If you visit the State Capitol during a legislative session, one thing you’ll be certain to notice is the very visible presence of Louisiana State Police (LSP) hanging around outside House and Senate committee rooms as well as upstairs in the Capitol rotunda and further up, in the governor’s fourth-floor suite of offices.
It’s understandable that security would be stepped up during the session which annually attracts throngs of tourists, demonstrators, and lobbyists to the house that Huey built. With so many people milling about, there’s always the chance of some misguided nutcase attempting to make a statement of some sort.
After all, more than half-a-century ago, back in 1970, there was a dynamite bomb that exploded in the Senate chambers that was linked to an organized labor dispute. It was a Sunday night and the chamber was empty, but still…
Then, on Jan. 6, 2021, there was the riotous insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, an outrage that remains stuck in the craw of a lot of people (except for those who refuse to acknowledge it as more than a “routine tourist excursion”).
And so it was that State Senate President Page Cortez (R-Lafayette) filed SB 490 in the 2022 regular session that easily passed both houses and was signed into law by Gov. John Bel Edwards as Act 507 to create a new Louisiana Capitol Police Force to provide security for the Capitol complex, including the nearby Pentagon Barracks, where quite a few senators and representatives (55, to be precise) call home at steeply discounted rental rates during the session and when they’re in town for committee meetings.
The other 89 members are on their own for housing – and security after hours.
Cortez is also chair of the Joint Legislative CAPITOL SECURITY COUNCIL. Other members include Sens. Gerald Boudreaux (D-Lafayette), Jay Luneau (D-Alexandria), Barry Milligan (R-Shreveport), and Beth Mizel (R-Franklinton), and Reps. Clay Schexnayder (R-Gonzales, vice-chair), Larry Selders (D-Baton Rouge), Joseph Stagni (R-Kenner), John Stefanski (R-Crowley), and Debbie Villio (R-Kenner).
Among the duties spelled out in the act are responsibility to “oversee law enforcement and physical security for the areas within the state capitol complex…that are occupied and utilized by the members, officers, and staff of the legislative branch of state government, including areas of ingress and egress for those areas as necessary,” and to “oversee law enforcement and physical security for the legislature, its members, officers, and staff at any official meeting or function or the legislature, and its committees regardless of location.” (Emphasis added)
Some of those “functions” consist of after-hours parties and cookouts at the Pentagon Barracks where coincidentally, eight of the 10 Capitol Security Council members reside during the session. Those include Cortez, Schexnayder, Boudreaux, Luneau, Milligan, Mizell, Stagni, and Stefanski.
The anticipated pay for the new police chief is in the area of $135,000 to head up a force of about two dozen officers. The target is for all personnel to be in place by the start of the 2023 legislative session, which begins April 10.
So, basically, what we have here is the creation of a new weaponized police force devoted almost exclusively to the protection of legislators and special protection for 55 occupants of the Pentagon Barracks and their guests during off-hours events, including, one would presume, tailgate parties and cookouts at the Pentagon Barracks for LSU home football games. And the taxpayers will foot the bill at $2 million per year, the anticipated budget for the new agency.
That’s what happens whenever the legislature gets its hands on a little surplus cash – they find ways to spend it on inconsequential matters rather than on education, the environment, health care, or on fighting poverty, obesity, coastal erosion, or flood control.
Besides LSP security during the session, there is already in existence another 26-person force assigned exclusively to the Capitol detail year-round. The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has a separate police force from LSP but which requires its officers to meet the same standards as State Troopers. They must be P.O.S.T (Police Officers Standards and Training) certified and they possess the same arrest powers as their much higher-paid counterparts at LSP. Their headquarters are actually located within the Capitol complex already.
From the DPS web page: http://www.lsp.org/dps_police.html:
DPS Police was established in 1974. At that time, DPS Police was charged with providing security at the Louisiana State Police Headquarters Compound and supervising inmates assigned to the State Police Inmate Barracks. This service is now provided by the Physical Security section.
In 1996, the Louisiana State Police increased the scope of DPS Police responsibility to include providing security in and around the State Capitol. This section is known as Capitol Detail. In addition to the State Capitol, officers are posted in many of the state buildings. Officers are also responsible for making patrols of the Capitol Complex and responding to calls for service in and around the state buildings and garages.
The department utilizes a state-of-the-art communications room equipped with the latest video equipment necessary to monitor the State Capitol Complex and the Louisiana State Police Headquarters Complex.
In 2010, the “old” Capitol Police was transferred from the Division of Administration and placed under the State Police. This unit, now known as DPS/State Facility Security, is responsible for security in and around all state facilities located outside of the Capitol Complex.
This includes facilities located in New Orleans, Lafayette, Alexandria, Shreveport, and Monroe. In 2015, these sections were combined and placed under the command of the Capitol Detail/State Facility Security Captain.
DUTIES:
- Enforces all applicable state laws.
- Provides security at the Louisiana State Police Headquarters Complex, State Capitol Complex and outlying state buildings to ensure the safety of those who either work or visit those facilities.
- Provides crowd control during demonstrations and parades, directs traffic flow, and investigates traffic crashes.
- Provides dignitary protection.
