After arrests, city quiet

HELENA-WEST HELENA — For 10 years, residents of this Delta town have watched their neighborhoods decay.

They’ve heard late-night knocks on their doors, when drug-seeking thugs mistook their homes for those belonging to dealers.

They’ve seen expensive, flashy cars in decrepit areas where such vehicles stand out.

Many nights, they were jarred from sleep when gunshots pierced the silence.

“It’s just been obvious,” said Bill Brothers, 60, a lifelong resident. “You don’t see them passing drugs, but you just know because of all the people and the cars, and people now with new Mercedes, and you wonder, ‘Where did that come from?’ There was a lot of bang-bang and boomboom.”

On Tuesday, 700 federal agents swarmed into the city and surrounding areas with warrants for 71 people accused of running large and brazen drug operations.

At last, for the first time in a decade, the streets fell quiet.

“Last night it was peaceful, nice, quiet, like it hadn’t been in a long time,” Brothers said.

More than 100 miles away in Little Rock, six people on Wednesday joined the more than 50 already being held at the Pulaski County jail awaiting hearings in federal court today.

All, including five police officers, face charges related to seven federal indictments handed up that lay out a sophisticated drug-trafficking operation replete with police corruption — officers escorting cocaine runners, taking bribes and tipping off dealers about search warrants.

On Wednesday, four people turned themselves in to law enforcement officers in Helena-West Helena, and a fifth man was arrested without incident in St. Francis County, Arkansas State Police spokesman Bill Sadler said. Another man was taken into custody late Wednesday.

Sadler and Special Agent Steve Frazier, spokesman for the FBI’s Little Rock field office, declined to release additional information.

Pulaski County jail records show that one of those arrested Wednesday was 37-year-old Torrance Turner of Marianna.

According to the indictment, Turner — who goes by “Hot Shot” — “directed a drug trafficking organization based in Marianna ... that was responsible for the distribution of quantities of cocaine, crack cocaine and marijuana in Lee County as well as other counties.”

Turner is accused of possessing and trafficking more than 11 pounds of cocaine, 9.8 ounces of crack cocaine and more than 220 pounds of marijuana and other substances mixed with it, according to the indictment.

As of Wednesday, federal officials had released the names and photographs of seven people named in the indictments who were still at large.

Marlon Sheard, Kentrell Starks, Milton Johnson, Melvin Brown, Charles Hunter, Melinda Parker and Torrance C. Davis were not in custody as of Wednesday afternoon, according to an FBI news release.

Meanwhile, in the small town in the blues heart of the Delta, Mayor Arnell Willis rejoiced.

“Welcome to the dawn of a new day in Helena-West Helena,” he said.

After 10 years of worsening crime and allegations of corruption in the Police Department, residents needed to see something happen, he said.

“It’s given hope to people who have lost hope.”

THE CALL

Unbeknownst to Willis and the rest of the city, federal authorities and Arkansas State Police began looking into possible drug trafficking and corruption two years ago.

Dubbed Operation Delta Blues, the investigation focused on Lee and Phillips counties.

One month ago, Helena-West Helena recorded its eighth murder of the year.

Angry and frustrated, Willis paid a visit to U.S. Attorney Christopher Thyer and begged the prosecutor for federal help with what he called a “known corruption problem” in Helena-West Helena.

“It’s steadily worsened in recent years,” the mayor said Wednesday. “And to see eight murders in one year in a small town is too much. We were just fed up.”

He blamed the problems on the sagging economy that has put millions of people across America in a financial slump.

“People want to live in a nice home, have nice cars and things like that,” Willis said. “People make bad choices sometimes, and there is a lot of pressure. But people have to know that they cannot turn to a life of crime.”

At the point of Willis’ visit with the federal prosecutor, Operation Delta Blues was about to go into action.

Thyer, however, couldn’t share that information with the mayor. Instead, he reassured Willis that something would be done.

At 4 a.m. Tuesday, Willis’ phone rang, jarring him from sleep.

His first thought: Are my kids OK?

But the man on the phone identified himself as an FBI agent.

Willis was skeptical, but after asking a few questions, he decided the caller was legitimate.

“We are in your city right now,” the FBI agent said. “What you’re about to see is unprecedented. As I’m speaking to you, we’re handing out warrants right now.”

Federal authorities also called the city’s Police Chief Uless Wallace, who took charge of the Police Department only a month ago.

An FBI agent told Wallace that five of his officers were being arrested.

Wallace then met with federal officials at a secret rendezvous spot in town, where FBI agents outlined the blatant corruption inside the Helena-West Helena Police Department.

The chief wasn’t surprised.

In fact, he’d already opened an internal investigation focused on seven of his officers.

Two of them — Robert Rogers and Sgt. Marlene Kalb — were arrested Tuesday, Wallace said.

The other five will remain under an internal police investigation.

“I don’t know what may come of these investigations,” Wallace said Wednesday.

“The mayor told me when I took this job that it would be challenging and that there are a den of snakes here.

