North Little Rock, AR cops stand by and watch as convenience store is robbed!

Police watched store robbery, court files say
BY JIM BROOKS
ARKANSAS DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE

North Little Rock police knew hours ahead of time that a convicted robber and kidnapper planned to hold up a convenience store Feb. 8 and watched as the robbery occurred, court records reveal.

But police never told the store clerk and waited until the armed man left the business before attempting to arrest him, the files show.

Investigators were tipped off about the robbery of the E-Z Mart at 3600 MacArthur Drive by a confidential informant who dropped the robber off a short distance from the store while police staked out the business. Police knew the informant would be driving the robber to the store, the records say.

Police confronted Willie Roy Lowery, 32, as he walked from the store, but Lowery bolted and hid for three hours in a nearby drainage ditch before he was arrested.

The clerk, Aaron Black, was not injured in the robbery. Black declined a request for an interview.

Black’s mother, who declined to give her name, said her son told her that police explained their timely presence at the convenience store by saying they were in the area investigating reports of cars being broken into at a nearby business. (Police lying to civilians!?> Say it ain't so!)

"It sounds like they [police] put my son’s life in danger," she said when told about the court filing. (No Mam, They DID put your son's life in danger.)

North Little Rock Police Chief Danny Bradley said that, after speaking with prosecutors handling the case, he would not release details or answer specific questions about the incident until a forthcoming trial is concluded. But the chief said police have to consider multiple factors in determining the safest way to apprehend a suspect.

"A lot of times, you make the decision to allow the person to leave before trying to make an apprehension," he said. "I can say that as a matter of policy... the safety of the public is our primary concern."

Efforts to reach criminal justice experts at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock and the University of Arkansas at Fayetteville, as well as at the Criminal Justice Institute in Little Rock, were unsuccessful.

The circumstances surrounding the robbery emerged in court documents filed by prosecutors who were attempting to keep the identity of the informant a secret from Lowery’s defense attorney.

The informant issue surfaced during a July 24 jury trial that had to be rescheduled. Pulaski County Circuit Judge John Langston set an Aug. 12 hearing on defense attorney Herb Wright’s motion to force the state to name the informant. Four days later, Langston ruled in favor of the defense.

In a response to the defense motion, Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Melanie Martin outlined the testimony expected at Lowery’s coming trial: "A confidential informant gave the officers a tip on the evening of Feb. 7 that the defendant would be robbing the store sometime that evening," Martin wrote. "This led to the store being surrounded by officers at the time of the offense.

"The facts would reveal that this confidential informant dropped the defendant off approximately fifty yards from the store and then drove off. The confidential informant was not detained by the police, nor was he arrested and charged with being an accomplice."

Lowery was on parole at the time of the robbery. He was sentenced to 35 years in prison in June 1987 after being convicted of aggravated robbery, felony theft and kidnapping, but was paroled less than 11 years later. In September 1998, he was returned to prison after his parole was revoked, but he again was released on parole in July 2001. After his arrest in the E-Z Mart robbery, Lowery was returned to prison. His trial date on aggravated-robbery and theft charges is set for Sept. 10 in Langston’s court.

A trial on a charge of being a felon in possession of a firearm is set for Oct. 31 in the same court.

The robbery occurred about 3:30 a.m. on Feb. 8 and was captured on the store’s video cameras.

A police report in the case said a robber entered the store wearing a hood over his head, threatened Black with a handgun and demanded money. The robber took a packing knife from Black and forced him to walk from the store at gunpoint, court records reveal.

"After exiting the store with the clerk, the defendant [Lowery ] was surrounded by officers and told to stop," Martin wrote in the court document. "He fled from the police, and during the pursuit dropped the money, cigarettes and his jacket."

North Little Rock police arrested Lowery several hours later after he emerged from a drainage culvert near the convenience store. Lowery did not have a gun when he was arrested, but he was charged with being a felon in possession of a firearm based on his statement to detectives.

Kim Fowler, a spokesman for E-Z Mart corporate offices in Texarkana, Texas, said the company works closely with law enforcement officials in every community.

"We trust that they know what they’re doing," she said. "We have faith in their ability to serve and protect."UN FREAKING BELIVABLE!

Dale Sides, director of loss prevention for the company, said he knows of several situations in which police staked out a robbery without notifying the clerk.

"This is really not uncommon," he said. "In fact, clerks are probably better off not knowing."

