Correction: J. Thomas Ray is a U.S. magistrate judge. This article provided an incorrect title for the jurist. The article also incorrectly categorized the court-appointed attorneys in the case. James Wyatt and Richard Holiman are private-practice attorneys.
A former Arkansas State Police lieutenant accused of stealing drugs from his agency’s evidence room and selling them to a convicted drug offender made his first federal court appearance Friday afternoon after his Thursday arrest.
Dressed in a blue Pulaski County jail jumpsuit and bound in shackles, Sedrick Reed, 43, waived his right to a preliminary hearing on the charge of possession with intent to distribute less than 500 grams of cocaine.
U.S. District Judge J. Thomas Ray ruled that the former trooper would remain at the county jail until a detention hearing at 10 a.m. Tuesday.
Reed’s arrest came one day after he, in his role as supervisor of the state police evidence room, testified in a criminal trial in Pulaski County Circuit Court about drugs missing from the property room. An FBI agent monitored the proceedings Wednesday but would not say at the time why he was at the trial.
Reed is one of several law-enforcement officers and former officers who have been accused of involvement in drug dealing since 2012. On Friday, a former Little Rock police officer was convicted of selling half a pound of marijuana.
Reed, a former Marine, spent Thursday night in isolation at the jail after his 4:30 p.m. arrest at state police headquarters in Little Rock - the same building where, according to federal investigators, he was caught on camera removing several ounces of cocaine from the evidence room he was in charge of monitoring.
The federal complaint filed Thursday states that investigators used wiretaps, an unidentified informant and direct surveillance as well as video to show a business relationship between Reed and Lamont Johnson, who sold 9 ounces of cocaine to an informant, much of which Reed provided.
Johnson, 45, who pleaded guilty to drug and weapons charges in 2011, is on probation and also was arrested Thursday afternoon. During Johnson’s court appearance Friday, Ray indicated that a pending probation revocation could complicate any potential release from custody.
After Johnson waived his preliminary hearing, he was told his detention hearing was tentatively set for the same time as Reed’s.
During Friday’s court appearances, Ray said both men qualify for a court-ordered attorney. Reed’s public defender is James Wyatt and Johnson’s is Richard Holiman.
According to Ray, Reed had about $50,000 in savings, but federal prosecutors said they hadn’t ruled out seeking an asset forfeiture for drug proceeds.
If convicted, each man could face up to 20 years in prison as well as a $1 million fine.
THE INVESTIGATION
Reed’s arrest came less than a week after investigators said they caught the state police supervisor tampering with drug evidence and delivering it to Johnson.
Reed’s duties included “full oversight for Troop A’s evidence vault,” a secured room with “large amounts of narcotics” from seizures and traffic stops, investigators said in the federal complaint.
Federal officials declined to say how they were tipped to Reed, but in the court complaint, agents wrote that they developed a confidential source who was able to buy bulk amounts of cocaine from Johnson.
The complaint describes a transaction that took place July 12:
The source called Johnson at 11:29 a.m. only to learn that Johnson’s phone was out of minutes. At 2:45 p.m., the source met Johnson at his 4406 Arehart Drive home and put in an order for 9 ounces of cocaine.
By 3 p.m., Johnson had Reed on the phone, a call that was intercepted by a wiretap.
“I don’t want the problem with that other one. It is hard for me to win with that other stuff since it’s so old,” Johnson said on the phone.
“Yeah, but that’s all I got,” Reed told him. “When all that mess happened with that fool, I had to sit down.”
The complaint did not elaborate on what this conversation referred to, and Randall Coleman, special agent in charge of the FBI’s Little Rock office, would not either.
“My guy was talking about nine of them,” Johnson said, a reference to the buyer’s request for 9 ounces of cocaine.
“I will call you when I get out of here,” Reed said.
Reed then went into the evidence locker at 4:58 p.m., took out a box of evidence and walked it into an adjoining room containing seized drug scales and packaging equipment.
He returned the box to the evidence locker, and at 5:48 p.m., Johnson and Reed talked about the “quality” of the drugs. Johnson told Reed that he had already procured 5 ounces and needed 4 more to complete the deal with the investigators’ informant, according to the filing.
At 6:13 p.m., Reed was seen stopping at Johnson’s home “holding a package” as he entered.
At 9:05 p.m., after the informant bought the cocaine from Johnson, FBI and state police investigators went to the property room and found the box Reed had moved.
Investigators said the box had been tampered with and, instead of holding three separately packaged kilograms of cocaine, it had 2 kilograms and one bag with “25 percent” left.
