Innocent Man Says Christian Faith Helped Him Forgive Crooked Cop Who Framed Him
Jameel McGee, 35, an innocent black man from Benton Harbor, Michigan, who was imprisoned for four years after a police officer framed him as a drug dealer is calling the now former officer a friend after his Christian faith helped him forgive.
McGee told CBS News that he was minding his own business one day in 2005 when then officer Andrew Collins accused him of dealing drugs and then arrested him.
"It was all made up," said McGee. And Collins agreed.
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"I falsified the report," the former officer told CBS. "Basically, at the start of that day, I was going to make sure I had another drug arrest."
Collins, 33, explained in an earlier AP report that he quickly evolved into a "dirty cop" shortly after he became a narcotics officer.
"Shortly after becoming a narcotics investigator, I became a full-blown corrupt police officer," said Collins. "What started off as small indiscretions led to bigger ones, which led to bigger ones, and was this slippery slope of wrongdoings. By the end of my short five-year career, I was a full-blown what you would call a dirty cop."
Collins' actions, however, put an innocent man in prison. McGee was sentenced to 10 years in prison for the drug charge. He told the AP that he grew angry and bitter until he started reading the Bible during his incarceration.
"I grabbed the Bible and just started reading it," he said. "As I was reading it, all these thoughts started coming in my head — to just let stuff go. Just let it go. Move on. Be something productive while you're here."
He said he started wondering if God had sent him to prison for a reason.
"(In 2006), my brother got shot," McGee told AP. "I was like, 'Maybe this is the reason God has me here.' I was like, 'Wow, the way everything was going, I probably would have done something real stupid.'"
Collins was eventually caught by authorities falsifying many police reports, planting drugs and stealing, CBS reports. He told the AP that he worked with FBI investigators to clear people who had been wrongly convicted.
The Berrien County Prosecutor's Office ended up dismissing about 50 cases Collins and his supervisor Bernard Hall had worked on. He served just a year and a half in prison while McGhee ended up serving four years for a crime he did not commit.
McGee was released from prison on Feb. 4, 2009 — days after Collins pleaded guilty on Jan 29, 2009.
Collins told AP that he started turning to Jesus shortly after his supervisors searched his office Feb. 18, 2008, and found illegal drugs under his desk.
"That was the last day I was a police officer," he said. The weight of what he had done caused him to contemplate suicide.
"My wife saw the desperation when she came home from work that day and said, 'I think you need to go talk to a local pastor,'" he said.
Collins said he spoke with the Rev. Brian Rumor from New Life Baptist Church in St. Joseph.
"The pastor had been a police officer before he was a pastor, so I trusted him in ways that I probably wouldn't trust other people," he explained. "I went in on the 20th and just told him everything.
"For the first time from the beginning of my career I actually articulated the wrong things that I had done. And that's really where it began with me — I wasn't just sorry that I got caught. I was sorry for what I had actually done," he continued. "I hung my head and started crying and said, 'I don't deserve (salvation),'" he said.
The pastor, however, was patient and walked him through the plan of salvation and it gave him hope.
In 2015, by sheer coincidence, both men ended up working at a café run by the Mosaic Christian Community Development Association.
Collins was the manager at Cafe Mosaic and he became McGee's mentor. McGee said he confronted Collins about what he did and he told him he was "sorry."
"I said, 'Honestly, I have no explanation, all I can do is say I'm sorry,'" Collins said of the confrontation.
"That was pretty much what I needed to hear," said McGee, who then forgave Collins.
"And I just started weeping because he doesn't owe me that. I don't deserve that," Collins said.
McGee told CBS that his Christian faith helped him forgive Collins and he is hoping for a kinder mankind by being an example of it.
His forgiveness has since blossomed into a friendship with Collins and both men now go around giving speeches about the importance of forgiveness and redemption.
