The Joplin Globe, Joplin, MO

Joplin Metro

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June 19, 2009

Prosecutor declines to charge fired officer with perjury

By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

The Jasper County prosecutor has declined to file charges at the conclusion of a Joplin Police Department investigation into whether fired police Lt. Geoff Jones committed perjury at a Personnel Board hearing last year.

Prosecutor Dean Dankelson’s decision earlier this month not to charge Jones with perjury effectively closed the probe and rendered its investigative report open record under state law. The Globe, which learned of the investigation this spring from non-police sources, requested the report and obtained it this past week.

“As far as our office is concerned, it’s over and a closed record,” Dankelson said prior to the report’s release by the Police Department.

Dankelson declined comment on why he chose not to file any perjury charges against Jones. He said it would be inappropriate to comment on a closed matter where no charges were brought.

The report reveals that police Chief Lane Roberts asked Lt. Mike Hobson, head of the department’s criminal investigations division, on Jan. 29 of this year to look into the possibility that Jones committed perjury at a hearing in July of last year. The Personnel Board hearing concerned his appeal of the firing.

Jones was fired by Roberts in February of 2008 for what the police chief cited as alleged associations with known criminals at poker tournaments, a resultant distrust of him by the FBI in an ongoing federal probe characterized by the police chief to be “of national scope,” and Jones’ alleged failure to disclose his use of prescription medications.

The Personnel Board upheld the firing.

“Chief Roberts stated that what Jones testified to under oath he did not feel was the truth based on what he had been told by the FBI,” Hobson wrote near the start of his report.

Roberts said this week that the Police Department could not comment on the report or its findings since Jones’ firing remains an “unresolved personnel matter.” Jones filed a lawsuit in October appealing the firing in Jasper County Circuit Court.

Roberts also declined comment on Dankelson’s decision.

“Whether I agree or disagree is irrelevant,” Roberts told the Globe. “That’s his decision to make.”

Hobson submitted a probable-cause affidavit for a perjury charge to Dankelson’s office along with the report.

The report provides for comparison what Jones’ testimony was at the hearing and what Hobson was told by an FBI agent; by police officers he interviewed with varying degrees of knowledge of Jones’ involvement in poker tournaments; by some of Jones’ alleged poker associates, their girlfriends and acquaintances; and by an unnamed confidential informant.

Hobson also reported information that he obtained by examining e-mails on the hard drive of a city laptop computer that Jones used and by searching the Web site of a poker club with which Jones had some involvement. The report shows that the investigator obtained a record of Jones’ use of a state criminal records system intended for law-enforcement use only and allegedly found that Jones had run the names of certain people in apparent violation of state law.

Jones expressed surprise with respect to the perjury investigation when contacted by the Globe.

“That’s all news to me,” he said. “Nobody has said anything to me about it.”

He said no police officer contacted him concerning any perjury probe. He said that he would need to see the report and review it with his attorney before making any further comment. Jones did not get back to the newspaper about the matter.

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