Mother accuses NOPD of framing son

5th September 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Michael Radcliff
Contributing Writer

“At approximately 11 p.m. on July 23, 1900 — three white police officers investigated ‘two suspicious looking Negro males’ sitting on a porch at the 2800 block of Dryades Street – in a predominantly white neighborhood. They arrived to find two Negroes males at the scene. The policemen questioned the two Negro men, demanding to know what they ‘were doing and how long they had been there.’ One of the two Negroes replied that they were ‘waiting for a friend,’ then stood up, which the police believed to be an aggressive move. One of the white police officers grabbed him and began to hit the Negro with his billet club; the Negro fought back. The white police officer then pulled his gun and the Negro in turn pulled his gun. Shots were exchanged and both men received non-lethal wounds. The Negro then fled, leaving behind a trail of blood.” The outrage that followed would live on in infamy as The Robert Charles Riots of 1900.

One hundred and ten years later, at approximately 10:30 p.m. on May 31, 2010, four New Orleans police officers — three white and one Black — investigated “four suspicious looking African-American males” sitting on a porch at the 2700 block of Dryades Street — in a predominantly Black neighborhood. They arrived to find four African-American males at the scene. The policemen questioned the four African-American males, deman­d­ing to know what they “were doing and how long they had been there.” They were ordered to “assume the position” on the unmarked police cruiser and when one of the four African-American males complained about being pushed by one of the police officers, another African-American male spoke up in his brother’s defense.

According to reports, the police believed this to be an aggressive move, and one of the officers reportedly told him, “Since you have so much to say then bring your ass over here,” then proceeded to handcuff him and place him in the back of the police cruiser.

Witnesses say that the officer continued by saying, “I’ll fix it so that the next time an officer tells you to shut up…. You will shut up!”

Without any further explanation, reportedly, the young Black male was driven off into the night by the officers — prompting the mom of the accused, who now feared for her son, Corey’s, life, to call 911 and report her son “kidnapped by the police.”

Corey’s mother, Ms. Troylynn Robertson, would later be informed by the NOPD that her son was being arrested for possession of crack cocaine and was being taken to Central Lock-Up for processing.

The above account, according to the accused and his family, and witnesses who looked on in shock, are the events that they say actually took place on that fateful night. The official trial version of this incident would change drastically from this version.

According to the police report and/or subsequent trial testimony, the arresting two officers who were paired together that night had not previously worked to­gether — the significance of this will be later become apparent. This night they were assigned to the special operations task force. As per their statements at the trial, when they turned onto the 2700 block of Dryades St. the suspect (Corey Robertson) stood alone on the curb staring across the street until he spotted the officers in an unmarked police cruiser. Upon seeing the un­marked police cruiser, he panicked. Thinking it odd to see a young man standing alone on a curb looking startled, the police officers allegedly shined a “spotlight” on him, which prompted Corey — in full view of the officers shining a spotlight in his face — to put his fingers into his mouth, remove something, then drop the item on the ground near the curb, a mere 10 to 15 feet from the police cruiser, then turn and walk back towards his residence. In the police report, arrest summary, and at preliminary hearings, there was never any mention of either officer shining a spotlight on the suspect until the trial. As one of the officers jumped out of the cruiser to see what the suspect allegedly drop­ped, the other officer intercepted the suspect before he reached the door of the residence. Retrieving what appeared to be a crack rock, wrapped in a cellophane bundle, on the curb in front of the suspect’s house. According to the police, the item would be field-tested for narcotics and the results would be positive for cocaine, whereupon Corey Ro­bert­son would be arrested on possession of a Schedule 2 controlled substance — .17 grams of crack cocaine.

Mr. Robertson would then be read his rights and then be placed in the back of the police cruiser and driven directly to the prison located at Tulane and Broad.