Sides said if a clerk is aware of an impending robbery and knows police are watching, he might act nervously or impulsively and put himself in more danger.

"He might have false hope knowing that officers are just outside and might do something to endanger himself," Sides said. "Our No. 1 priority is the safety of our employees."

North Little Rock Alderman Tony Vestal declined to comment on the police’s handling of the robbery.

"I knew that the robbery occurred, but I didn’t know about the exact circumstances," said Vestal, who represents the ward in which the robbery occurred.

"Without having all the information, I wouldn’t want to make a judgment one way or the other on how the police handled it."

Some stores had a security guard hanging out in the cooler in position to see the register(pretty bad neighborhoods). I worked in one where we had a five dollar bill slipped under a paging device that when removed, would send a signal to the local police.

What bugs me about this article is that the cops knew the place was going to be hit and waited for it to happen. From my own experience I know that most robbers just want the money and to get the heck out of there as fast as they can. Perhaps they were working under this same assumption.

Trouble is, a friend of mine was gut-shot by two punks who had previously been denied a beer sale due to their ages. Two cases of Shlitz Malt Liqour. It was while they were leaving that one of the perps turned, looked at my friend and fired the sawed-off 30cal. rifle. He lived, but has a nasty limp. Seems after dragging himself around the counter to the front (that was the only thing he could think of) he was spotted by another customer who then called for help.

Are we talking about an employee behind a bulletproof window, or just a regular pick out stuff you want and buy it kind of store?

That's a shame about your friend having his life changed for the worse by these idiot thugs. I'll bet dollars to donuts this failed Malt Liquor heist was not their first attempt to use violence to obtain something they felt they were being unfairly denied.

In the seventies I don't believe there was much 'bullet-proof' anything. Come on in, grab it and pay was the norm. (A couple of years ago I laughed at the employees behind plexiglass at a pizza resturant, thought they looked too much like an aquarium exibit, my apologies to the folks at Monterey Bay).

One point I forgot to mention was that my friend is perhaps alive today due to a lucky choice that he made that night. Not knowing, he moved himself to a position where his head was lower than the rest of his body. Seems that your brain and heart need a lot of blood to keep you going when such trauma occurs. Should someone ever be seriously injured, keeping their head and heart below the rest of their body will buy them time.

"North Little Rock police knew hours ahead of time that a convicted robber and kidnapper planned to hold up a convenience store Feb. 8 and watched as the robbery occurred, court records reveal. But police never told the store clerk and waited until the armed man left the business before attempting to arrest him, the files show. "

Did you hear about this?

That old "escalate" canard, eh?

That's what all the gun-haters say when they're rationalizing why everyone should go about in public like lambs to the slaughter, handing the continuance of their lives over to the miniscule mercy of hardened criminals if they're unlucky enough to be targeted by one of them.

"Ask him to use a condom while he's raping you, don't fight back, just give them what they want," etc., etc., etc.

In San Francisco last year a man was shot down in cold blood AFTER he'd handed over his wallet.

News flash - THE VICTIM MAY HAVE BEEN HARMED ANYWAY!!!

If this is indeed what the police were thinking, then they're morally and spiritually bankrupt, as is anyone who holds this point of view.

I can tell you from personal work history experience having worked in a support role for a SWAT team in San Diego, CA that this is the way they should have responded... Why? Because it was exactly the way they responded...

Most rational people are more deft at concealing their tautologies, unless you mean that the San Diego SWAT team has the same procedure of using a store clerk as unwitting bait when they're staking out an expected armed robbery.

No. You are not in fear for your life so you may not use deadly force. If you did, it would be considered vigilantism and you'd be sharing a cell with the perp.

You're mistaken, Joe. The first paragraph of Arkansas Code 5-2-604, entitled "Choice of evils", reads as follows:

5-2-604. Choice of evils.
(a) Conduct which would otherwise constitute an offense is justifiable when:
(1) The conduct is necessary as an emergency measure to avoid an imminent public or private injury; and
(2) The desirability and urgency of avoiding the injury outweigh, according to ordinary standards of reasonableness, the injury sought to be prevented by the law proscribing the conduct.

I would say that the desirability and urgency of conducting the killing of someone who has a gun pointed at someone else's face reasonably outweighs the law against killing.

This is commonly known as "justifiable homicide."