On Monday, Reed went back to the evidence room and removed the same box. Later that night, state policeinvestigators saw that Reed had dipped from the same bag again, the court filing said.
At 4:35 p.m. Wednesday, investigators intercepted another call during which Johnson told Reed, “It is OK to bring it now.”
By 4:55 p.m., Reed pulled up to Johnson’s home in his state police vehicle, in uniform, and walked up to the house with his service weapon in plain view.
Reed left 18 minutes later.
Later that night, Johnson called Reed and told him his “nosey” girlfriend was getting suspicious, that “she will run her mouth” and that from now on, things would have to be “legitimate” whenever she was around.
On Thursday, the day of his arrest at his workplace, Reed was fired for abusing his position by taking drugs from the evidence room, breaking the law and “adversely impact[ing] the reputation of the Arkansas State Police,” according to his termination letter.
State police spokesman Bill Sadler deferred any comments to federal authorities.
Coleman declined to elaborate on the origin of the FBI’s investigation or say how long Reed and Johnson’s operation existed.
“Obviously, the investigation continues,” Coleman said. “A lot of evidence was collected. We’re going to continue to run those leads out and go where the case leads us.” TWO HISTORIES
Reed joined the state police on Jan. 2, 1996, after earning an honorable discharge from the Marine Corps, where he worked his way up from private to the rank of sergeant, according to state police documents.
Reed became a state police sergeant five years later, and in June 2004, he was promoted to lieutenant and became the assistant commander of Troop A, which is anchored in Little Rock.
In several 2012 letters indicating his interest in a promotion to captain, Reed said he had a formidable background, one built on his three years as a supervisor in the department’s anti-drug unit and informed by his leadership experience in the military.
He received several commendations for “excellent” service and “professional” conduct, including his work in providing security for visits from Vice President Joe Biden and first lady Michelle Obama, documents showed.
On July 4, 2011, Reed was accused of getting into a tense argument with a woman he knew, Dedra Rudley, and then harassing her, according to his personnel file. When she tried to get away from him, he followed her in his car, running her off the road, the records show.
Although the prosecutor’s office cleared Reed of any legal wrongdoing, such as threatening to kill Rudley, Pulaski County Prosecuting Attorney Larry Jegley told state police officials that he was disturbed by Reed’s actions.
“There is much about Lt. Reed’s behavior that is troubling,” Jegley wrote in a January 2012 letter to a state police special agent. “[Reed] should have ceased to have any contact with [Rudley] in either his professional or personal capacity. Instead of keeping his distance, however, he began watching for her and eventually pulled her over for expired tags.”
“This entire situation smacks of an abuse of authority… The situation does not reflect well on Lt. Reed or on the Arkansas State Police,” Jegley wrote.
The federal complaint leading to the arrest of Reed and Johnson did not stipulate how the men knew each other before their purported drug dealing, and federal officials declined to comment on their relationship.
But in records from a 2010 drug raid that led to Johnson’s conviction, Johnson listed Reed as a “next of kin.”
According to court files, police drug investigators and the SWAT team raided a residence with a search warrant and seized about a half-ounce of cocaine, some marijuana and a .22-caliber pistol. Three small children were also in the residence, the report noted without elaborating.
After negotiating a guilty plea to drug and weapons charges, Johnson was sentenced to five years on probation plus four months in jail in December 2011.
Authorities last month again moved to revoke his probation because he owes$2,015 in fines, according to court records. His driver’s license was suspended on June 19 because of the debt. Records show that the Chicago native, who has “Fry Dog” tattooed on his left arm, has a felony conviction but do not show what it is.
At Wednesday’s circuit court trial, Reed told jurors that he did not know what had happened to the contraband - about an ounce of marijuana and almost half an ounce of powder cocaine - but that it had not been deliberately misplaced or destroyed. He said police had searched the room but could not find the drugs.
He said the drugs were discovered missing in April 2011 when the property room was converting from using a handwritten ledger to track evidence to a computerized system.
The missing drugs - seized during a June 2010 traffic stop by a state trooper - created a significant legal issue at the trial of the defendant, Devinn Deshawn Sheppard of North Little Rock. The 29-year-old defendant, already serving a 25-year sentence for a November shooting rampage, was subsequently convicted of drug-trafficking and gun charges and sentenced to 42 years in prison.
The defense had attempted to have that evidence thrown out before trial, arguing unsuccessfully that Sheppard’s rights had been violated because he was unable to have independent testing done that could have allowed him to challenge the state Crime Laboratory’s findings.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 07/20/2013