STATE POLICE TAKE 2ND LOOK AT DRUG UNIT INVESTIGATION

LONOKE -- The Arkansas State Police reopened an investigation last week into
whether agents of Lonoke County's former drug task force manufactured and
sold drugs and planted them on people.

"There are too many inconsistencies in the investigation," said Prosecuting
Attorney Lona McCastlain, who asked that the investigation be reopened.

The original investigation of the 23rd Judicial District Narcotics
Enforcement Unit, now defunct, and its director, Mike Weaver, began in March
and was completed June 13, when state police criminal investigator Jamie
Cook wrote that McCastlain had reviewed the case and agreed with Cook that
"there was no criminal conduct on the part of any person mentioned in the
investigation."

But the state police never looked for any criminal conduct, according to
documents in the case file. It also never checked Weaver's background even
though the state police knew Weaver's resume had been questioned.

McCastlain requested the investigation after attorneys for Tommy Sutton, 33,
of Austin accused Weaver and the drug enforcement unit of planting drugs on
their client. But the state police never considered the Sutton case in its
investigation. Sutton is serving a 15-year prison sentence on drug-related
charges.

"This investigation leaves more questions than answers," McCastlain said.
"That's why we have to do more."

WEAVER UNDER FIRE

In 1998, McCastlain waged a public battle with Sheriff Charlie Martin for
control of the drug task force, which had a spotty history.

In the mid-1990s, the drug task force was taken from former Sheriff J.O.
Isaac and placed under the direction of former Prosecuting Attorney Larry
Cook after allegations of task force wrongdoing.

Martin, who was elected sheriff in 1996, said he told McCastlain shortly
after she took office in 1998 that he wanted the drug task force returned to
his supervision.

"They work under my colors," Martin said recently. "I issue them cards so
they can work; yet I have no control over them. They work for the
prosecutor, not me; yet I'm liable for what they do."

Although she regrets it now, McCastlain said, she fought to keep the task
force under her control and won when the Quorum Court decided the force
could remain under her supervision.

McCastlain said she hired Weaver on June 17, 1999.

"When I applied for the job, I was just applying to be an agent," Weaver
said in a recent telephone interview. "I never dreamed I'd be the director.
But when it was offered to me, I realized it was a great opportunity."

McCastlain also was pleased.

"He was neat, professional and really wanted to do a good job," she said.
"He was young and enthusiastic."

Weaver, who was 27 at the time, came to Lonoke with a resume that many law
enforcement agents would envy: a stint in the Marines as a military
policeman, an officer in charge of nearly every aspect of the Greenland
Police Department, and a former task force officer and tactical response
team leader with the New Orleans Police Department, where Weaver said he
worked for 16 months.

"My goal was to become a prominent person in the county and be someone they
looked up to as the man who was trying to rid the county of drugs," Weaver
said.

He started making a name for himself quickly.

After being on the job about a week, Weaver led a raid at Sutton's home,
arrested him and his wife, and charged him with attempted manufacture of
methamphetamine and other drug-related counts.

Area residents and newspapers were singing Weaver's praises for the June 24
raid. They said they were pleased that something was being done about the
county's drug problem.

But eight days later, the honeymoon abruptly ended for Weaver when an agent
in the narcotics unit resigned, accusing Weaver of wrongdoing.

Kristy Pickard, a recent graduate of the state Law Enforcement Training
Academy at Camden who had worked for Weaver for one week, wrote a letter to
McCastlain that she was quitting because she would not be a part of the
"unethical schemes [Weaver] has implemented solely for the chance of
boosting himself as a 'super narc.' "

In her letter, dated July 2, 1999, Pickard wrote that Weaver asked her to
falsify reports, lie on her time sheets and display real or simulated
controlled substances in her unmarked car so she could pass as a drug user.
McCastlain said she confronted Weaver right away with Pickard's allegations
and asked him to take a polygraph test and a drug test.

Weaver said it was his idea to take the polygraph, but he didn't take it for
at least a week.

"The charges were ridiculous, and I wanted to clear my name," Weaver said.

The polygraph test was administered July 12, Weaver said, after new
allegations that he had fabricated his resume.

The test was not administered by the state police, the agency commonly used
for polygraphs when a police officer is being questioned. Instead, Weaver's
polygraph test was administered by the Southwestern Bureau of Investigation
in Conway, a private firm.

McCastlain said she asked for the private company because "I needed it done
right away, and there wasn't time to make an appointment with the state
police because they have a waiting list."

Later on the same day, the Conway company sent McCastlain a four-page fax
saying Weaver passed the test. But even with that knowledge, McCastlain met
that night with the task force's board and asked them to vote to disband the
unit.

"It was over," she said. "Weaver was ruined. Everyone was attacking the
unit. The only thing I regret is I didn't do it sooner."

