THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, December 6, 1995 TAG: 9512060429
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOE JACKSON, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Long : 125 lines
Jurors on Tuesday convicted a police officer of soliciting a 17-year-old girl for sex, but acquitted him of more serious charges of bribery. The decision could end his 20-year career with the Norfolk Police Department.
Chester P. Crowe, 42, was accused of fixing a speeding ticket for the girl in exchange for oral sex. He was charged with bribery, crimes against nature, solicitation for bribery and solicitation for sodomy. Crowe faced a maximum sentence of 25 years in prison.
After three days of testimony, jurors decided the evidence wasn't strong enough to support the charges of bribery or crimes against nature. But Crowe's voice on tape asking the girl for sex was enough to convict him for solicitation for sodomy, and jurors recommended a $2,500 fine.
Crowe is currently working in his brother's dry cleaning business, he said.
It was a trial where almost everyone - witnesses, defendant, police and victim - was cast in a sordid light. Crowe's accuser, a waitress at Dunkin' Donuts, allegedly served tales of sex with coffee and crullers. Police were portrayed as good ol' boys among whom the right word between friends could get a speeding charge dismissed.
The victim, a former Norview High School student, testified that she started working at a doughnut shop near Roosevelt Shopping Center on East Little Creek Road in October 1993. She was friendly to her customers - perhaps too friendly, she admitted.
But she never talked openly at the shop about sex, she testified.
Crowe and his witnesses would later dispute that claim. They drank coffee at the shop before or after they worked out at a nearby gym, where Crowe was part owner, they testified.
In early April 1994, the girl received a speeding ticket near Emporia from a state trooper. She asked Crowe for help, but Crowe said he couldn't assist in state charges. He added, however, that if she ever got a ticket in Norfolk, she should contact him on his pager, she testified.
At 8 a.m. on April 15, when she got her second ticket that month, she feared her parents would take away her car, she testified. So she paged Crowe. When he called back, he agreed to help her, but for a price, she said.
``He said, `I can fix the ticket for you, but what can you do for me?' '' she testified. ``I said, `What do you mean?' '' He then asked for oral sex, she said. ``I said I'd think about it.
``I wasn't thinking clearly,'' she testified. ``I decided I would do it because . . . I didn't want to lose my car,'' license and insurance, she said. ``It seemed like the easy thing to do.'' She accepted, she said.
Late at night on April 16, she walked into the darkened gym and found Crowe. After the sex act, ``I gave him the ticket and he said he'd talk to the officer,'' she said.
Sometime before the May 9 hearing, Crowe called the officer who had given the girl the April 15 ticket, Lawrence Corbett. Crowe told Corbett he was a friend of the girl's family and that her mother was in law enforcement, Corbett testified. Crowe asked Corbett to request that the case be taken under advisement, meaning the charge would be dropped after a certain length of time if there were no additional offenses.
Corbett testified he did ``not consider the request extraordinary'' and ``did not consider what Crowe asked a crime.'' Therefore, he said, he did not tell his supervisors.
On the day of the hearing, the girl told him she had been speeding because she had a personal emergency.
Corbett relayed her story to the judge, and the judge took the charge under advisement. Corbett did not know about the allegations of bribery and sex, he testified.
Six months later, the charge was dropped.
She said she did not mention the bribe until she realized one of her parents would have to accompany her to court - the whole motive behind her accepting the deal, she testified. When she admitted the newest ticket to them, she also told them about the bribe and sex.
Defense attorney Andrew Sacks said she made up the story to deflect some of the blame from herself. The girl told jurors she was confused and scared. Jurors apparently believed Sacks.
When the girl's parents learned what happened, they called the police. After going to court about the ticket on May 9, detectives hooked a microphone to her phone. She paged Crowe, and their conversation was taped. In it, Crowe said: ``My word is as good as gold . . . now you keep yours.'' He then added she owed him more sex.
Soon afterward, Crowe was charged and suspended.
According to Crowe and his witnesses, the girl was more culpable than she appeared. Crowe admitted he had sex with the girl, but said it occurred in March, before the speeding offenses. The sex, he said, was consensual. He maintained he was guilty of bad judgment, but not of bribery and malfeasance.
Crowe will be sentenced on Jan. 19. His lawyer said Crowe will appeal.
These were not the only sex-related charges Crowe faced. In August, he was charged in Norfolk with taking indecent liberties with a juvenile and sexual battery. Last month, he was charged in Virginia Beach with two counts of taking indecent liberties with a juvenile. All the alleged incidents occurred over the summer, and the juvenile was a second cousin, police said.
Crowe has denied the charges. MEMO: THE TAPE
This is a partial transcript of a recording, played in court, of a May
9, 1994, phone conversation between former Norfolk police officer
Chester Crowe and the teenager who accused him of demanding oral sex in
exchange for his help in getting a traffic ticket dismissed:
The victim tells Crowe that the ticket was put under advisement by a
judge during a hearing that day in Norfolk Juvenile and Domestic
Relations Court. She thanks him.
CROWE: I keep my word. My word is good as gold.
VICTIM: OK.
CROWE: OK? Now you keep yours.
VICTIM: What?
CROWE: Keep your word. . . . You still owe me some (oral sex).
VICTIM: (sighs) OK.
CROWE: You said that was the deal.
VICTIM: All right.
CROWE: OK?
VICTIM: OK.
CROWE: Be good, Sweet.
KEYWORDS: SEX CRIME NORFOLK POLICE DEPARTMENT by CNB