Louisiana Voice

What’s going on in the 22^nd Judicial District of Louisiana?

Comprised of the parishes of Washington and St. Tammany, it’s beginning to appear that anything goes in those two Florida parishes that abut the Pearl River in the easternmost part of the Louisiana toe.

There’s the going on nine-year-old as yet unsolved murder of NANETTE KRENTEL.

 And while the 2012 murder of St. Tammany native businessman BRUCE CUCCHIARA did not occur in either of the two parishes (it happened in New Orleans East), his ties to Covington’s Jared Caruso-Riecke continue to raise questions while providing no answers.

It didn’t help when Sheriff Randy Smith arrested Jerry Rogers in 2019 for “criminal defamation” (a law that does not even exist) when Rogers, an investigator for the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, criticized the lack of progress in solving the Krentel killing.

Rogers filed a LAWSUIT against Smith and two of his deputies in federal court in 2020. Rogers prevailed in his lawsuit when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5^th Circuit RULED IN HIS FAVOR in 2023.

Nor did it help burnish the local image when Smith’s predecessor, Jack Strain, was arrested in 2021 on state charges of rape, incest and indecent behavior with a juvenile. He was subsequently SENTENCED to life imprisonment for those offenses and for 10 after entering pleading guilty to soliciting and receiving bribes involving contracts for privatization of a work release program in St. Tammany Parish.

We’re rehashing all those past stories as a way of bringing events to the present day as they pertain to the City of Bogalusa and apparent reluctance by the district attorney’s office to investigate claimed irregularities in the previous city administration.

A Jan. 22 posting on Facebook by The Parish Spectator called into question the apparent lack of interest in investigating claims of bid irregularities that allegedly occurred during the administration of former Mayor Wendy Perrette.

Early in the tenure of Perrette’s successor, Mayor Tyrin Truong formally requested that District Attorney Collin Sims “investigate potential contractor fraud” connected to the administration of Perrette, the Facebook post said, adding that among the questionable transactions were “more than $1 million spent between two contractors without bids or quotes, with work allegedly awarded directly to individuals described by many as friends of the former administration.”

Instead, an investigation was initiated into Truong himself. Truong was indicted last October on multiple charges, including malfeasance of office, public intimidation and theft. The charges were tied to a drug trafficking investigation. Truong, incidentally, supported Sims’s opponent. Sounds much like a scaled-down version of Cankle Ankles Trump.

“It is not unreasonable for the public to ask whether that political reality has influenced what followed,” the Facebook post said. When prosecutorial power is exercised in a way that appears retaliatory, public trust erodes—and with it, confidence in the justice system itself.”

Fast forward to today. The results of a 71-page INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT conducted by the Legislative Auditor’s office has revealed a plethora of violations of state laws and regulations as well as a violation of the Louisiana State Constitution and the city charter.

The question that must be asked, then, is just where has the district attorney’s office been all this time?