West Alabama Police Chief, Former Officers Indicted For Abusing Patient At Taylor Hardin

TUSCALOOSA, AL — Three former employees of the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility, one of whom is the police chief of a small West Alabama town, have each been indicted for felony abuse of a patient last year.

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Court documents obtained by Patch show that Adrian Watters, Cedric White and Arturo Zambrano were indicted earlier this month by a Tuscaloosa County Grand Jury on a single count each of abuse of a protected person, which comes following their arrests for allegedly beating Jeremy Shawn Bentley on Dec. 3, 2024.

Their bonds were set at $10,000 each.

While details of the incident in question are scarce in the public record, one source close to the case told Patch that the three men are accused of moving Bentley to a location that was not under video surveillance and beating him as he cowered in the fetal position on the floor.

Watters is currently listed on the City of Uniontown's website as the city's police chief and Tuscaloosa Patch has reached out to the city following his indictment.

Zambrano — the only one of three who has not been served his indictment as of the publication of this story — once worked with the Tuscaloosa Police Department before resigning amid accusations of malfeasance unrelated to the abuse case.

White is a former University of Alabama Police officer and a longtime employee at Taylor Hardin, going back to at least 2006.

Bentley was found not guilty of capital murder by reason of mental disease or mental defect in the 2000 beating and strangulation death of 24-year-old Jamie Ray Tolbert in Biloxi, Mississippi.

He was also convicted of second-degree assault in Tuscaloosa in May 2010.

Bentley has reportedly been a patient under psychiatric care at the Taylor Hardin Secure Medical Facility ever since the end of his murder trial.

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