LITTLE ROCK — A former Helena-West Helena police lieutenant testified Wednesday during her trial that she was set up by an FBI informant who made it falsely appear in secret recordings that she agreed to help him transport cocaine through the city in return for cash.
But an FBI task-force officer who interviewed Marlene Kalb immediately after her arrest testified that she admitted to him, in an unrecorded interview, that she had indeed taken bribes for helping the informant, believing he was transporting drugs.
Closing arguments in the federal trial that began Monday are to begin at 1 p.m. today, followed by deliberations by the eightwoman, four-man jury.
Kalb, 49, faces possible convictions on extortion, money-laundering and drug charges, the latter of which U.S. District Judge James Moody said at one point Wednesday that he had “concerns about all along” and will consider dismissing if the jury convicts her on them.
The former officer of nearly 27 years was one of 70 people, including four other law-enforcement officers in the area, who were arrested in October 2011 in an FBI-led investigation dubbed Operation Delta Blues. The investigation focused on public corruption and drug trafficking in primarily Phillips and Lee counties. Several defendants, including the four other officers, have negotiated guilty pleas and have been sentenced to prison in the case.
Kalb’s testimony came Wednesday afternoon after prosecutors rested their case and defense attorney John Wesley Hall called nine character witnesses who touted Kalb’s honest reputation.
Kalb told jurors that she was somewhat puzzled in the fall of 2011 by the sudden flurry of calls she began receiving from Cornelious “CC” Coleman, the FBI’s informant. She had known him “off and on” for years but hadn’t seen him in some time, she said. Indeed, she said, she didn’t even recognize him when he showed up one day at the Police Department building.
Kalb said that she soon learned, however, that Coleman had a romantic interest in a friend of hers, Krissy Reynolds, and chalked up his repeated calls as efforts to woo her friend.
Kalb testified that Coleman’s testimony against her Tuesday was simply false.
She didn’t deny driving behind his pickup in her marked police car on two occasions — Sept. 9, 2011, and Sept. 26, 2011 — to “escort” him through the city. But she told jurors she didn’t believe that he was carrying drugs.
She had heard years earlier that Coleman dealt drugs. But last year when he told her that he was no longer involved in drugs, she believed him, Kalb testified.
“I thought he had changed,” she said. She also didn’t know that he was recording her phone calls and conversations using a body microphone, she said.
On FBI recordings of phone calls and in-person discussions, Coleman can be heard telling Kalb he was “loaded down” with drugs. But Kalb testified that she didn’t hear those remarks.
She noted that some of the statements he made in person came as she was driving away from him. She said other times during phone calls, his words were drowned out by the police radio inside her car or were muffled by spotty cellphone reception.
“Half the time I couldn’t understand what he said,” she told jurors, and other times, she was simply “humoring him” by agreeing with him without knowing exactly what he was saying.
Kalb said she understood that it was important for Coleman to travel through Helena-West Helena periodically to pick up motorcycle parts at a shop he frequented in Marianna, near a place where he raced motorcycles.
Kalb said 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. Coleman testified a day earlier that he refused to pay $12,000 in back child support because he contested his paternity.
Kalb testified that it was within her discretion, according to Police Department policy, not to stop Coleman for the suspended driver’s license, and that she had hoped he would remedy the legal situation.
She also testified that she accepted cash from Coleman after her first escort in the belief that he wanted her to give it to her friend Krissy, who she saw regularly at an off-duty job at a gas station. She said she didn’t take any money from him after the second escort, but he tossed a wad of cash into her car through an opened window as she drove off.
Kalb also disputed earlier testimony by Little Rock police officer Eric Knowles, who is assigned to an FBI task force and arrested Kalb on Oct. 11, 2011.
Knowles, the last witness for the government, testified that Kalb told him a much different story during a 5 a.m. interview in the back seat of a police car, where she sat wearing “Hello Kitty” pajamas.
Knowles said he asked Kalb about Coleman, “You knew he was a drug dealer, and you knew that he wanted you to protect his drug shipment through town, and you accepted money for it. Did you know that was wrong?”
“She said, ‘Yes, sir,’” Knowles said.
Kalb talked with him for about an hour and 45 minutes, detailing her conduct as well as the illicit conduct of other officials including police officer Winston Dean Jackson, who is now serving prison time because of the Delta Blues investigation, Knowles testified.
Kalb said she saw Jackson “shake down” drug dealers, Knowles testified. Jackson was a police captain at the time.
“She’s actually seen and observed Capt. Jackson beat and rob, not only money from drug dealers but their drugs as well,” Knowles recalled Kalb saying in the interview.
He said Kalb also provided information concerning other “public officials in Helena-West Helena and Phillips County that had been committing illegal acts.”
“She presented a gamut of information concerning local police officers, sheriff’s deputies, a judge and a county prosecutor as well,” Knowles testified. He didn’t refer to any of the officials by name.
Knowles testimony came a day after Coleman, the FBI informant, testified that he had once paid Phillips County Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Todd Murray “$30,000 under the table in cashier’s checks” in exchange for assistance with a drug arrest.
Murray, reached later by phone, emphatically denied Coleman’s allegation, saying, “I have never taken any money from Cornelious Coleman or any other criminal.” Murray called the accusation “ridiculous” and “a bald-faced lie.”
A federal agent testified earlier that Coleman had, at the FBI’s behest, secretly recorded 10 public officials including Phillips County Sheriff Ronnie White and an administrator at the Phillips County jail. The agent didn’t elaborate but said that as a result, he feared for the safety of Coleman when he was placed in the Phillips County jail. The FBI then arranged to have Coleman housed in another jail.
Murray, White and the unnamed jail administrator have not been charged in the case.
During Wednesday’s crossexamination in the federal trial in Little Rock, Kalb told Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Gordon that she had no tolerance for illegal drug activity and would arrest anyone she suspected of possessing drugs.
Gordon then played a part of one of the recorded phone calls in which Kalb says she knew two men who had been in her house were “smoking dope.”
“I don’t give a shit about weed. That ain’t no big deal,” Kalb said during the recorded conversation with Coleman.
Kalb told Gordon she made the comment to build a rapport with Coleman.
During a tense and at times combative conclusion to Kalb’s questioning, Gordon scoffed at Kalb’s assertions that she didn’t hear Coleman refer to any drugs in his car and had thought he was carrying motorcycle parts.
Gordon also suggested that Kalb didn’t visually search Coleman’s vehicle looking for drugs as she said she did.
Aerial video didn’t record her searching the truck, and the recordings didn’t include any threats by her to arrest him if he had drugs — something Kalb testified she had said.
“It’s all bad luck, right?” Gordon said.
“Yes sir,” she said.
Gordon later asked Kalb why her testimony didn’t match with that of Knowles.
“I don’t know why he’s lying,” Kalb said.
“Just more bad luck?” Gordon replied.
Front Section, Pages 1 on 12/13/2012