“I love a challenge.”

AWAKENED BY RAIDS

As hundreds of federal agents and state police officers surged under the cover of darkness through the Delta towns — Helena-West Helena, Marianna, Marvell — neighbors of the targeted houses were shaken from sleep by shouts, bangs on doors, flashing lights and, in Marianna, gunfire.

Willia Rucker, who lives next door to Apartment 328 on Desoto Street — known by drug dealers and their customers as “The Projects” — happened to be up getting a drink of water when four sport utility vehicles with flashing lights pulled up.

Alarmed, she opened her front door and peered outside.

“Open the door!” she heard someone yell as he banged on the door of her neighbor Jessie Brewer. And then — “Go around back!”

Rucker shut her door but continued to watch the scene unfold through her window blinds.

Several bobbing flashlights illuminated Brewer’s car as authorities looked inside.

Next door, federal agents were going through the apartment.

While startled, Rucker wasn’t surprised. Ever since she’d moved into her apartment in April, she’d been suspicious of the number of cars and people coming and going.

“And people were knocking on my door at all hours of the night,” probably, she said, because they mistook her apartment for Brewer’s.

Like many, Rucker was relieved to see authorities finally take action against Brewer, who is in custody.

“I hope they got all of them, but I still figure it’s higher up,” she said.

At 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, just a few hours after the raid that Rucker described, Bill Brothers drove toward the Helena-West Helena Municipal Airport.

Brothers buys and sells airplanes and serves on the airport commission.

At the airport entrance, however, state police stopped him.

“What are you doing here?” an officer asked.

“Well, I work here,” Brothers said.

“Not today,” the officer replied, and ordered him to turn around.

So Brothers headed to town, got a haircut and fielded calls from other baffled airport workers.

Suddenly, things he’d seen and heard the night before made sense.

About 5:30 p.m. Monday, he’d noticed a lot of cars parked at the National Guard Armory, which is next to the airport. At the time, he’d figured the Guard was setting up something for military training.

But later, around 9:30 p.m., when he went to check on some newly installed runway lights, the gathering had grown. Brothers found it strange that the armory lights were still on and a tent was set up outside.

When he received a call at 6 the next morning from an airport mechanic, he realized that it was more than a military exercise.

The Federal Aviation Administration had enacted a temporary flight restriction, barring flights from landing at the airport, the mechanic told him.

The mechanic also was turned away by law enforcement officers when he tried to go to work.

In the following hours, Brothers and the other 15 or so airport workers learned more in dribs and drabs as federal agents continued to transport more and more suspects to the armory.

“It was a massive operation,” he recalled Wednesday. “I was awed by it.”

A mile down the highway, at the busy corner of U.S. 49 and Business U.S. 49, an automobile business called AC Customs Exotic Whips was deserted.

The white metal shop with orange trim showed the signs of an executed search warrant: 5-foot windows busted, shards dangling, front door flung open.

Across from the shop, less than 1,000 feet away, is Eliza Miller Junior High.

There, Principal Monica McMurray said she was surprised to learn that federal agents had raided the shop Tuesday because she’d never noticed anything untoward there.

“At times, you’d look over there and you’d see car there and with it being a body shop, that’s what you think it is. I had no reason to think any different,” she said.

The shop wasn’t a hangout for her middle-schoolers, she said. Most of the 275 students are bused in, so few even walk past the place where federal agents say drugs were stored and prepared for sale.

And school officials haven’t found evidence that the drugs made it into the hands of the students, who are seventh- and eighth-graders.

“We’ve never had any major situation with drug trafficking or students for that reason. I have no reason to believe now or in the past that that was a problem for our school,” she said.

Some of her students, however, are related to those listed in the federal indictments.

“Some children did have questions, but we as educators have to be very general in what we say because you don’t know who’s related and who’s affected,” she said.

“You just want to make sure you are explaining that this is something to keep us safe. This is something to help all of us in the community in the long-run.”

Brothers agreed.

“We’re hoping it’s going to make a difference, and the start of a big difference. The mayor is a godsend. He is trying to help get this place orderly, straight ... back to the way it used to be.”

‘WINDS OF CHANGE’

Morale at the Helena-West Helena Police Department hasn’t been affected by the arrests, the mayor and chief said.

And thus far, the department isn’t missing the lost manpower.

“We are driving on,” Wallace said. “We have plenty of people waiting in line to become officers.”

The department currently employs 35 officers.

The mayor wouldn’t speculate further on why or how corruption was able to seep into the Helena-West Helena Police Department. His focus, he said, was on making sure it never happens again.

Outside the municipal building, drivers honked and waved as Mayor Willis talked on a street corner at midday Wednesday.

“We are going to move beyond the culture of corruption and bring back hope. There is such a breath of fresh air here today. Change is happening. The winds of change are blowing through this city and Phillips County.”

Another car passed. The window slid down.

“Keep up the good work, Mayor,” a woman called from a passing car. He waved and laughed quietly.

“That’s a sign of approval.”