Former DeKalb County Georgia Detective Anthony A. Robinson Has Active State Certification After Conviction For Stealing From Convience Store 3 Years Ago

DEKALB COUNTY, GEORIGA – A former DeKalb County police detective was still eligible to be a sworn officer, despite being convicted of stealing from a convenience store more than three years ago, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution has learned.

The Georgia Peace Officers Standards and Training Council only on Tuesday learned that Anthony A. Robinson was no longer a cop and that a court order required him to surrender his certification.

Officials for the state agency that certifies police say a new state law can prevent such oversights in the future.

“It’s already working,” Georgia P.O.S.T. executive director Ken Vance said.

Robinson, 42, pleaded guilty in February 2009 to violating his oath as an officer and theft by taking, after he was caught on film in 2008 taking money and lottery tickets during a police raid.

As part of his three-year probation, he was directed to not “work as a police officer and surrender [his] certification as a law enforcement officer.”

But before Tuesday, Robinson’s status was listed on the P.O.S.T. database as “in good standing.”

“Nobody thought to notify P.O.S.T.,” Vance said.

Reached by phone by the AJC Wednesday, Robinson declined to comment. But he told Channel 2 Action News that “I didn’t know I was supposed to report [the arrest].”

As part of their certification process, all sworn police officers are required to notify P.O.S.T. any time they are arrested for offenses that are not traffic-related, Vance said. The agency then investigates to determine if the officer can keep his or her arrest powers.

“They know that,“ Vance said. “They are taught that in school, but they generally conveniently forget. [Robinson] didn’t report.”

Notifying P.O.S.T. is important, Vance said, to prevent cops who’ve lost their jobs due to criminal behavior from being hired somewhere else as a sworn officer.

At the time of Robinson’s arrest, he was held solely responsible for reporting it to P.O.S.T., Vance said. But the DeKalb Police Department was required to report that Robinson had resigned in lieu of termination, which Vance said did not happen.

DeKalb County Police Chief William O’Brien told Channel 2 that the reporting likely slipped through the cracks under the previous administration.

P.O.S.T. is supposed to be notified within 15 days of an officer being arrested, officials say.

“Two things were in place that failed,” Vance said. “Large agencies many times get overwhelmed and may overlook these things. But the more you pass on the problem, the bigger the problem gets. Then you have something bad that happens … and the agency gets the liability.”

Now, police agencies also are held responsible to report an officer’s criminal misconduct to P.O.S.T.

But that process did not work in November when DeKalb officers Blake Andrew Norwood and Arthur Parker III were arrested for allegedly beating a handcuffed teen, and subsequently resigned to avoid being fired.

Both were indicted earlier this month, along with DeKalb police Sgt. Anthony Remone Robinson, for that incident and for allegedly beating three other shackled juveniles.

P.O.S.T. officials say neither the arrested officers – Parker and Norwood – nor DeKalb Police leaders reported the arrests or resignations.

Vance says a new law is in place that requires a three-tier reporting system.

The arrested officer, the officer’s law enforcement agency and the arresting agency are now required to report to police. Conversely, P.O.S.T. is required to report to respective police chiefs, prosecutors and judges when an officer’s certification comes under scrutiny.

Vance noted only one problem with the new law, however. “There’s really no culpability for the agency or the agency head” that fails to report misconduct, he said.

Still, the law has already begun to work, Vance said. “We have about 200 more cases in the field that we’re having to work than we did prior to the law,” he said.

Robinson told Channel 2 that even though he might have been able to apply for, and get, another policing job since pleading guilty to the 2008 theft, he’s made no effort to work again in law enforcement.

Vance said Robinson could apply for reinstatement, but the chances would be slim.

“But because of that lapse, and his non-reporting, that’s going to make it that much tougher for him to stand in front of the P.O.S.T. council and say, ‘I really would like my certification back,’” Vance said.

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Former Top Maine Drug Prosecutor James M. Cameron Found Guilty Of 13 Counts Of Child Pornography

PORTLAND, MAINE - Three years ago, James M. Cameron held a position of power and trust as the top drug prosecutor for the Maine Attorney General’s Office.

