Source: United States Department of Justice News
A man who led Dubuque police on a high‑speed chase that ended with his car on its hood and his gun, heroin, fentanyl and cocaine in the snow was sentenced March 17, 2022, to four years in federal prison.
Richard Allen Roberts, age 39, from Chicago, Illinois, received the prison term after September 27, 2021 guilty pleas to one count of distributing crack near a playground and one count of being a felon in possession of a firearm.
In a plea agreement, Roberts admitted that he sold about a half gram of crack cocaine to a confidential informant near Jefferson Park in Dubuque on January 26, 2021. About a week later, police tracked Roberts’s car from Dubuque to Chicago. When he returned to Iowa on February 5, 2021, officers stopped the car after it crossed the bridge into Dubuque from Wisconsin. A narcotics K9 alerted to the odor of narcotics coming from Roberts’s vehicle. After an officer asked Roberts to get out of his car, Roberts put the car in gear and fled. During the subsequent chase, Roberts’ vehicle reached speeds in excess of 80 miles per hour and collided with a snowplow but kept going. Roberts eventually lost control of his car approximately 3.5 miles away in Illinois, flipping the car over into a snow‑filled median. When the car was turned back over, officers found a plastic bag containing about 32 grams of powder cocaine, 44 grams of crack cocaine, over 9 grams of heroin, 1.5 gram of heroin and fentanyl. Next to the bag was a Smith & Wesson 9mm pistol. Roberts had previously been convicted of 11 prior felony crimes in Illinois.
Roberts was sentenced in Cedar Rapids by United States District Court Judge C.J. Williams. Roberts was sentenced to 48 months’ imprisonment. He must also serve a 6-year term of supervised release after the prison term. There is no parole in the federal system.
This case was brought as part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN). PSN is the centerpiece of the Department of Justice’s violent crime reduction efforts. PSN is an evidence-based program proven to be effective at reducing violent crime. Through PSN, a broad spectrum of stakeholders work together to identify the most pressing violent crime problems in the community and develop comprehensive solutions to address them. As part of this strategy, PSN focuses enforcement efforts on the most violent offenders and partners with locally based prevention and reentry programs for lasting reductions in crime.
Roberts is being held in the United States Marshal’s custody until he can be transported to a federal prison.
The case was investigated by the Dubuque Drug Task Force and prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney Dan Chatham.
Court file information at https://ecf.iand.uscourts.gov/cgi-bin/login.pl. The case file number is 21‑CR‑1017‑CJW‑MAR.
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