Louisiana Voice

After viewing WVUE-TV Lee Zurik’s report on the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC), several things are abundantly clear:

• If a State Police report is accurate, commission member Calvin Braxton must go but it has to be a package deal with fellow member Jared Caruso-Riecke also being shown the door.
• The commission, embroiled in tawdry political theatrics, is no longer functional if, indeed, it really ever was. It is incapable of autonomy and must be abandoned and Louisiana State Police (LSP) brought back under the management of the Louisiana Civil Service Commission.
• In the alternative, if it is to remain intact, there must be put in place a prohibition against a state trooper’s serving as chairman.

LouisianaVoice has been upfront in its past support of Braxton, primarily because he is something of a maverick who refused to take his marching orders from former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson. He often bucked the rest of the board and he asked probing questions that made some other members more than a little uncomfortable. The commission needed such a member.

Our 180-flip, based in large part on Zurik’s excellent REPORT Monday night, isn’t because Braxton had a couple of tickets fixed—or that he apparently imposed on then-LSPC Executive Director Cathy Derbonne to write letters on his behalf in efforts to put the fix in.

Who among us has never had a ticket taken care of by friends in the right places? In the spirit of full disclosure, I have on a couple of occasions. My first was as a 21-year-old and was issued as the result of an accident that I still maintain, after 52 years, was not my fault. Not knowing any better, I showed up in court in Farmerville in Union Parish only to have District Attorney Ragan Madden (he represented the 3^rd Judicial District, which includes Union and Lincoln, my home parish) meet me at the back of the courtroom. “What’re you doing here? I dismissed your ticket. Go home.”

Wow. And I didn’t even ask. Guess he felt the accident wasn’t my fault either.

In the interest of full disclosure, it should be noted that I also paid a few tickets along the way, even though in two cases, I was offered the fix, but politely declined. Also in the interest of full disclosure, none of the tickets were for anything major (other than the accident)—a rolling stop and a couple of speeding offenses but only about 15 mph over the limit.

When fellow blogger and occasional LouisianaVoice contributor Robert Burns suggested the ticket-fixing would force Gov. John Bel Edwards to remove Braxton from the commission, my first rhetorical question was: How many tickets do you suppose the governor’s brother, Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff Daniel Edwards, may have fixed over the years?

No, it wasn’t the attempt to get tickets fixed that concerned me. It was Zurik’s revelation that Braxton had apparently attempted to have the state trooper who arrested his daughter for DUI transferred and that he implied that as a member of LSPC, he might be disinclined to help the trooper should he ever find himself before the commission for disciplinary action.

Those allegations were contained in a lengthy report by Troop E Commander Captain J.D. Oliphant to the Region 3 Command Inspector that was brandished by Zurik.

Such behavior on the part of a member of the commission that oversees the actions of Louisiana State Troopers in unacceptable. Period.

Granted, Zurik blindsided Braxton at the LSPC meeting last Thursday. Some call it “ambush journalism,” but Braxton has exhibited a reluctance to talk to anyone in the media, LouisianaVoice included, and the direct approach was apparently the only one available to Zurik.

And Braxton’s sudden memory loss concerning his communications with Derbonne was clumsy and was certainly less than convincing.

So why would I insist that Caruso-Riecke be removed from the commission along with Braxton?

Not because he has been a divisive force since his appointment by Gov. Edwards, though he has certainly been that.

My contention is that while Braxton has been issued tickets and then tried to get them fixed, Caruso-Riecke has made it a point of considerable pride that he avoids tickets because…

He cheats. He openly violates the law and even boasts about it on his internet Web page.

You can hear it in his own words HERE and about his wager with Team Texas HERE.

You see, Riecke, who is worth an estimated $70 million, has a lot of time on his hands to pursue his hobby as a star in a TV reality show in which he uses his modified Mercedes in cross-country rally competition, tearing down the nation’s highways at speeds of up to 140 mph.

His vehicle is equipped with two in-dash police scanners with more than 1,000 channels—concealed by a fake dashboard, a handheld scanner and several cellphones, all used to evade law enforcement on public highways.

But here’s the real clincher: his car has 10 separate license plates to help evade law enforcement.

That raises the obvious question of how one gets 10 separate license plates issued to the same vehicle. Or does he pull plates from other cars to use to escape police?

Well, he is a licensed auto dealer, so perhaps he has access to plates from other vehicles. Or maybe he registered the vehicle in multiple states—sort of like Donald Trump’s claim of multiple-state voter registration fraud.

But no one appears to be concerned about that. When Floyd Falcon, attorney for the Louisiana State Troopers Association (LSTA), fired off a LETTER to Gov. Edwards on July 11, 2016, asking that Braxton be removed from the commission, he included a laundry list of 20 specific complaints and also included a four-page State Police Incident Report by Oliphant and submitted to Region 3 Command Inspector Kevin Reeves (since named as Edmonson’s successor as Superintendent of State Police with Oliphant promoted to Major and moved to Reeves’ former post as Region 3 Command Inspector) which detailed Braxton’s alleged threats against the State Trooper who arrested his daughter.

Falcon has been strangely quiet about Caruso-Riecke’s somewhat cavalier attitude about speeding, eluding law enforcement by illegally switching license plates (and yes, it is definitely illegal). But there seems to be no indignation over his thumbing his nose at the law.

But Riecke won’t be removed by Edwards.

Why? A little thing called campaign contributions. Riecke is a close friend of Sheriff Daniel Edwards and between the sheriff and his brother, Riecke has contributed $10,000 in campaign cash. He ain’t going anywhere.

Which brings me to my final point. T.J. Doss is a state trooper. He is a mostly ineffective chairman of the LSPC but as such, is in position to control investigations (or non-investigations in the case of those illegal campaign contributions by the LSTA) of trooper misconduct.

But not once did he attempt to investigate the actions of his former boss, Mike Edmonson. Not once was that infamous San Diego trip raised before the commission. But who in his right mind would want the dubious task of investigating one’s boss?

Which is precisely why there should be a prohibition against a State Trooper serving as chairman of the LSPC. It’s too much of a hot seat—or should be—for a State Trooper. Yes, the LSTA should be represented on the commission, which hears appeals of disciplinary action by troopers. But chairman? No indeed.