Probation recommended for ex-Rocky Mount police officer in U.S. Capitol riots case
A former Rocky Mount police officer who joined his mentor and supervisor in breaching the U.S. Capitol, only to later testify against him, should be sentenced to probation, prosecutors say.
Jacob Fracker’s incrimination of Thomas “T.J.” Robertson was cited Tuesday as one reason for a judge to depart from sentencing guidelines that would otherwise call for 15 to 21 months in prison.
The testimony “led directly” to Robertson’s conviction in Washington, D.C.’s federal court, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum. It also “came at great personal cost to Fracker, as Robertson was his friend and mentor; their relationship was so close that Fracker routinely referred to Robertson as ‘dad.’ ”
Fracker, who like Robertson was off-duty at the time of the insurrection, is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 16.
In addition to probation, U.S. District Judge Christopher Cooper should consider either a term of home detention or time in a treatment center or other noncustodial setting, Assistant U.S. Attorneys Elizabeth Aloi and Risa Berkhower wrote in the memorandum.
Robertson, whose sentencing is set for Thursday, faces a more severe punishment.
Prosecutors are asking Cooper to impose an eight-year sentence — which would be the longest issued to date in the Capitol riots cases — for a man they say recruited Fracker and a neighbor to accompany him to Washington on Jan. 6, 2021, to hear then-President Donald Trump speak at a rally about what he claimed to be a “stolen election.”
Encouraged by the president to “fight like hell,” the crowd became a mob as it approached the Capitol, where lawmakers were meeting to certify an election won by Joe Biden.
“Fracker conspired with Robertson to stop the peaceful transfer of power on Jan. 6,” Aloi and Berkhower wrote. “Despite both men being military veterans and trained law enforcement officers, neither did anything to help the vastly outnumbered group of law enforcement officers who were trying to defend the building from the advancing mob.”
But Fracker played a lessor role in several respects.
He was not armed — Robertson carried a large wooden stick that he brandished at police during an encounter — and acted “at the behest of his mentor and higher-ranking police supervisor,” prosecutors say.
Robertson was a sergeant with the Rocky Mount Police Department at the time of the riots. Both men were fired shortly after their arrests.
Prosecutors also pointed to Fracker’s contrition — which they say Robertson lacks.
In his testimony to a jury in April, Fracker said that “at the time it was all fun and games. Here lately I’ve had it all presented to me and shown to me for what it is. And that’s not the person I am. That’s not how I act.”
“And so I sit here today just ashamed of my actions,” he told the jury. “I didn’t have to do all that stuff, but I did.”