Ms. Robertson’s version as explained to The Louisiana Weekly, is that on the night of May 31 at around 10 p.m., her sons Corey and Conroy were sitting on the front porch of their Central City residence with two of their friends when two NOPD cruisers pulled up and began questioning them. Hearing the fracas going on outside she got dressed and went outside to investigate. By the time she had reached the front porch, her son Conroy and two of his friends were face down, leaning over one of the police cruisers and her son Corey was sitting in the back of another police car. As she approached, one of the officers to inquire as to what was going on, (the following being verified by her recorded conversation with a 911 operator on the night of May 31, 2010), he told her that whenever they see a group of young men “going back and forth at night,” that they’re going to stop them. When she asked why one of her sons was sitting in the back of the police car, he told her that he wasn’t sure but that she should ask the arresting officers. As she turned and walked towards the unit Corey was seated in, the car sped off towards the river — the opposite direction of the jailhouse — and stopped on a corner a few blocks away. Nervous and frightened for her son’s life, she then ran inside and called 911, informing the operator that her son had just been “kidnapped” by the police. It was at this point the 911 operator would ask her if she wanted a ranking officer on the scene, she said “yes.” After waiting a few anxious moments, two ranking NOPD officers arrived on the scene and explained to her that her son Corey was being arrested for possession of crack cocaine and was being taken to jail. Ms. Robertson would hire criminal attorney John Fuller to represent her son.

The Pre-Trial Hearing & the Trial

At the pre-trial hearing, Ms. Robertson explained to The Louisiana Weekly that the D.A.’s office offered her son a deal in which they would recommend “time served” for a guilty plea. In other words, if he pled guilty, he could go home. He refused the offer. It was at this hearing, Ms. Robertson explained, that she realized that the NOPD was attempting to “sanitize” the case.

According to Ms. Robertson, “Instead of two cars of police rolling up to my house, according to their testimony and the police report they made-up, it was one unit cruising down the street minding their own business,” she added. “Instead of my sons and their friends sitting on their porch, it was Corey standing on the curb by himself, like a damn zombie, staring out into space — with a crack rock in his mouth — that he would take out of his mouth only when they shined a light on him — a light that they failed to mention in their police report or the first hearing but magically appears at the trial.”

Ms. Robertson presented documents to The Louisiana Weekly showing that her son Corey, having been hired by BP, had recently — the previous week — completed a 40-hour HAZWOPER, or Hazardous Waste Operations and Emergency Response Stan­dard course, which earned him his certification, and he was anxiously awaiting a call to do his drug testing so that he could begin working.

“Why would my son go through all the trouble of training for a job, knowing full well that they could call him at any time for his drug testing, and stand on the street, in front of my house, with a crack rock in his mouth?” she asked. “They couldn’t say he was using because, according to their own testimony, he didn’t have any pipes or drug paraphernalia on him. They couldn’t say that he was selling, because again, according to them, he didn’t have any money on him. I believe Corey must’ve said something that they did not like and they were going to beat him up but after I called 911 they did him the same thing that they did to that guy in Algiers last year — planted a crack rock on him. If Corey had crack on him, he would have accepted the DA’s deal and pled guilty and he would be home by now and not facing a four-year prison sentence.”

At the pre-trial hearing, according the trial transcript acquired by The Louisiana Weekly, only one of the two arresting officers showed up at the hearing. According to Ms. Robertson, not only did the officers not perform a standard field test on the alleged crack rock at the scene, but also even if they had, for the entire time they were there — there were no ranking officers on the scene to sign off on the results as required by departmental policy. Ranking officers did not appear, she insisted, until after the officers left with her son and her call to 911.

At the hearing, when asked whether he conducted a field test on the object found on the ground to confirm that it was in fact a narcotic, the officer replied, “Yes.” When asked by Mr. Fuller if he had placed the test kit into evidence, the officer responded, “No… we’re not required to… there’s nothing in our regulations that says we have to put that into (evidence)… because it’s going to be tested by the crime lab after the fact anyway.” When asked if he had a receipt, a test kit number or anything to show that the test was actually done, the D.A. objected and informed the court that the crime lab had actually confirmed that the substance was actually cocaine.

The court agreed.

