Officer to gain release
Home detention in Conway in works for Delta drug case defendant.
The only law-enforcement officer indicted in a federal public corruption and drug case centered in the Arkansas Delta who hasn’t pleaded guilty was granted release from custody Tuesday, nearly seven months after her arrest.
Marlene Kalb, 48, of Helena-west Helena must remain under home detention with electronic monitoring at her sister’s Conway home until her jury trial, which is scheduled to begin July 30, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jerome Kearney said after hearing two hours of testimony on whether her release created a risk of flight or danger to the community.
But before Kalb’s actual release, Kearney said, U.S. probation and pretrial officers must ensure that no guns remain inside the Conway house, and that electronic monitoring equipment is set up and working.
Kalb testified that she fully intends to go to trial, because, “I want to prove that I’m not guilty. I’m not a dirty dog. I’ve never been a dirty dog.”
She was a patrol lieutenant with the Helena-west Helena Police Department when she was fired as a result of the Oct. 4, 2011, indictment in which she is charged with attempted extortion , attempted distribution and possession with intent to distribute a controlled substance (cocaine), and money laundering.
She testified that she has been a veteran of law enforcement for 27 years, starting at the department part time in 1985 and gradually working her way up to the rank of captain before leaving to join a drug task force, then returning to the department after the task force split apart and she was laid off.
During that time, she said, she has reported “dirty dogs,” or corrupt law-enforcement officers, to the FBI and the Phillips County sheriff’s office, but she said she never joined their ranks.
Later, FBI Agent Ward Seale confirmed from the witness stand that Kalb had indeed provided information to the agency at least once
in the past 10 years, and that she was not initially a target of the investigation in which she became ensnared.
Asked about Fbi-recorded conversations that prosecutors cite as evidence that she agreed to escort a drug dealer through the city in September 2011, believing he had a load of cocaine in his vehicle, Kalb said she doesn’t dispute the conversations — “not at all” — but that they were incomplete and misconstrued.
She said the FBI informant is a man she has known for a long time, adding, “I know his mother very well,” and that she didn’t think he actually had cocaine with him.
She denied taking money from him in return for escorting him on a drug-trafficking mission, but she acknowledged following him in her patrol car for nine miles to the Mississippi River bridge, and then taking money he gave her. She said it was $300, not the $500 the FBI claims, and the reason she took it was “to give to a friend of mine, who was his girlfriend.”
In answer to defense attorney John Wesley Hall’s question about whether she felt at the time like she was being “set up,” Kalb replied, “Yes, sir, I did. But I knew I wasn’t doing anything wrong. I wasn’t dirty. I wasn’t corrupt.”
According to a transcript of the conversation between Kalb and the source on the day in question, he told her, “I’ll be pulling up at Walnut Corner in about 10 minutes. I’m going to need you to pick me up at the city limits there.”
She replied, “Okay, holler at me when you get close. I’ll be hanging around waiting for you.”
The source then told Kalb, “Yeah yeah, I’m going to need you to get me to the bridge because s***, I got a s***load of cocaine with me today.”
Kalb responded, “Don’t be saying that s***. ... You trying to get me in trouble?”
She also asked him, “You working for the feds or what?,” to which he responded, “Is you crazy? Girl don’t say that no more.”
Kalb also told the caller, “Cops don’t do good in pen,” prompting him to reply, “You crazy as hell, Marlene. Don’t say no s*** like that, you crazy.”
Kalb testified that she “did hear him say” that he had a load of cocaine, but, “I thought he was playing. ... He would joke about stuff.”
She said her reference to “the feds” was her way of playing with him in return.
She said she did warn him that if he actually had cocaine, she would have to arrest him — but she said those words didn’t seem to make it onto any recording.
Seale testified that Kalb caught the attention of the FBI several days earlier when the unnamed confidential source, who posed as a drug trafficker at the FBI’S direction, went to the Helena-west Helena Police Department to meet with then-officer Robert “Bam Bam” Rogers about providing an escort for a drug run. Rogers, 36, has since pleaded guilty to an extortion charge in exchange for a 16month prison sentence.
Seale said that when the source provided his identification to an officer behind the front desk, that officer arrested him on an outstanding warrant. A short time later, Seale said, the source called him and told him, “Just listen,” then held the phone so that Seale could hear a female officer discussing which officers were working which shifts.
“I overheard a woman talking in such a way to indicate the warrant would be taken care of,” Seale said.
The agent testified that he later spoke to the desk officer, who remembered arresting the source.
“When he went back to try to find it, he said the warrant was just gone,” Seale testified.
Seale said that while the FBI had run a warrant check on the source before agreeing to use him as an undercover informant, finding nothing, he later learned that Helena-west Helena police didn’t enter their warrants into state or national warrant databases, but instead “kept them in a big bucket.”
Kalb later testified on rebuttal, “He said he’d been arrested on a warrant. He didn’t have a warrant. I went in the radio room and checked with the dispatcher.”
Kalb also insisted that she and Rogers “never talked about the informant.”
Hall told Kearney that based on Tuesday’s testimony, “I would think there would be a great possibility for an entrapment defense.”
He also argued that the three officers who have pleaded guilty to taking bribes from drug traffickers have negotiated sentences of two years at the most, indicating Kalb’s offense isn’t serious enough to warrant her continued detention. He also said he needed her out of jail to help prepare for her trial.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Julie Peters argued that Kalb could face up to 108 months in prison if convicted, saying, “The evidence against her is extremely strong. I would submit that she can’t be trusted.”
Hall noted that the FBI’S “snitch,” who Seale admitted had been paid $25,000 by the FBI, “hasn’t been cross-examined” about what he did for the money, having yet to appear in a courtroom.
Citing testimony, including promises from Kalb’s sister and mother that they would monitor her and make sure she takes her medication for depression, Kearney said prosecutors didn’t prove that she was a danger to herself and others, and agreed to release her until trial.
He admonished her not to have any contact with potential government witnesses and to “minimize” trips to Helena-west Helena with Hall to prepare for trial.