Louisiana Voice

Another black man killed by police during a routine traffic stop.

This time it wasn’t State Police, but a sheriff’s deputy and it wasn’t in Troop F, but in Rapides Parish.

And it was the end result of a traffic stop for, of all things, a pickup truck for suspected window tint and modified muffler violations, according to Louisiana State Police (LSP) Superintendent Lamar Davis, who belatedly came up with the reason for the traffic stop – even though the deputy who actually pulled Derrick Kittling over never explained to him why he was pulled over.

And also, to be completely fair, I don’t know what went on during the exchange between Deputy Rodney Anderson and Kittling, but I do know this: Louisiana’s archaic laws over window tint and muffler modification are nothing more than license to harass and an excuse for selective enforcement.

I live next to a major thoroughfare in Denham Springs and I literally am unable to count the number of vehicles – driven mostly by white, middle-class teenagers – that roar up and down Range Avenue with those loud, obnoxious modified mufflers with impunity from Denham Springs police.

To carry the absurdity a bit further, there is no continuity between states, no standardized regulations on tinted windows. A friend, also in Denham Springs, purchased a vehicle in another state that already had its windows tinted – legally in that state, but apparently not so much in Louisiana. The result? He can’t get his vehicle inspected in this state without changing out all his windows because of our backward laws regulating tinted windows.

In Kittling’s case, he allegedly asked repeatedly why Anderson had stopped him but got no response and things escalated.

And again, I don’t know the particulars of this incident. Anderson may have only been trying to give Kittling a warning and things got out of hand.

But Davis, who said State Police are conducting an ongoing investigation of the November 6 shooting – that’s an investigation that has slogged along for two whole months now, if you’re counting – said the sheriff’s office had been receiving reports of people with weapons in the area where Kittling was pulled over.

What?

Are you kidding me?

Weapons? Please name me any area of any town, city, burg, hamlet, village, or metropolis where there is not a presence of guns these days.

That’s about the weakest explanation yet from LSP.

And of course, LSP has not responded to a request for an update on its investigation but that’s not unusual. Make a request for public records to LSP for a public record (as I have) and you’ll get the response (as I have) that it may take up to 45 days for compliance despite Louisiana Revised Statute 44:1 (et seq.), which plainly says:

If the public record applied for is immediately available, it shall be immediately

presented to the authorized person applying for it. If the public record applied

for is in active use at the time of the application, the custodian shall promptly

certify this in writing to the applicant and shall fix a day and hour within three

days, exclusive of Saturdays, Sundays, and legal public holidays, for review of

the record.

Of course, when presented with that statute, LSP’s legal department responded with a statute that does not remotely apply to the records in question. We are now in our 24^th working day in our standoff over my pending records request despite the law that mandates “immediate” compliance.

But back to those Louisiana laws governing tinted windows and modified mufflers.

According to a deep dive into the records by freelance journalist FRANCES MADESON, writing for the Louisiana Illuminator, the Rapides Sheriff has a crack team assigned to the public danger inherent in dark windows and loud mufflers. Madeson reports that there was a grand total of seven modified muffler violations in 2020, ten in 2021, and eight as of November 28, 2022.

Tinted windows? Well, there was just one in 2020, five in 2021, and another five as of Nov. 28, 2022.

Would anyone care to guess as to the ethnicity of the drivers?

Oh, the sheriff’s office did say those numbers did not include stops in which drivers were not ticketed. Anyone care to hazard a guess as to the ethnicity of those drivers?

Another point raised by Madeson was the inspection sticker on Kittler’s vehicle, purchased only a month before the shooting. That would have been in October. The inspection sticker, issued that same month, indicated that it had passed inspection only a month before Anderson pulled him over. State inspections are supposed to check window tinting with an approved light meter, and vehicles with exhaust systems that produce “excessive noise” can be rejected, according to state law.

That alone should produce a curious “hmmm?” from investigators.

Madeson contacted Lauren Bonds, executive director of the National Police Accountability Project based in New Orleans (NPAP), who said such low-level infractions are widely known as “gateway” violations. “You get a tint violation,” she said, “and then it’s ‘I saw that you didn’t have your seatbelts on’ and then ‘I got a chance to read your license and saw that you had a suspended license’ or ‘I get this chance to look at your insurance and see that it’s expired.’”

While Bonds called RPSO’s citation numbers “strikingly low,” she described the tint and mufflers stops as often being “pretextual” or a reason to conduct another type of investigation. She said once they find a bigger violation, it’s a common practice not to include the lower offense on the ticket.