What's more, Joe, there's section 5-2-606 and -607 of the Arkansas Code:

5-2-606. Use of physical force in defense of a person.
(a) A person is justified in using physical force upon another person to defend himself or a third person from what he reasonably believes to be the use or imminent use of unlawful physical force by that other person, and he may use a degree of force that he reasonably believes to be necessary. However, he may not use deadly physical force except as provided in § 5-2-607.

5-2-607. Use of deadly physical force in defense of a person.
a) A person is justified in using deadly physical force upon another person if he reasonably believes that the other person is:
(1) Committing or about to commit a felony involving force or violence;
(2) Using or about to use unlawful deadly physical force; or
(3) Imminently endangering his or her life or imminently about to victimize the person as described in § 9-15-103(a)(2), from the continuation of a pattern of domestic abuse. For the purposes of this section "domestic abuse" shall be that described in § 9-15-103(a).

In this case, someone standing outside the store with a rifle, and who saw the robber point the gun at the clerk, would have been doubly justified in using it to kill the perp, because both 5-2-607(a)(1) and (2) would have applied.

Indeed, it would even appear that under 5-2-607(a)(1), if you reasonably believed the guy was about to commit armed robbery, you could have shot him to prevent it, since armed robbery is a felony involving force or violence.

I enthusiastically advocate cops or armed civilians killing life-long criminals in the commission of a crime. Criminals like this are only going to reoffend until they kill someone.

Do you remember the suit filed against the city of Los Angeles by a lawyer representing the family of Emil Matasareanu, one of the body-armored bank robbers in that bloody shootout in 1998? The shot-dead perp's mom (who hired a legendary cop-hating lawyer on behalf of her grandchildren) contended that the LAPD deliberately delayed calling an ambulance after the outgunned cops finally downed the scumball at close range, preventing his worthless life from being saved. The trial ended with a hung jury, but not before it cost Angelenos a whole lotta money.

What you are suggesting is that the N.L.R. police should have put themselves in a position in which they would be practically executing a suspect. The family of the crook in this case -- had he been shot dead as you advocated -- could probably OWN the city of North Little Rock if the lawyers could get a dumb enough jury.

If it is the 1 thing that I could count on it is the paper commando's with the chip on the shoulder Lon Horuchi types . I wish you luck and I hope that what you have is not as contagious as you desire it to be .

You a single issue voter also ? Stil waiting to hear from you if you would want your brother cops to set you up like they did in AR to the clerk ?

Maybe the 4th time around I'll get a yes or no answer from you . Hang in there babe , its only been 2 days .

Arkansas Code sounds a lot better than my attempt, I guess I should read it sometime. Although I've resigned myself never to enter the borders of that state again, I now stand educated, armed, and 1400(give or take) miles away from the action! :-)

From the JoeSixPack file of experience,
.....Rule #1, if you kill it, grill it.

Thanks for the update and education.

What you are suggesting is that the N.L.R. police should have put themselves in a position
in which they would be practically executing a suspect.

I'll never forget my brother telling about the law enforcement culture in
West Germany after he returned from spending about two months there in the early 1980s.
His impression was that there was a reason for a low crime rate in West Germany...
a cop with a sub-machine gun on many street corners, with MANY cops with machine
guns at any sort of public event.
He said that a couple of bank robberies/hostage situations were quickly resolved
while he was there...with single head-shots for the hostage takers.
(I don't know if the German police/security is always this good, but my brother
said that people don't screw around there without expecting to get capped.)

The family of the crook in this case -- had he been shot dead as you advocated --
could probably OWN the city of North Little Rock if the lawyers could get a dumb enough jury.
Sadly you are correct.
Lawyers like Steven Yagman are a dime a dozen and everywhere in the USA.
And easily bamboozled jurors are too common.

Send your cousin a copy of Dial 911 And Die by Richard W. Stevens. It covers the police
liability statutes in all 50 states, Canada, and Puerto Rico, and in nearly all cases,
the police have no legal duty to protect you except under certain very specific circumstances.

Thanks for the suggstion. I've just about gotten my cousin convinced that he
is more responsible for his immediate bodily safety than police ever will be.
It just took some time to convince him of this as he also has undergo conversion from
being a "subject" while growing up in Canada to being a "citizen" (and US Citizen) in Dallas.

I'm pro-cop...but stories like this one just give anti-police critics the ammo they need
to convince people that cops only spend their time at/driving between
KrispyKreme, Winchell, and Dunkin Donuts.

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