Trial starts for LR officer accused of escorting ‘pot’
A federal jury rode along Tuesday as prosecutors played a videotape taken by a Little Rock police officer’s dash-mounted camera on the morning of March 22, 2012 — when 29 patrol units raced to answer a call about a shotgun-toting man who was on the loose in a west Little Rock neighborhood after forcing people to disrobe, robbing them and possibly shooting a woman.
As the department’s SWAT team was dispatched and officers from all over the city converged on the area surrounding the 3900 block of St. James Court, off Shackleford Road, the camera captured a single black and white patrol vehicle closest to the crime scene turning the opposite direction, trailing a white van.
That patrol vehicle, a Chevrolet Tahoe, was driven by Ronald Tremayn Robinson, who was the assigned “primary officer” in the patrol district in question, and who just happened to be closest to the scene when dispatchers sent out the call at 8:43 a.m.
Robinson, now 39, is on trial this week in federal court in Little Rock on charges related to that morning, when FBI agents say they had him and his half brother, fellow officer Mark Anthony Jones, under surveillance as they used their patrol cars to follow and “protect” vans they believed were each carrying
500 pounds of marijuana to storage units.
In fact, the story that a confidential informant told the officers about needing their help to escort 1,000 pounds of marijuana across the city was part of an FBI “sting” operation, which resulted in both officers being arrested on several felony charges apiece.
As a result of the charges, Jones, 46, was fired after 26 years with the department, and Robinson, an 11-year veteran, resigned.
Jones avoided trial by pleading guilty on June 28 to a single charge of attempting to aid and abet the distribution of 1,000 pounds of marijuana, in exchange for six other charges against him being dropped. That left Robinson to face trial on his own, on five charges: distribution of marijuana, conspiracy to distribute marijuana, aiding and abetting the distribution of marijuana, possessing a firearm during a drug trafficking offense and misprision of a felony, or failing to report a crime of which he was aware.
Jones faces between five and 40 years in prison, with federal sentencing guidelines likely to suggest at least 6 ½ years, when he is sentenced at a later date. If convicted, Robinson faces a potential sentence of several years behind bars.
Another video that a federal jury watched Tuesday showed Jones walking into the Mail Express store on Bowman Curve later on the day of the marijuana “escort” and collecting $10,000 cash, to be split with his half-brother, from Brandon Hill.
Hill, an admitted former marijuana dealer, owned the business. He testified Tuesday that he was acting as a confidential informant for the FBI after agents intercepted a package of marijuana he had shipped to himself.
FBI Agent Mike Lowe testified on Monday, the first day of Robinson’s trial, that federal agents had been watching the half-brothers since 2010, at the request of Little Rock police.
The request was made after a situation on Aug. 4, 2009, in which detective Charles Weaver testified about working with a confidential informant to catch Robinson accepting $600 from an informant after meeting him outside a Reser- voir Road apartment complex and giving him a half-pound of marijuana, as arranged earlier in a monitored telephone call.
Defense attorney Bill James of Little Rock is scheduled to begin presenting defense witnesses when the trial resumes at 9 a.m. today before U.S. District Judge James Moody.
James told the jury of 11 women and one man on Monday that Robinson was “nothing more than a pawn in his brother’s plan.” He said that when Robinson followed behind one of the two vans in March of 2012, he was simply obeying the orders of his older brother, a senior officer, and had no idea that he was helping Jones do anything illegal.
James told jurors that Robinson intends to testify. Prosecutors rested their case Tuesday without calling Jones as a witness.
On Monday, Lowe, using aerial maps and photographs, showed jurors how, on two previous occasions before the March 22, 2012, sting, Jones provided a protective escort for what he believed were smaller loads of marijuana in return for cash from Hill. Lowe said that after watching those two escorts, FBI agents had Hill ask Jones to bring another officer on board to help protect a truckload of marijuana that was expected to arrive in Little Rock in March from California. Lowe played excerpts of audio recordings in which Jones responded that the only other officer he trusted was Robinson.
The potential hostage situation that coincidentally unfolded on St. James Court just after the false “escort” began on March 22 ended up without anyone being hurt, though several shots were fired.
The responding officers’ lieutenant, Scott Timmons, testified on Tuesday about electronic equipment that captured the activity of each patrol car in the area that day. He described how one responding officer’s camera captured the video of Robinson’s patrol car heading the opposite direction.
Jurors also heard audio recordings Tuesday of Jones later telling Hill in a telephone call that Robinson was too scared to provide an escort again.
“I can tell you right now, he’s out. Yeah, it’s nerve-racking as hell. … He almost had a heart attack,” Jones can be heard saying as he described Robinson’s reaction to seeing other officers headed toward him with their blue lights flashing.