A former Helena-West Helena police lieutenant wasn’t an initial target of a public corruption investigation in eastern Arkansas, but a fellow officer named her to stand in for him and provide an escort for a man believed to be carrying a load of cocaine, an FBI agent testified Monday.
Marlene Kalb, 49, is accused by prosecutors of taking bribes to escort the informant whom she believed to be trafficking drugs into Arkansas from Mississippi. Federal prosecutors say Kalb took $500 on two separate occasions to escort the informant, who was wasn’t carrying any illicit drugs.
In addition to the fellow officer’s referral, the informant told federal agents Kalb was close with his family and with one of his girlfriends, FBI Special Agent Ward Seale testified.
Seale was the sole witness to testify Monday as Kalb’s trial opened at the federal courthouse in Little Rock.
Seale’s testimony, which resumes today, centered largely on Kalb’s interaction with Cornelius Coleman, a convicted felon who was paid $25,000 to work with the FBI during the investigation known as Operation Delta Blues.
Among the revelations during Seale’s testimony was that Phillips County Sheriff Ronnie White and an administrator at the Phillips County jail were surreptitiously recorded by Coleman during the federal investigation.
And, since the federal sting, which culminated in October 2011, the FBI has had to intervene on Coleman’s behalf to make sure he wasn’t held in the Phillips County jail, Sealetestified.
“His safety would have been in severe danger,” Seale told jurors.
“Two of the people that he had recorded conversations with run the jail, which include the sheriff and the jail administrator,” Seale said.
In total, Seale said Coleman recorded conversations involving 10 public officials as part of the investigation. White and the jail administrator, who was not identified Monday, haven’t been charged with any crimes related to the investigation, which resulted in the indictment of about 70 people.
Kalb and four other police officers were among those indicted. The other four off icers, including Kalb’s original co-defendant, former Helena-West Helena police officer Robert Rogers, have since pleaded guilty and been sentenced to prison.
As Seale testified, jurors followed along on screens as prosecutors played a video of Kalb’s black and white patrol car meeting up with and following Coleman’s white Dodge pickup for nearly 10 miles on the U.S. 49 bypass.
The video, made on Sept. 9, 2011, by an Arkansas State Police plane, was intended to capture Coleman meeting up with and being escorted by Rogers, who had agreed in a recorded phone call the previous day to escort Coleman from the Mississippi River bridge through town.
When Coleman reached Rogers that day, however, the officer said he had been expecting Coleman earlier and was already off work and refereeing a football game.
“You can call Marlene,” Rogers was recorded as saying.
Seale said that agents, who were listening in on a speaker phone as Coleman drove, decided to go with the unexpected turn of events.
After the trip through town, both vehicles turned into a convenience store parking lot on the west side of town and Kalb and Coleman talked for about 15 minutes, during which time Seale said money changed hands.
Seale testified that the FBI met Coleman in July 2011 through Drug Enforcement Administration agents in Memphis, where he had indicated a willingness to cooperate with authorities to help a friend who faced charges there.
“There was no doubt hewas very knowledgeable about drug trafficking, the police officers and the court system,” Seale testified.
Coleman told agents that some local police provided “escorts” through town for drug dealers to prevent “legitimate” law enforcement off icers and other drug dealers from interfering.
Though Kalb wasn’t on a list of officers that Coleman identified, “he said she was close with the family,” a friend of his mother, and “he felt she would do almost anything for him, but she hadn’t done it in the past.”
Seale noted that because of Coleman’s work with federal agents, and the public disclosure of his identity in the trial, “As soon as this trial’s over, he will be permanently relocated.”
To help with his move, the FBI paid Coleman another $5,000 this week,Seale said.
Before Seale’s testimony, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters told the jury that Coleman’s background shouldn’t obscure Kalb’s conduct.
“There are good cops, and there are dirty cops and the evidence in this case will show the defendant, Marlene Kalb, was a dirty cop,” Peters said.
In his opening statement, Kalb’s attorney John Wesley Hall told jurors that Kalb shouldn’t be grouped in with other officers who have admitted to taking bribes and aiding drug traffickers.
“There’s no doubt a lot of bad things have gone on in Helena-West Helena ... but Mrs. Kalb is saying ‘I’m not guilty. Maybe everybody else is, but I’m not,’” Hall told jurors.
Hall of Little Rock also questioned agents’ reliance on an informant who was an experienced criminal with ulterior motives.
“Marlene Kalb is not a dirty cop,” Hall said, noting that she “spent 27 years trying to defend the people of Helena-West Helena.”
Hall said Coleman, on the other hand, “is working for the FBI, trying to get as many as he can get.”
“If the money wasn’t there and the cocaine didn’t exist, where’s the crime?” Hall asked. “There is no crime. The crime is in the imagination of Mr. Coleman, a career criminal.”
Northwest Arkansas, Pages 7 on 12/11/2012