Ex-officer guilty in drug-escort case

Kalb is fifth lawman convicted in Delta Blues anti-drug operation

Chris Thyer (left), U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters and FBI Special Agent in Charge Randy Coleman discuss former Helena-West Helena police Lt. Marlene Kalb’s conviction on extortion and attempted-drug-trafficking charges Friday in federal court in Little Rock. The case “sends a strong message that someone who would sell their badge” won’t be tolerated, Thyer said outside the courthouse.

Chris Thyer (left), U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters and FBI Special Agent in Charge Randy Coleman discuss former Helena-West Helena police Lt. Marlene Kalb’s conviction on extortion and attempted-drug-trafficking charges Friday in federal court in Little Rock. The case “sends a strong message that someone who would sell their badge” won’t be tolerated, Thyer said outside the courthouse.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

— A federal jury convicted former Helena-West Helena police Lt. Marlene Kalb of extortion and attempted drug trafficking Friday but acquitted her of two counts of money laundering.

Kalb, 49, showed little emotion as U.S. District Judge James Moody read the jury’s verdicts on each of her six charges, which accused her of twice escorting an FBI informant she thought was carrying a load of cocaine and accepting $500 each time she had ensured his safe passage through the city limits.

After deliberating for more than five hours over two days, the jury of four men and eight women returned guilty verdicts on two counts of extortion under color of official right and two counts of attempting to possess cocaine with intent to distribute, closing out a week-long trial at the federal courthouse in Little Rock.

Kalb hugged her defense attorneys and mouthed “I love y’all” to her mother and sister in the courtroom as she was taken into custody by U.S. marshals Friday morning.

Kalb, who faces up to 20 years in prison under federal law, will be sentenced by Moody at a later hearing.

After the verdicts were read, Christopher Thyer, the U.S. attorney for the Eastern District of Arkansas, told reporters that he was largely pleased with the jury’s decision.

“It sends a strong message that someone who would sell their badge for $500 and escort drug proceeds through the Arkansas Delta or anywhere else in the state of Arkansas will not be tolerated,” he said standing on the courthouse steps.

Thyer stressed that the FBI’s investigation into public corruption in eastern Arkansas is ongoing.

“This is a first step in what we hope to be a broader investigation, or a broader cleanup of the Arkansas Delta,” Thyer said, referring to the prosecutions that resulted from the federal sting known as Operation Delta Blues, which targeted drug-trafficking and public corruption in Phillips and Lee counties.

“From my perspective, I think things are better than they were before we got involved [in those counties], and I think things will continue to get better. Are they where they need to be? Probably not. But we’re working on that,” Thyer said.

The first phase of the Delta Blues investigation culminated Oct. 11, 2011, with the arrest of about 70 people, including Kalb and four other police officers, who were indicted on public corruption and drug charges. Of the officers, Kalb was the only one to ask for a jury trial. The other four, including Kalb’s original co-defendant, Robert “Bam Bam” Rogers, took plea bargains.

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FBI Special Agent in Charge Randy Coleman, who heads the Little Rock field office, called Kalb’s verdict “bittersweet.”

“It’s bitter in the fact that yet another sworn law enforcement officer, the fifth in this case, has been convicted of misusing her position in exchange for a couple of payments worth $500. It’s sweet in that it shows what we can do as a team in addressing public corruption, law enforcement corruption, violent gang and drug activity,” said Coleman,who praised the work of Assistant U.S. Attorneys Julie Peters and Michael Gordon, who prosecuted Kalb.

Kalb’s defense attorney, John Wesley Hall, who was appointed in the case, said the jury’s decision was inconsistent, citing the guilty verdicts on the extortion charges but acquittal on the money-laundering charges.

“They depend on the same facts,” Hall said.

In the case, extortion is defined as a “wrongful taking by a police officer of money,” even if there is no threat. The money-laundering charge relied on Kalb accepting money with intent to promote drug-trafficking, but it also required that the FBI’s informant represented that the money was drug-trafficking proceeds, according to the jury’s instructions.