- Supervises Department of Corrections inmates assigned to the Louisiana State Police Barracks.
- Investigates all criminal activity that occurs in and around State Police Headquarters, Capitol Complex, and various state buildings throughout the state.
So, why not just hire additional officers for DPS? Good question.
In addition, Baton Rouge police, constables and sheriff’s deputies also have authority within the Capitol complex. With all those law enforcement officers, we might actually see cops outnumbering lobbyists during the session, which certainly would be a first.
Initially, 11 people submitted applications for the position of CHIEF but that list has been whittled down to three: Frederick Thomas, a district commander for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office; Terry Alario, Jr., a special agent/operations officer with the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office, and Lt. Rodney Hyatt, who has been employed since 2017 in evidence control for LSP.
Hyatt, readers may remember, was among the four state troopers who were disciplined for unauthorized travel back in 2016 in connection with their taxpayer-paid state auto trip to San Diego via the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas.
An internal investigation resulted in Hyatts’ demotion from lieutenant to sergeant but that was overturned by the Louisiana State Police Commission. Hyatt based his appeal on his claim that then-State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson knew of and approved the trip and made Hyatt and his three state police companions on the trip the scapegoats once the trip became public.
The State Ethics Commission likewise exonerated Edmonson, meaning that no one bore responsibility for the four troopers taking a state vehicle to San Diego for the sole purpose of attending a conference to see Edmonson receive an award.
Alario, who is currently in charge of security at the AG’s main office in Baton Rouge as well as its satellite offices throughout the state, is currently working under his third attorney general. He began under Charles Foti and has remained first with Buddy Caldwell and now Jeff Landry. His current salary is $94,723 per year.
His staying power could be attributed in part to his pedigree. He is the nephew of former Senate President John Alario, who has managed to have several of his family members employed by the state, including his daughter-in-law, Dionne, who was Administrative Program Manager for DPS. She was hired to supervise DPS employees in Baton Rouge while working from her home in Westwego at a salary of $69,222.
John Alario’s son, JOHN W. ALARIO, also is employed by DPS as director of its Liquefied Petroleum Gas Commissionat at a salary of $124,384.
Anyone care to take odds on who the new chief of the new Louisiana Capitol Police Force will be?
Louisiana Voice 
“The Department of Public Safety (DPS) has a separate police force from LSP but which requires its officers to meet the same standards as State Troopers.”
You are getting as bad as Burns at Soundoff. DPS officers attend a basic POST Academy for about 400 hours of training. State Troopers receive over 1,000 hours and are the most trained police officers in the State by far, and one of the highest trained agencies in the entire country. Do some research, Tom.
I always believed that but I was told by DPS source that DPS officers possess the same authority as LSP and that was what I was inferring. If the standards are different, then I was misinformed but it does not change the fact that they do have the same arrest powers. And I think your information raises yet another point: how much training will these new officers be required to have? Will it be the 400 hours that DPS get or the 1000 that LSP requires. I’m betting the former.
I do appreciate your clarification, but my point is not so much the training received by DPS officers, but whether or not another police department is actually necessary.
Well, Mike Hawk, that may well be but I have yet to hear of any DPS officer tasing and beating anyone to death, or getting in trouble while protecting the Pope during his visit to New Orleans, or of taking a state vehicle on a taxpayer-paid tour of the Grand Canyon and Vegas. So what it basically comes down to is it doesn’t really matter how well trained you are; if the leadership is rotten, the poop flows downhill.
Not really relevant but fun fact: Louisiana game wardens are the most highly trained POST certified law enforcement officers in the state. They’re training academy is longer than LSP’s … They’re some of the most highly trained law enforcement officers in the country.
If this is the Janice I think it is, I will agree. I would imagine that more often than not a Louisiana game warden comes into contact with people who are armed. Every hunter they approach will have a weapon handy. So, I can see the need for more training.
This is a consequence of the right wing politically correct position that we can never spend enough on police and military and saying anything to the contrary is practically treason. I found this to be another informative article regardless of pretty trivial particulars about the number of hours of training.
“Anyone care to take odds on who the new chief of the new Louisiana Capitol Police Force will be?”
Tom,
It is obvious that the Legislature will chose an Alario. They are all in bed together. Looks like nepotism, favoritism, and typical Louisiana politics lives on. Even “retired” we see Alario still pulls the Legislators’ strings and continues to provide his family with cush, unneeded jobs.
The Act that created this new security force does not tell you the whole story. If you look at the end of line 12 of the image above, you will see a phrase “to remove provisions for the capitol police”. There is no mention of the Capitol Police in the final digest of the bill. The Capitol Police were created in 1974, R.S. 49:149-149.5. They were subject to the supervision of the superintendent of state buildings and grounds. They were declared as peace officers and had jurisdiction on state properties and buildings, including the “capitol complex”. So the Act just replaced existing law with newer provisions. The biggest change is that the Legislature controls this new entity. Control it did not have over the old capitol police and does not have over the detailed state police, during sessions, nor the ever present DPS police.
Tom, unless I missed it, I didn’t see an Act that transferred the capitol police to public safety. I did see a House Bill that attempted such, but it died in senate retirement. Maybe they amended it on to another bill?
Not aware of such.