His stunning fall from that post began in December 2007, when state and federal agents showed up at his Hallowell home with search warrants for the four computers inside.

The fall ended Monday, when a federal judge convicted Cameron on 13 of 15 counts of sending, receiving and possessing child pornography over the Internet.

Cameron, 48, showed no emotion as Judge John Woodcock Jr. read the verdicts that capped the six-day bench trial.

Cameron was handcuffed immediately and put into federal custody after the ruling. The former state prosecutor, who opted not to testify in his own defense, faces a minimum of five years and a maximum of 20 years in prison when he is sentenced later this year.

The Maine State Police Computer Crimes Unit began investigating Cameron in 2007, after Yahoo reported finding child pornography in the photos of an account holder later identified as Cameron’s wife. The Yahoo reports were made to the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children in Alexandria, Va., an organization that works with local, state and federal investigators.

Investigators ultimately tied 17 user profiles on Yahoo — many of which had sexually explicit names — to three Internet Protocol addresses assigned to computers at the Cameron household. Prosecutors used data from the computers, including log-in names and times, to determine that it was Cameron alone who was responsible for the illegal activity. Besides images of child pornography uploaded to Yahoo file servers, investigators found explicit images, e-mails, chats and other evidence on the four computers seized from Cameron’s home.

Cameron engaged in some of the illegal activity from his home computers on days when he was working, prosecutors said. His former secretary testified that Cameron was often away from his office, and those unexplained absences prompted a running joke at the Attorney General’s Office, in which someone would ask: “Where in the world is Jim Cameron?”

Assistant U.S. Attorney Donald Clark referred to that joke several times during his closing argument Monday.

“Where in the world is Jim Cameron? We know the answer. He was at home, on his computer, trading child pornography,” Clark said.

Clark said Cameron had advanced computer knowledge, and he stored pornographic materials in photo folders on Yahoo, so that he could then delete the files from his home computers using a software program called Wash n’ Go. However, Cameron was apparently unaware that traces of the child pornography, including images and chats on the now-defunct service Google Hello, remained on the hard drives of the computers and were found by investigators, Clark said.

In his closing argument, defense attorney Michael A. Cunniff said the government failed to prove that it was Cameron who sent, received or possessed any illegal photographs or videos. Cunniff said if Cameron inadvertently received illegal images, he deleted them because he was not looking for child pornography. Erotic chat and fantasies are not crimes and are protected by the right to free speech, Cunniff said.

“If a person wants to collect child pornography, they save it. They don’t destroy it,” Cunniff said.

Cunniff also said the investigation of Cameron was flawed from the start because agents believed him to be guilty and they did not pursue any other possibilities, such as the theory that someone had pirated the open wireless signal at Cameron’s home. Cunniff noted that one state police detective used the term “stringing evidence around Jim Cameron’s neck.”

“No meaningful search for exculpatory evidence was made,” Cunniff told Woodcock.

A federal grand jury indicted Cameron in February 2009. He waived his right to a jury, putting his fate solely in the hands of Woodcock, the chief federal judge for the District of Maine.

Much of the testimony during the trial was slow going, as government lawyers and Cunniff argued about rules, procedural matters and the admissibility of almost every piece of evidence.

“The persistence and vigor that I displayed were manifestations of my respect for the law, not disrespect for the court,” Cunniff told Woodcock at the outset of his closing argument. Cunniff lodged repeated objections based on his argument that Yahoo does not have the right to browse through images posted by users in password-protected folders. Woodcock said the images qualify as business records and Yahoo has the right to inspect them.

Cameron is now divorced from his wife, but they have been working together to raise their 15-year-old autistic son, Cunniff said. Cameron had been free on $75,000 bail before Monday’s verdicts.

Woodcock found Cameron guilty on eight counts of sending, four counts of receiving and one count of possessing child pornography. The judge found Cameron not guilty on two counts of sending child pornography.

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