Hall also questioned the jury’s decision regarding the two attempted possession of cocaine charges, which Moody had told the attorneys during the trial, out of earshot of the jurors, that he had reservations about. Federal prosecutors have argued that the two charges apply because Kalb became a “co-carrier” of the drug when she began following the informant.

Hall, who plans to appeal the verdict, said his client has always maintained her innocence and “still does.” Kalb had talked with him Thursday about the prospect of an appeal, Hall said, and had reaffirmed her intent immediately after hearing the verdict.

Kalb was “not happy but stoic,” Hall said. “She always knew this was a risk. She passed on an 18-month plea agreement a week before trial.”

In the meantime, Hall said, he will argue that Kalb shouldn’t be punished for taking her case to trial. He said he will push for her sentence to be more in line with Rogers’, who was sentenced to 14 months in prison and has since been released, and two other police officers, who both took plea bargains and were sentenced to two years or less in prison.

Another officer, Winston Dean Jackson, admitted to more-extensive corrupt conduct and drug-trafficking and was sentenced to about 6 1/2 years in prison.

The charges against Kalb stemmed from two escorts - Sept. 9, 2011, and Sept. 26, 2011, - that she gave Cornelious “CC” Coleman, the FBI informant who was posing as a drug-trafficker carrying a load of cocaine.

At first, federal agents testified, Kalb wasn’t an FBI target. Coleman was expecting to meet up with Rogers for an escort, but Rogers told Coleman that he was refereeing a high school football game.

In a recorded phone call, jurors heard Rogers suggest Kalb as a substitute for Coleman’s escort.

During trial, both sides agreed that after that phone call, Kalb provided Coleman safe passage through the city on the two occasions.

But during the trial, Hall argued that prosecutors hadn’t persuasively shown that Kalb knew Coleman was carrying drugs in his Dodge pickup when she agreed to escort him.

Prosecutors played for jurors recordings of phone calls and in-person discussions in which Coleman can be heard telling Kalb that he was “loaded down” with drugs.

Kalb, who testified Wednesday, told jurors that she didn’t hear many of the things Coleman said. Some of his in-person references to carrying drugs came while she was driving off, she said. She testified that she didn’t hear other comments he made on the phone because of her police radio and poor cell-phone reception.

Kalb also testified that she thought Coleman was carrying motorcycle parts, not drugs. Coleman had said he needed her to follow him because he was afraid of running into “dirty cops” in the city who had been harassing him since his driver’s license had been suspended for nonpayment of child support, she testified.

She testified that she never thought of Coleman as a “big time” drug dealer and had thought he was no longer involved in drugs.

When he gave her money after the first escort, she said, she thought Coleman meant for the money to go to Krissy Reynolds, a friend of Kalb’s in whom Coleman had expressed romantic interest.

Kalb’s testimony disputed much of Coleman’s version of events that he imparted to jurors on Tuesday as well as testimony by an FBI task force officer who arrested Kalb the day of the Delta Blues sweep.

During hours of testimony Tuesday, Coleman described his hometown of Helena-West Helena and Phillips County as an area with “good cops” and “bad cops,” some of whom would “shake down” drug dealers, taking not only their money but their drugs.

Coleman, a self-described lifelong drug-trafficker, told jurors that he’d known Kalb since his childhood and hadn’t originally listed her among the corrupt cops he named for FBI agents when he began working for them in summer 2011.

But as prosecutors played recordings of Coleman’s discussions with Kalb, the informant told jurors that he’d “palmed” Kalb $500 in rubber-band bound $20 bills in exchange for the escorts. He also told jurors that Kalb knew that he had been a drug-trafficker all of his life and thought he was carrying cocaine during the escorts.

Eric Knowles, a Little Rock police officer assigned to an FBI task force, also testified for the government and told jurors that Kalb admitted during an interview the day of her arrest that she escorted Coleman while she thought he was carrying a load of drugs.

On Thursday, Peters, the federal prosecutor, told jurors that the case boiled down to one question.

“The question is, did she believe that he was running motorcycle parts or cocaine?” Peters asked jurors. “The recordings make it perfectly clear he was talking about cocaine.”

On Friday, jurors agreed.

Information for this article was contributed by Linda Satter of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/15/2012