pleading guilty even though he insisted the heroin experienced been planted on him by a team of officers, led by Sgt. Ronald Watts, who labored in the Ida B. Wells Residences public housing complex on Chicago’s South Aspect in the early 2000s. Shannon couldn’t demonstrate it, and he didn’t imagine any person would consider him.

“There was nothing I could quite possibly do,” Shannon, 34, mentioned last 7 days, weeping as he recalled his arrest and conviction, which he explained derailed his senior calendar year of large university and led him into gang existence. “It was all in the arms of this officer.”

That officer did change out to be corrupt. In 2012, Watts and another officer ended up arrested and later on pleaded responsible to federal theft of general public money charges, accused of extorting citizens and drug sellers in the housing undertaking.

Now Shannon is still preventing