Ex-Wichita cop who molested boys, at sentencing: ‘Fairness is something I’ll never have’
An ex-cop and former public schools employee who reportedly used his position of trust to groom and molest underage boys in the Wichita area for more than a decade will spend five years in a Kansas prison, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Alex Robinson will start serving the 60-month term after he is paroled from the Colorado prison where he’s been serving time for sex crimes against another young boy, Sedgwick County District Court Judge David Kaufman decided at the 58-year-old’s sentencing hearing Tuesday afternoon.
The sentence is in line with what prosecutors sought but is harsher than the defense lawyer push for Robinson to be through with incarceration if the Colorado parole board chooses to free him — something that could happen as early as fall, according to statements given in court.
Kaufman offered no in-depth explanation for his sentencing decision or commentary on Robinson’s crimes during the hearing.
But in response to the announcement that he’d have more prison time to serve, Robinson told the judge he thought it was “a little unfair” that prosecutors “waited for so long” to bring him back to Kansas to finish the case.
He contended they only did so when he had been eligible to move to a Colorado halfway house.
“Now I’m suffering the consequences” of the delays, Robinson complained aloud in court, without interruption or retort from the judge.
“My life is waiting,” he continued, adding later: “Fairness is something I’ll never have.”
Robinson was first arrested in 2013 after a 24-year-old Wichita man told authorities that the then-police officer had abused him repeatedly after they’d met through the Boys and Girls Clubs when when the man was 11 or 12. Prosecutors waited more than a year to file formal criminal charges, as additional victims came forward.
In all, Robinson stood accused of molesting four boys, aged 11 to 14, locally between 2000 and 2012 at locations that included his apartment, a camp and a recreation center.
The abuse in the Colorado case occurred earlier, in the latter half of the 1990s.
All of the boys met Robinson through family or youth organizations and knew he was a Wichita police officer.
Resolution of the Wichita case was further delayed when the criminal charges El Paso County, Colorado, authorities filed resulted in Robinson’s convictions and a prison sentence in 2015.
Authorities transferred him back to Wichita last year.
Once considered a pillar of the community for his work as a Wichita police officer, youth organization volunteer and Wichita Public Schools safety services supervisor, Robinson pleaded no contest in February to three sex crimes — one count of indecent liberties with a child and two counts of aggravated indecent solicitation of a child — involving three different juvenile victims.
Originally, he faced several more counts, but most were dismissed with the plea.
Robinson spent 22 years on the Wichita police force and was on the school district’s payroll at the time of his 2013 arrest. The district didn’t fully sever ties with him until months afterward.
None of Robinson’s victims came to court Tuesday to address the judge in person about the effects of being molested. It wasn’t immediately clear whether any wrote letters.
Kaufman said, though, he’d received and reviewed several written notes from Robinson’s supporters. Three who were in the courtroom for Tuesday’s sentencing flashed Robinson a quick thumbs up when deputies escorted him into the room in shackles and a bright orange Sedgwick County Jail jumpsuit.
After the hearing started, Robinson’s lawyer called the case “unusual” and said he didn’t file a motion requesting a departure to probation for his client because he “doesn’t think probation would be appropriate” for the ex-cop.
Instead, defense attorney Steve Mank asked the judge to impose a mid-range prison sentence that would be served concurrently, or at the same time, with his Colorado confinement.
Robinson then spoke for several minutes about his experiences the molestation accusations surfaced, including how he felt like he was “in jail” since the moment news of his arrest broke in 2013 even though he quickly posted bail and how after his convictions in the Colorado case, he had “many lessons to learn, first and foremost about prison life.”
Robinson told the judge during his prison journey, he’s become “an empathetic listener” and said that “God gave me a vision of a plan” to start a barbecue business, which he turned into a lengthy written proposal.
“To follow God,” Robinson said he took a job as a cook in the Colorado prison’s kitchen and participated in a number of culinary training programs as well as art and music courses, some of which earned him community college credit. He also acted as a fitness instructor and attended weekly Bible studies for five years in the prison until his transfer back to Kansas last spring, he said.
He said he tried to attend a sex offender treatment program, too, but is on a waiting list.
“My life has taken a huge detour, and I apologize to my family and to God and to society,” Robinson said in court.
“I must focus on starting over and building a future.”
When he’s released from prison, he plans to live in Colorado “for the rest of my life.”
The prosecutor, Justin Edwards, pointed out that in Robinson’s long speech, he made “a lot of statements” about how the criminal cases have affected him but said nothing about his victims.
In asking for a consecutive sentence, he told the judge that Robinson’s penalty “ought to be at least a decade in prison” and that Colorado prosecutors think Robinson stands a good chance of getting paroled on his first try.
Mank disagreed, saying that a Colorado defense attorney he talked to didn’t think parole was “very realistic” so soon.
Robinson has already served 70 months, or nearly seven years, of his Colorado sentence. When he does start serving his Kansas prison term, the few days he spent in the Sedgwick County Jail early on in the case will count toward his time. But recent months he’s spent in Wichita waiting for it to end will go toward his Colorado sentence.
He is also eligible to receive up to a 15% reduction in his Kansas sentence, called “good time credit,” if he behaves and participates in prison rehabilitation programs.
This story was originally published April 14, 2021 at 10:51 AM.
