By Jeff Lehr

jlehr@joplinglobe.com

Roderick Mack was sitting in his attorney’s office being interviewed by Lt. Mike Hobson of the Joplin Police Department.

Hobson was looking into fired police Lt. Geoff Jones’ past involvement with Mack and others in local poker tournaments and home games at the request of police Chief Lane Roberts.

Mack told him that he first met Jones about four years ago at a free poker tournament through Mack’s cousin, Jermaine K. Camp, 35. He kept running into Jones at the Poker Pub-sponsored tournaments and gradually got to know him, although at first he didn’t know Jones was a police officer.

Eventually, he learned Jones was an officer. But Jones “was always cool” to Mack, so after a while it did not concern him, he told Hobson. Sometimes, Mack said, he’d smoke marijuana on the way to the bar where a tournament was being held and come in reeking of pot and find himself sitting next to Jones in the game. Jones might joke that he was “smelling good” that night. But there were never any negative consequences. So it all seemed “cool” enough to Mack.

No, he’d never smoked pot with Jones, he told Hobson. Mack didn’t think his cousin had either.

Mack told Hobson he played in poker games for money all the time with Jones. After the Poker Pub tournaments, there were often games for money at someone’s house, usually tournament-style games with buy-ins of $5 to $10. Jones was frequently at these games. He played in two such games at Jones’ house.

Alleged associates

Hobson’s interview of Mack in April of this year was part of a Joplin Police Department investigation into whether Jones committed perjury when he testified under oath at a city Personnel Board hearing in July of last year.

The intelligence report from that investigation was released to the Globe by the Police Department last week after Jasper County Prosecutor Dean Dankelson declined to file any perjury charges against Jones.

Jones expressed surprise that there had been such an investigation when the Globe contacted him about it on Thursday. He said he would have to see the report before commenting and did not get back to the newspaper about it.

Mack, 36, is one of the “known criminals” with whom Jones allegedly associated at poker tournaments. Roberts cited those associations as one of the reasons Jones was fired last year.

Hobson’s report shows Mack with a number of local arrests or citations for misdemeanor offenses in recent years and refers to him as a convicted felon. It also indicates the existence of a criminal history, but that part of the report released to the Globe is blacked out due to the information having been obtained from state or federal crime computer data systems not subject to open-record requests.

Jones claimed at the hearing to have little involvement with Mack.

“I have seen him around town and I have seen him at the recreational poker games, but, you know, I don’t know him,” Jones testified. “He’s not a friend of mine. I certainly don’t hang out with him.”

But a confidential informant told Hobson in February that Mack talked about Jones all the time and considered him to be a good friend. The informant reported hearing Mack state more than once that it was good to have a friend on the police force because he would always have someone to help him if he got in trouble with the law.

The informant reported hearing that Jones was introduced to Mack by Camp, Mack’s cousin, and that Mack and Jones would go to Camp’s home at the Casa Grande Apartments for buy-in poker games. Mack told the informant that the three of them even traveled together to Arkansas for a poker tournament.

Hobson’s report shows a number of arrests of Camp for misdemeanor offenses in Joplin ranging from driving while intoxicated to possession of marijuana and domestic assault. It also states that he is currently serving time in Connecticut for a sexual assault.

Hobson tried to interview Camp in a telephone call to a prison there in March, but Camp proved a reluctant witness due to a felony assault charge he still has pending in Greene County, Mo., according to the report.

Camp, who remains in prison, could not be reached by the Globe for comment. Mack has no listed telephone number and no known address in police records.

FBI suspicions

Jones was not asked about Camp at the Personnel Board hearing. But FBI agent Bart Starky pointed Hobson at the start of his investigation to another alleged poker associate of Jones, Dean “Tiny” Oliphant, 43, about whom Jones was asked at the hearing.

The FBI had looked into Jones’ involvement in poker games in 2007 and early 2008 as part of an ongoing investigation that Roberts termed “national” in scope. Starky interviewed Jones in January of 2008, presumably as part of the federal investigation, and the FBI had him take a polygraph test the next day.

Jones testified at the hearing that the FBI wanted to know what he knew about a large sports-gambling operation in Joplin. He said he told the FBI he did not know anything. Jones testified that agents asked him about a suspected bookie for the operation and he told them he did not know the man.

The suspected bookie named at the hearing was not anyone identified in this article, and no one has been charged with running such an operation.

But Starky told Hobson that Jones said he played in small-stakes poker games where the stakes did not exceed $20. Starky also told Hobson that he’d interviewed Oliphant and Oliphant’s wife and that they said they were friends with Jones.

A girlfriend of Camp told Hobson in February that Camp and Mack collected debts for Oliphant and would get paid for doing it. Camp was collecting a debt in Springfield when he picked up the assault charge for allegedly beating another man “really bad,” the girlfriend had said.

At the hearing, Jones testified that he had seen Oliphant around town on a few occasions and maybe three or four times at recreational poker tournaments. But he denied being a friend of Oliphant and his wife.

“Tiny”

Hobson spoke to Katrenea Oliphant in March prior to speaking with her husband and she told him that they knew Jones and his wife through Poker Pub tournaments and through money games at another couple’s home in Oronogo. She said games there generally had buy-ins of $20 to $30. She told Hobson she remembered Jones’ wife playing in those games, but she had only heard from someone else that Jones played in the games as well.

