Pubdate: Sat, 06 Mar 2004
Source: Times-Picayune, The (LA)
Copyright: 2004 The Times-Picayune
Contact:  http://www.nola.com/t-p/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/848
Author: Michael Perlstein
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/raids.htm (Drug Raids)

ARRESTS BLAMED ON VENDETTA AFTER MOTHER'S DEATH

Tensions Flared While Police Searched House

In life, Cynthia Franklin did everything she could to protect her three 
sons from what she perceived as a vendetta by overzealous police officers. 
She blasted the authorities who prosecuted her oldest son, Percy Franklin, 
and sent him to prison for 20 years for his involvement in the notorious 
7th Ward Soldiers drug gang. She stormed the New Orleans Police Department 
with complaints every time her younger sons -- 20-year-old fraternal twins 
Brandon and Randon Robinson -- were stopped on the street and searched for 
drugs.

After her death, little changed. In fact, her seemingly peaceful passing 
seemed to aggravate the long-running conflict between her family and police.

On Jan. 24, Franklin didn't wake up. Her death appeared to be from natural 
causes, but after police arrived, the house was declared a crime scene, 
neighbors nearly rioted , and Brandon and Randon were arrested on gun and 
drug charges. Several witnesses said some officers used profanity to 
address grieving family members.

At one point, after the house was sealed off for a search by narcotics 
detectives, Franklin's sister Connie said she asked to see the body and was 
told, "What do you think this is? A f -- ing funeral home?"

Despite those claims, the officers in the case were cleared of wrongdoing 
last week after a review by the Police Department's Public Integrity 
Bureau. The criminal case against the twins is pending.

"The officers were exonerated," police spokesman Capt. Marlon Defillo said. 
"PIB reviewed the facts and determined that the officers were in compliance 
with all departmental rules and regulations."

According to police records, Franklin was still lying on her death bed when 
officers said they spotted an AK-47 in plain sight in the family's home on 
Bayou Road. The family said the police account is a fabrication. They said 
the weapon, however menacing, was hidden under a mattress and behind the 
closed door of the twins' bedroom. Randon said he had purchased the weapon 
legally at a gun show and produced a receipt showing he had paid $391.45 
for the gun in March 2003.

Officers sealed off the house, called Franklin's death suspicious and roped 
off much of the block while they obtained a search warrant.

About six hours later, police said they found two small bags of marijuana 
and a small amount of cocaine. Randon was arrested first, accused of 
marijuana possession and illegally possessing a firearm with narcotics. 
Soon after, Brandon was booked on the same charges, plus an additional 
charge of cocaine possession. The family said police officers planted the 
drugs; defense attorneys are working to get the charges dropped.

"I couldn't believe any of it was really happening," Randon said of his 
arrest. "It was like a bad dream. My mother's dead, police are tearing up 
the house and I'm in handcuffs."

Police concede that other than Franklin's relatively young age, 52, there 
was nothing outwardly suspicious about her death, which remains 
unclassified pending toxicology results. An epileptic and borderline 
diabetic, Franklin was found in bed by a sister who lived with the family. 
Rushing in from their bedroom down the hall, Brandon and Randon frantically 
tried to move her, turn her over, wake her, revive her -- but she was 
unresponsive. Brandon called 911.

First to arrive was a fire emergency truck. Next, an ambulance. Finally, a 
police cruiser pulled up. It was about 10:30 a.m. Franklin's death was 
unexpected and family members and neighbors began assembling around the 
house. By all accounts the police officers and emergency workers initially 
seemed to treat the case as a sad, but routine, death.

That is, until 1st District narcotics Detective Jake Schnapp showed up in 
an unmarked police car, the family said. Schnapp was well known to the 
family and soon after his arrival more than a dozen officers were swarming 
around the scene while an increasingly hostile crowd of onlookers voiced 
their protests.

On the day before Franklin's death, court records show, Schnapp appeared at 
a pretrial court hearing to testify against Brandon Robinson in an earlier 
drug case. Franklin accompanied her son to the hearing, as she did whenever 
one of her sons had a scrape with the law.

For the twins, both high school graduates, those scrapes were mostly minor, 
court records show. In addition to the two pending cases against him, 
Brandon pleaded no contest to a marijuana possession charge in 2001, and a 
marijuana possession charge against him last year was dismissed. Randon was 
found innocent by a judge after being charged with marijuana possession in 
2002 and he is awaiting trial on a 2003 charge of illegally carrying a 
weapon. More than a dozen other stops by police did not result in arrests, 
the twins said.

If there is any reason for the family to show up on police radar, it would 
be the twins' older brother, Percy Franklin. Franklin was one of seven 
members convicted for their roles in the so-called 7th Ward Soldiers, a 
street-level drug gang involved in six murders and eight attempted murders. 
Cynthia Franklin went to her death trying to convince people Percy's 
conviction was a raw deal. While the other six gang members are serving 
life prison sentences, Franklin is serving 20 years because none of the 
violence and only a minimal amount of drugs were pinned on him. Upon 
Franklin's sentencing, then-U.S. District Judge Edith Brown Clement found 
he had "operated only at the fringes of the conspiracy."

Regardless of the family history, family members said the decision to call 
Schnapp to the scene of Cynthia Franklin's death was callous, provocative 
and unnecessary.

"My mom is dead and suddenly this is all about Jake Schnapp trying to put 
me in jail. He has a vendetta," Brandon said.

John Fuller, an attorney for the family, was called to the house after 
police declared it a crime scene. He said the discovery of the gun was 
clearly the result of an illegal search.

"The tears weren't even dry on those people's faces and you had cops using 
this death as a pretense to conduct a search," Fuller said. "Then they say 
they saw an AK-47 in plain view? What's the chance of having an AK-47 in 
plain view in your mother's house? Especially after you call the police. I 
have a problem with that. . . . Bad searches happen every day, but this was 
repulsive."

The situation may have been unusual, Defillo said, but the officials at the 
scene went by the book. He even credited the officers for showing restraint 
in the face of hostile family members and friends.

"It's an unfortunate situation, but if we haven't determined that the death 
is from natural causes, we call it a crime scene," he said. "It was a tough 
situation for the officers. There was a lot of vulgarity toward the 
investigators."

A cousin of the twins, Mark Rainey, was arrested at the scene on charges of 
disturbing the peace and trying to incite a riot, but those charges were 
later dismissed.

One of Cynthia Franklin's sisters, Pamela Monroe, admitted family and 
friends at the scene were very vocal in expressing their displeasure toward 
the officers. But for good reason, she said.

"We were upset, yeah, but all Brandon was saying was don't let Jake Schnapp 
inside the house because he just went to court on him," Monroe said. "My 
sister died in her sleep and police turned it into a damn circus."
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