Effective July 13, 1999, almost a month after Weaver was hired, the unit was
disbanded, and Weaver left the area. Chris Hill, the unit's other agent,
went back to work for the Lonoke Police Department.

THE ALLEGATIONS RESURFACE

After that the issues of wrongdoing mostly were forgotten until the Tommy
Sutton case was scheduled to come to court in February.

Sutton's attorneys, Hubert Alexander and Richard Grasby, learned of
Pickard's resignation and her allegations against the narcotics unit. At the
same time, their client was saying he was innocent.

"From day one, Tommy insisted on fighting this," Grasby said. "He said he
was innocent, and he stood his ground."

It wasn't the first time that Sutton had been arrested.

"Tommy never claimed he was innocent of everything he's been accused of
doing, but he said he never had a drug lab, which Weaver and the NEU said
they found at his house" during the June 24 raid, Grasby said.

"I had four policemen tell me that Tommy didn't manufacture drugs," Grasby
said. "Tommy bought drugs, but he didn't make them."

Grasby asked for a continuance so he could look into the new information.
But Sutton's trial was postponed for only a week, but the attorneys said
that was not enough time to investigate Pickard's allegations.

"At the last second Tommy pleaded guilty," Grasby said. "He did that so his
pregnant wife wouldn't have to go to jail."

Sutton was sentenced to 15 years in prison for possession of methamphetamine
with intent to deliver, possession of drug paraphernalia to manufacture
methamphetamine, possession of marijuana with intent to deliver, and three
counts of endangering the welfare of a minor.

McCastlain said she still worried about the allegations made against Weaver
and the narcotics unit. She decided to have Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Tim
Blair interview Pickard.

On Feb. 22 Pickard was asked to go to the prosecutor's office to discuss the
Sutton case.

After she arrived, Blair questioned Pickard under oath about the unit. Jamie
Cook's supervisor, Sgt. Jim Rainbolt, and a court reporter were also
present.

During the interview, Pickard told Blair and Rainbolt that she had overheard
a confidential informant, whom she knew only as "Anderson," talk to Weaver
at the unit office. She said the informant asked Weaver to give him money to
buy "precursors," the ingredients to make methamphetamine.

She also told police that Weaver told her he wanted to get the informant to
make methamphetamine for the unit "as a training tool."

STATE POLICE INVESTIGATE

After Pickard's deposition, McCastlain wrote a letter to Col. Tom Mars,
director of the Arkansas State Police, asking for a criminal investigation
of the narcotics unit.

"I had a sit-down interview with Jim Rainbolt. I needed for him to
understand that serious allegations had been made regarding the Tommy Sutton
case and the NEU," McCastlain said.

Rainbolt first assigned investigator Doug Estes to the case but replaced
Estes with Jamie Cook within weeks.

When asked why the state police didn't obtain its own polygraph test on
Weaver when the investigation began, Rainbolt said, "It would have been
insulting to the first polygrapher if we asked for a second test. It would
have looked like we were questioning his work."

Cook said she talked to McCastlain about Weaver's polygraph test but never
obtained a list of the questions asked by the examiner.

"I asked Lona what was asked on the test," Cook said. "She said he was asked
about all of the criminal allegations, and he passed the test. I believe
Lona. I didn't need a copy of the questions. And there was no need to give
him another test."

But the private examiner never asked Weaver about any criminal allegations,
McCastlain said.

"I didn't know about the criminal allegations when I had him polygraphed. He
was asked about his resume and what Kristy Pickard originally accused him
of. None of that was criminal," McCastlain said.

McCastlain also said she has never seen a copy of the questions asked by the
private polygraph examiner.

"I didn't need them," she said. "I have a list of about 40 questions I sent
that I wanted the polygrapher to ask Weaver. I assume he asked them."

Weaver said he was asked 12 to 16 questions during three tests. "Some of the
questions were repeated," he said.

WEAVER'S RESUME

Cook said she did not check Weaver's resume. "This was a criminal
investigation, and his resume had nothing to do with the investigation," she
said.

However, each agency Weaver listed on his resume said either he "fudged the
truth" or he was not truthful about describing his jobs.

A spokesman for the U.S. Marine Corps said Weaver's claims that he had been
a hostage negotiator at Camp Pendleton, Calif., between 1988 and 1991 "were
bogus."

Weaver also said that he "supervised more than 60 military police officers
on a daily basis."

"No way," the Marine spokesman said. "There's less than 60 people in a
platoon, and there's no way a corporal was in charge of 60 people. I don't
believe it. He's making it sound like he's totally responsible for the
security of Camp Pendleton and everything else. He was a cop here and that
means he was a team player."

Weaver said he worked for the Greenland Police Department from 1994 to 1997,
when in fact he worked there on and off during that period, a department
spokesman said.

