A former DeKalb County police sergeant was sentenced to two years in prison Tuesday for ordering the beatings of four young suspects.
Following his release, Anthony Remone Robinson will serve eight years probation after being convicted last week of two counts of violating his oath of office, both felonies, three counts of simple assault and one count of battery.
The officers who assaulted the suspects avoided prison altogether. Blake Norwood and Arthur Parker pleaded guilty last month to lesser charges in exchange for testifying against their former supervisor, a gambit by the prosecution that backfired, according to William McKenney, Robinson’s attorney.
“The jury didn’t believe Norwood and Parker,” said McKenney, who called his client “a good man” who was convicted “for grabbing a gang banger. We could not say that at trial, but that’s what they were.”
In November 2011, Robinson ordered the two officers to take an 18-year-old burglary suspect, Travarrius Williams, "behind the shed and tighten him up," said prosecutor Buffy Thomas. The shed refers to the area where officers parked their off-duty vehicles.
Parker interpreted that as a command to “beat him up,” Thomas said.
“There is nothing that these young men did that would render them unworthy of the same protections we all are due,” DeKalb District Attorney Robert James said Tuesday. “All are held to the same standard and worthy of the same protections under the law.”
Following an investigation by internal affairs, Norwood turned against Robinson and later told prosecutors about a 2010 incident involving three teens, ages 15 and 16, suspected in a car theft. Norwood said he and Parker, along with another officer, were ordered to handcuff the teens and beat them.
Robinson faced a maximum sentence of 150 years in prison had he been convicted on all 15 counts, including 10 felonies. Jurors deliberated for three days but deadlocked on four of the charges against the 15-year law enforcement veteran. They found him not guilty on five of the most serious charges, including three counts of aggravated assault.
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