Louisiana Voice

Latest items of interest picked up by LouisianaVoice concerning Louisiana State Police (LSP):

• Four months before the beatings of black motorists Aaron Larry Bowman and Ronald Greene, another black motorist was beaten by troopers from State Police Troops E, F, and G, a beating that LSP has tried desperately to keep from going public. Video in the possession of LSP shows troopers beating Damarirca Mims and hurling racial slurs at him.
• LSP and some members of the Legislative Black Caucus are pushing to retain the services of Theron Bowman, Ph.D, a police and city management consultant, as an effort to prevent the implementation of a federal consent decree for State Police.
• Louisiana State Police high command is said to have delayed firing Trooper John Clary for his role in Greene’s beating death on May 10, 2019, until he reached his three-year anniversary date at the rank of lieutenant last November.
• The LSP IT employee who was ordered to sanitize the cellphones of former – and current- employees is described as “stressed” and is said to have expressed concerns over why the department ordered him to wipe the phones of active employees Lt. Col. Doug Cain and attorney Faye Dysart Morrison. It is still unknown as to ordered that the phones be erased.
• Likewise, questions remain as to why Maj. Jason Turner, who is the Region 3 Officer over Troops E, F, and G, blocked Det. Albert Paxton when Paxton attempted to obtain evidence in the Greene matter. Paxton, ultimately retired from State Police but did not go quietly, giving interviews of difficulties of his investigation to a Baton Rouge TV reporter.
• State Police appear to be attempting to keep a lid on an event involving a trooper from Troop L and a young girl, details of which reflect back onto Louisiana’s First Family.
• A State Police lieutenant has been involved in at least two hit and run accidents in the Lake Charles and New Orleans areas. In the latest incident, he attempted to say he was sideswiped by another vehicle, though there are no paint transfers that would indicate contact with another vehicle, leaving skeptics to believe he struck a guardrail.

The Mims beating took place in Caddo Parish in January 2019, just four months before the Bowman and Greene beatings. One of the troopers involved in the Mims beating was Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who also was involved in the Greene beating death on May 10, 2019. Hollingsworth was subsequently fired and died days later as the result of an auto accident. Troopers involved in the Mims beating were identified as Brent Hardy of Troop G, and Trooper George Hardy, and others.

The bookshelves of Louisiana state government in general and state agencies in particular are filled with dusty consultant studies on how to make operations more efficient. Basically, all they have done is result in the expenditure of tax dollars for expensive studies that produce few tangible results.

Yet, LSP and the Legislative Black Caucus are pushing to retain the services of Theron Bowman, a police and city management consultant in an attempt to head off the implementation of a federal consent decree to oversee state police operations. Bowman is a member of the Management Partners consulting firm of Cincinnati, Ohio.

That’s not to say that Bowman doesn’t possess the chops for the job, he does. He has more than 30 years’ experience in leading and managing complex and sophisticated police and public safety operations, including New Orleans, Maricopa County, Arizona, Cleveland, Los Angeles County, Newark, and others. He spent more than 30 years with the City of Arlington, Texas, Police Department, rising through the ranks to become chief and later deputy city manager.

But two common sense moves continue to elude those in the decision-making positions: (1) abolish the State Police Commission and move state police into State Civil Service like the rest of the working stiffs and (2) abandon the regulation that the state police superintendent must come from within the ranks and not from outside. Those are two things that continue to keep State Police from entering the 21^st century. Neither is a matter of waving a wand and declaring it so, but it’s worth the bureaucratic necessities involved to get them done.

Clary was said to have boasted to fellow officers that LSP Internal Affairs (IA) provided him with interview questions and answers prior to his interview. He was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing in Greene’s death. Clary lied for more than two years about the existence of body cam footage of the Greene beating but when investigators examined the time/date stamped audit trail of the video, it showed that Clary was periodically going back to check the video to ensure that no one else was seeing it.

No more needs to be said about the concerns of the IT employee over the wiping of State Police cellphones and the concerns of former Det. Albert Paxton have been widely publicized, though Turner needs to be questioned further about his role in blocking Paxton’s investigation of the Greene death.

The identity of the state trooper involved with “inappropriate conduct” with a female member of the LSU band in hotel room during travel to the Mississippi State football game last fall has been kept under wraps like some sort of state secret but LouisianaVoice has learned that the trooper was Thomas Noto from Troop L. Little is known about the complaint filed against Noto other than he and the female band member were drinking in a hotel room while he was on duty.

It’s interesting to note that Noto was also assigned to the security detail for the governor’s son, John Miller Edwards, while he was enrolled at LSU. Noto was placed on administrative leave, but no further announcements of discipline have been forthcoming.

Finally, it is disconcerting that the driving habits of Lt. Chad Lacoste have not come under greater scrutiny. His first incident occurred in Troop L in early 2021 when his patrol unit sideswiped a civilian’s vehicle and Lacoste fled the scene. The civilian, however, got his license number and had a private investigator run it. Rather than arrest Lacoste for hit and run, however, he was merely ticketed.

Then, on Sept. 30, 2021, Lacoste called Troop B and claimed he was traveling on an interstate ramp near the Mercedes Benz Superdome when a white pickup truck sideswiped his unit and fled the scene. Lacoste, a seasoned police officer, failed to get a license plate number and apparently forgot he had a police radio. There was no paint transfer, however, which would have been the case when one vehicle hits another, leaving investigators to believe he sideswiped a guardrail instead and was most likely impaired.