She told Hobson that Jones and his wife earned enough points through Poker Pub tournaments to get a bid in a poker tournament at a local casino. At the casino, they had won two trips to Las Vegas and bids to play in a tournament there. The Joneses had given “Tiny” one of the trips and one of the bids and they had all gone to Las Vegas together, Katrenea Oliphant told Hobson.

When the investigator later spoke with “Tiny,” he acknowledged having been given a trip to Las Vegas but could not recall who gave it to him. He told Hobson that Jones was never at the game in Oronogo when he was there.

Oliphant also is cited in the report as having a record of arrests or citations by Joplin police for various misdemeanor offenses.

Contacted by the Globe this week, Oliphant said Jones told the truth. He said he knew Jones was a police officer from past arrests, but they have never been friends. Oliphant denied what Camp’s girlfriend told Hobson.

“I don’t even know who Camp is,” Oliphant said. “I don’t know who that is.”

He said he did not know why the woman would have said Camp and Mack collected debts for him.

“I just play at the poker games,” he said.

Oliphant said it was Thomas “Zack” Stafford, not Jones, who gave him the bid to play in Las Vegas. He said he never traveled there with Jones.

Hobson interviewed the couple at whose home in Oronogo the buy-in games were played. The man, Stafford, told Hobson that he ran the Poker Pub tournaments. The couple acknowledged holding buy-in games at their home and that Jones had played there.

Stafford also confirmed that Jones won a trip to Las Vegas through Poker Pub and went there with Stafford and some other people. He showed Hobson a photograph of the group taken in Las Vegas, and Hobson reported that the only people he recognized in the photo were Jones and the Poker Pub operator.

Officer poker

Any unlicensed gambling is illegal in Missouri, even “friendly” bets and “friendly” games. Few people are ever charged with the offenses, but there are both misdemeanor and felony level penalties for “promoting” or “advancing” gambling and for profiting from gambling activity.

Shortly after Roberts was hired as police chief in April 2007, the subject of officer involvement in poker games came up at a Police Department staff meeting. Roberts issued a departmental memo after the meeting warning that officers needed to avoid playing in illegal games.

Jones testified at the Personnel Board hearing that he stopped playing poker at that time.

As part of his investigation, Hobson went to the Poker Pub’s computer Web site and accessed a record of Jones’ participation in the organization’s tournaments. He also cross-referenced that record with listings of Camp’s and Mack’s participation in the tournaments.

The Poker Pub’s records showed Jones participating in legal tournaments at bars 92 times from January of 2006 through early April 2007. At 10 of those tournaments, either Camp or Mack, or both, were listed as having played as well. Hobson could not find that Jones played in any after the memo was issued.

Hobson also interviewed a number of officers or former officers of the Joplin Police Department with varying degrees of knowledge of Jones’ involvement with poker. Several officers acknowledged the existence of buy-in poker games at officers’ homes in recent years and that Jones had played in some of the games.

Two of the officers named as holding such games were Frank Lundien and Carl Francis. All the officers described the games as being for “pennies, nickels, dimes and quarters” and not high-stakes poker.

Francis is currently the police chief in Webb City. Lundien, the former head of the Jasper County Drug Task Force, resigned from the Police Department in February 2007 amidst an uproar over $62,999 in alleged drug-conspiracy funds missing from the task force. Francis was his supervisor at one time in the Joplin Police Department.

One of the officers told Hobson that he played in games at the homes of both Lundien and Francis and that he had seen Jones play once at Francis’ residence.

The same officer said that one time he’d gone to a game at Lundien’s home and saw a man there who seemed familiar to him. He eventually recognized the man as someone he had arrested for possession of methamphetamine and learned that the man had become an informant for Lundien. He told Hobson that he and another officer at the game were so upset with Lundien after learning who the man was that they left.

Hobson interviewed Francis early in his investigation and Francis told him that he thought the effort to build a perjury case against Jones was “a witch hunt” and that he did not wish to see his name as a witness on any case sent to the prosecutor, according to Hobson’s report.

But the report states that Francis also told Hobson that he introduced Jones to the free poker games and that on one occasion he had gone to Jones’ residence after a poker club event for a home game. He told Hobson that when he got there, he did not know any of the other people and felt uncomfortable and left.

The Globe contacted Francis about the report this week.

“It’s no secret that Frank Lundien and I worked together for over 20 years,” he said. “And I do not deny for many years playing penny poker games with my officers.”

He said the games have never been anything but low-stakes and no serious debts were ever incurred by anyone who played in them.











Memo

Joplin police Chief Lane Roberts circulated the following memorandum at the Joplin Police Department shortly after being hired in April 2007:

“Many of our officers enjoy playing poker with friends, as do I. However, if the nature of the poker meets the statutory definition of gambling, then it is illegal and therefore conduct in which police officers should not be engaged. I will leave it to your training and conscience to tell you whether a poker game in which you are playing constitutes gambling or not, but please be aware that JPD will not allow our staff to engage in illegal activity. If it is determined that a member of our staff is involved in illegal gambling, regardless of its venue, they will be held accountable. If you are in doubt whether a particular game is illegal, I am asking you to air (sic) on the side of caution and forego playing.

“It is not my intention to deprive anyone of their enjoyment of poker and friends. Nor do I want to seem overly righteous about the issue. This is a matter of ethics. Police officers should not engage in criminal conduct on any scale, large or small. Please be prudent about the nature of poker games in which you choose to play.”