“If you accept what they say, then even if they did not do the field test on the substance — which they didn’t — they back it up by saying the crime lab said it was a drug and the crime lab makes no mistakes,” Ms. Robert­son insisted. She provided The Louisiana Weekly with copies of a police report and the crime lab report of another one of her relatives who in a totally separate case had been arrested for possession of marijuana. Ac­cording to the police report, a young African-American male was stopped by another police officer after he was seen smoking what the officer suspected was marijuana.

The suspect readily admitted his guilt. The officer then confiscated a single bag of vegetable matter, which he field tested and the results were positive for marijuana. The bag was then confiscated and turned over to the crime lab for analysis. The results of the crime lab report stated that, “THREE clear plastic bags of marijuana were tested and all came back positive for marijuana.”

“Where did they get the other TWO bags?” asked Ms. Robertson. “When he was arrested, according to him and the police report, he only had ONE bag of weed!!!”

Aside from the issue of the circumstances of her son’s arrest and the treatment of the evidence, Ms. Robertson also raised the issue of her son’s legal rights. “Like I said, I don’t believe that they had any intention of arresting my son,” she told The Louisiana Weekly. “They left the scene in such a hurry that they didn’t even bother reading him his rights. They threw him in the back of their car and sped off. This is why the first officer that I spoke to that night didn’t know anything about why he was in the back of the other car and told me to ask them.”

A careful review of both the pre-trial hearing as well as the trial testimony itself, seems to confirm Ms. Robertson’s claim that Corey Robertson was not read his Miranda rights. According to the pre-trial hearing, when asked by Mr. Fuller, Corey’s attorney, if he had read the defendant his rights, Officer Keaton replied, “No, not me… my partner (Officer Harris) did.” When asked when Corey Robertson’s rights were read to him the officer said, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask my partner (Officer Harris).” His partner, Officer Harris, was not present at the hearing. When asked by Mr. Fuller how he knew his partner had read the defendant his rights, the officer responded by saying “Because I heard him…”

Conversely, when his partner (Officer Harris) was finally cross-examined at the trial — when the defendant’s attorney, Mr. Fuller, asked him if the Miranda warnings were given to his client — according to the trial transcript, the officer responded, “Yes.” When Fuller asked where Corey Robertson’s rights were read to him, Officer Harris responded by saying “Where?” “YES, where?” repeated Mr. Fuller. “The Miranda warnings were given to him once my partner (Officer Keaton), tested the cocaine — well, the crack and it tested positive for cocaine, HE (i.e. Officer Keaton) then placed him in handcuffs and ADVISED him of his rights,” Officer Harris testified.

While each police officer allegedly claims that the other police officer read the defendant his rights, the transcripts seems to contradict them. “I don’t know about Officer Harris,” said Ms. Robertson, “but Officer Keaton said under oath that he heard Officer Harris read Corey his rights and when Officer Harris took the witness stand, he said under oath that he did not read Corey his rights. He said Officer Keaton did — one or both of them are lying and that’s perjury.”

The Verdict and the Aftermath

On January 4 a jury of his peers found Corey Robertson guilty. On February 24 he was sentenced to 40 months of hard labor. The result of the trial left little solace for Ms. Robertson, whose youn­gest son was now faced with spending the next three years of his life behind bars because as she sees it, her son lived in the wrong part of town and was allegedly victimized by a “made-up” police report and the perjured testimony of two of New Orleans’ finest.

A real estate broker by trade, Ms. Robertson decided to take matters into her own hands, when she and a small group of family and friends began their own independent investigation into her son’s case and after combing the web and relentlessly going over the various reports and transcripts was able to put together a list of questionable facts and statements relating to her son’s arrest to present both to the trial judge and the Police Integrity Bureau.

NOPD Assistant Superintendent and Deputy Chief Arlinda West­brook confirmed that she has met with Ms. Robertson and told The Louisiana Weekly that “the matter is currently under investigation.”

In the meantime, Corey Robert­son’s conviction is currently on appeal and the NOPD’s Public Integrity Bureau is investigating the case.

This article was originally published in the September 5, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper