In December 2024, Harold Pryor, the first Black state attorney in Broward County, Florida, presented plans to vacate around 2,600 crack cocaine-related convictions. But it wasn’t just any crack cocaine. It had been produced and sold by the sheriff’s office.
For three years, starting in 1988, cops produced $20,000 worth of crack on the Broward County Courthouse’s seventh floor. The notorious “Cuban Cop” Nick Navarro was sheriff then. But why did they do it?
Broward police didn’t have enough confiscated drugs for reverse-sting operations. This way, they had more to sell to set people up for arrest. According to attorney Ed Hoeg, from one of their reverse-sting cases, it wasn’t just about criminalizing addiction. Cops wanted a photo-op.
Navarro “would go out with television crews,” remembered Hoeg. “He would alert the news…80, 90, 110 arrests a night...I don’t think they caught one dealer. They didn’t catch one trafficker. They caught users. They didn’t do anything about the crack problem.” And beyond 2,600 convictions, how many lives were lost? Families damaged? Taxpayer dollars wasted?
Federal officials claim these Broward cops were unique in manufacturing crack cocaine. But the strategy of flashing power to incarcerate many people at once instead of helping them is a universal one. The "war on drugs" would become a war on Black people, another chapter in our history that can’t be forgotten.