LITTLE ROCK — A former Little Rock police officer accused of participating in a scheme to rob an armored car monitored his police radio so that he could alert his co-conspirators of any trouble during an unsuccessful robbery attempt in September 2005, a prosecutor said Thursday.
Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon said the 2005 attempted robbery targeted an employee of Arkansas Armored Car Service at the company’s main office on Daisy Gatson Bates Drive in Little Rock. The attempt failed, Gordon said, when one of the would-be robbers dropped his gun as he approached the employee outside the building.
Gordon briefly described the robbery attempt, including the role of former Little Rock officer Jason Gilbert, during a hearing in federal court for Sterling Platt, a former UAMS police officer charged with participating in the conspiracy.
Prosecutors say the conspiracy eventually led to the robbery of an armored car outside a US Bank branch in North Little Rock in 2007 that netted $400,000.
Gilbert and Platt are among five people who were indicted in the case by a grand jury in January.
Three of the defendants - Gilbert, former U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs police officer Allen Clark, and Antonio Person of North Little Rock - are set for trial on the charges Nov. 28. Another defendant, Mark Davis of Little Rock, is scheduled to change his plea from innocent at a hearing Tuesday.
At the hearing Thursday, Platt, 30, pleaded guilty to being part of the conspiracy, but U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes agreed to not accept the plea pending the outcome of an argument by attorney Jeff Rosenzweig that the statute of limitations on the charge has expired.
Rosenzweig, who represents Clark, says his client is accused only of participating in the 2005 attemptedrobbery scheme, which he contends was a separate conspiracy from the one that led to the 2007 robbery.
The conspiracy charge has a five-year statute of limitations, Rosenzweig said. Because the indictment was not handed downuntil this January, he argues, the charges against his client should be dismissed.
“By erroneously conflating two separate conspiracies into one, the government seeks to avoid the statute of limitations dismissal under ... which Clark would otherwise be entitled,” Rosenzweig wrote in a filing last week, saying in a footnote that Clark “hastens to add that he was not part of any conspiracy.”
If Holmes chooses not to dismiss the charges, Rosenzweig wrote, a jury should be allowed to decide whether the 2005 robbery attempt and 2007 robbery were part of the same conspiracy.
Gilbert’s attorney, Jason Files of Little Rock, echoed Rosenzweig’s argument in a filing Monday. Files said Gilbert “expects that there will be some testimony indicating that he monitored a police radio during the 2005 attempt” but that prosecutors have “no credible evidence” of Gilbert’s involvement in the 2007 robbery.
In a response filed Thursday, Gordon contended that both episodes were part of the same conspiracy. He wrote that “multiple groups and the performance of separate crimes or acts do not rule out the possibility that one overall conspiracy exists.”
Gordon told Holmes at the hearing Thursday that Platt participated in the 2005 robbery attempt along with Person, Gilbert, Clark and Davis.Gordon said members of the same group also conducted surveillance that year on the US Bank branch in North Little Rock but didn’t attempt a robbery at that location that year.
Platt left the group before the 2007 robbery, Gordon told Holmes.
Holmes said he agreed that if the two conspiracieswere separate, the statute of limitations would bar Platt from being prosecuted. Attorneys are expected to argue the issue at a hearing today. Holmes said he didn’t know whether the matter would be decided at the hearing or at the trial.
Holmes told Platt that if he accepts his plea, Platt could be sentenced to up to 20 years in prison and fined up to $250,000.
Of the five people named in the indictment in January, only Person is accused in the indictment of taking part in the Sept. 10, 2007, robbery at the bank branch at No. 1 Pershing Circle.
Police have said an armored-car employee making a delivery at the bank branch was robbed by two men, one of whom pointed a gun at the employee.
The robbers stole $400,000, which police said they later recovered. Person was arrested four days after the robbery. Two other men, Oscar Holmes and Eric Owens, were named in an earlier indictment and have pleaded guilty.
Owens was sentenced in March to three years’ supervised release. A sentencing date for Holmes has not been set.
Platt became a UAMS police officer Sept. 10, 2007, the same day as the armored-car robbery in North Little Rock, UAMS spokesman Leslie Taylor said. He was fired Feb. 24, she said.
Gilbert was fired from the Little Rock Police Department on Jan. 28 for violations of department policies related to separate charges he faces in state court. He has pleaded innocent in Pulaski County Circuit Court to felony counts of theft by receiving and second-degree forgery, as well as a misdemeanor count of possession of marijuana.
Gilbert was also arrested by the Arkansas State Police on a driving-while-intoxicated charge Oct. 23, 2010.
Arkansas, Pages 9 on 11/18/2011