In his resume, Weaver said he was responsible for personnel and internal
affairs at the Greenland department. The spokesman said Weaver was not
responsible for personnel and the department has no internal affairs
department.

Weaver claimed he also was responsible for training commissioned officers.
"What's that?" the spokesman said. "We only have three officers, including
the chief, which Mike wasn't."

Also on Weaver's resume was the claim that he started an auxiliary police
unit while working for the department. "He asked the chief if he could let
some of his friends ride around with him," the spokesman said. "I guess he
bossed them around and they were the auxiliary policemen."

Weaver said he worked for the New Orleans Police Department in several
areas, including its special operations group called the Task Force, in
which he said he was a tactical response team leader from May 1997 until
September 1998.

During that time, "I personally filed over 1,240 felony drug cases in
Circuit Court," he stated on his resume.

Personnel records in New Orleans show Weaver worked there for only seven
months instead of 16 months.

"He started working here on Oct. 27, 1997," a spokesman for the department
said. "He went to the academy until Nov. 23, 1997, and then he was assigned
to the 5th District. He was ranked a police officer 1, which is the
beginning or lowest rank of an officer. We have no records that show he ever
worked in special operations."

While Cook said she did not check Weaver's background, she did include his
resume and two letters -- one saying that Weaver's resume was false and
another that said it was true -- in the file. She also submitted a page
titled "investigator's notes" that states, "None of these statements
[concerning the resume] have been substantiated."

Cook focused her investigation on interviewing Weaver, Pickard and Fletcher
Anderson, the confidential informant referred to by Pickard.

Cook did not interview Hill, the other agent in the disbanded unit. Instead,
Hill provided Cook with voluntary written statements. "I didn't need to
interview Hill," Cook said. "He was not the subject of the investigation."

But McCastlain specifically asked for an investigation of the narcotics
enforcement unit and not just Weaver. "Hill was a member of the unit and he
should have been interviewed," McCastlain said.

The state police investigative file lists Weaver as the subject of the
investigation, but Weaver said that's not what Cook told him.

"Jamie Cook interviewed me about everything," Weaver said. "But she never
told me I was the suspect. She told me she was doing an investigation on the
NEU and made it clear that my part was limited to the three weeks I was
there, which meant my role was very small. If I had known I was the suspect,
I would have hired an attorney."

Anderson, who was interviewed at the state Department of Correction's East
Arkansas Regional Unit in Lee County, where he is serving time for a drug
conviction, told Cook that he cooked methamphetamine with Weaver, the two
packaged it at the unit's office, and then they took it to the parking lot
of the Wal-Mart store in Lonoke to sell it. Patrol units from the Lonoke
Police Department were set up down the road from the store and officers were
going to arrest the buyers, he said.

But the police didn't find any drugs when they stopped the buyers, Anderson
said.

Cook said she never interviewed the Lonoke Police Department to find out
whether they deployed the patrol units because "it never happened. Weaver
said it didn't happen, and Hill said it didn't happen. I had no reason to
talk to the Lonoke Police Department."

Hill never mentioned a Wal-Mart drug sale in his statements. Weaver said he
was at the parking lot with Anderson -- not to sell drugs, but rather to buy
them.

McCastlain was opposed to "reverse buys," Weaver said, which is why he
claimed he wouldn't conduct such an operation. A reverse buy occurs when
agents sell drugs to entice people into a situation where they can be
arrested.

McCastlain opposes reverse buys because they often create legal problems,
especially when a defendant claims entrapment. Also, "the question always
arises: Where did the drugs come from?" she said.

Despite Cook's contention that a reverse buy did not take place, Lonoke
Police Chief Charles Peckat said it did.

"Weaver called me while he was the director of the NEU and told me he wanted
to do reverse buys. He said he needed some patrol units to back him up. He
was setting up to do the sales at the Wal-Mart parking lot," Peckat said. "I
sent the units, but they were unsuccessful. No drugs were found in the cars
that were stopped. My guess is they swallowed the drugs."

Peckat said Weaver did not tell him where he had gotten the drugs he was
selling. "I don't know where they came from," he said. "I wasn't told."

While Anderson said the drugs sold were from the batch he and Weaver made,
Cook discounted Anderson's statement.

Anderson also told authorities he did not "set up" the Suttons. Documents
show that another informant was used in the Sutton case, but the Sutton case
was not included in the state police investigation.

"I don't know what to say," McCastlain said when she learned the Sutton case
was not investigated or included in the file. "That's why this investigation
was started, and I told Rainbolt that when it was opened."

Rainbolt told two reporters he had never heard of Sutton. Cook said she
never knew about the "Sutton case involvement."

The questions and inconsistencies in the investigation "should be answered
when the state police finish this investigation," McCastlain said.