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LSP denies 4th JDC report; claims investigation is ongoing while OIG says it’s over and gives report to LouisianaVoice

Posted in Attorney General, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Fraud, Guest Columnist, Judges, Lawsuits, State Police on May 11, 2016| 9 Comments »

 isBy Tom Aswell and Ken Booth

If there was ever any question that there is a deliberate ongoing effort by the Louisiana State Police (LSP) to deny access to public records, those doubts were laid to rest by a pair of responses to LouisianaVoice—one from LSP and the other from the Office of Inspector General.

It all began innocently enough with a routine request made for files into the turmoil and legal battle among judges of the 4th Judicial District Court which includes the parishes of Ouachita and Morehouse.

Judge Sharon Marchman filed suit against four of her colleagues on the 4th JDC bench over her claims that they were covering for a legal clerk who Marchman suspected was not at work during times she was being paid. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/05/05/disorder-in-the-court-guest-columnist-ken-booth-reveals-disturbing-events-that-taint-several-judges-of-4th-jdc/

Oddly enough, the clerk is the highest-paid law clerk in the 4th JDC—despite the fact that she is not even an attorney, normally the number one criteria for a law clerk.

The clerk, Allyson Campbell, is the sister of prominent Monroe trial lawyer Catherine Creed, the daughter of George Campbell, regional president of Regions Bank who in turn is married to the daughter of another prominent attorney, Billy Boles who was instrumental in the growth of Century Telephone and who is a major contributor to various political campaigns.

Another major screw-up in 4th Judicial District Court (and again Judge Larry Jefferson is right in the middle of it all)

State Police were reported last June to be conducting a joint investigation, along with the OIG, but no report on that investigation has ever been issued by either agency.

So naturally, in keeping with our uncompromising belief in the public’s right to know, we asked.

Here is the identical request made by LouisianaVoice to both agencies on May 5:

Pursuant to the Public Records Act of Louisiana (R.S. 44:1 et seq.), I respectfully request the following information:

Please allow me to review the file on the Fourth Judicial District 2015 investigation.

Here is the response received on Wednesday, May 11, from LSP:

Mr. Aswell, I have been advised that the district attorney for the 4th JDC considers this an open matter as he is awaiting additional information.  Therefore, any responsive records maintained by LSP are not subject to release at this time as they are exempt from disclosure pursuant to R.S. 44:3(A)(1). With kindest professional regards, I am,

Sincerely,

Michele M. Giroir

Attorney Supervisor

But wait. A full day before receiving the LSP denial (on Tuesday, May 10) we received quite a different response from the OIG. OIG 4TH JDC REPORT

On the first page, OIG General Counsel Joseph Lotwick explained that “records prepared or obtained by the Inspector General in connection with investigations conducted by the Inspector General shall be deemed confidential and protected from disclosure.”

But Lotwick, in that same letter, also said he was attaching a copy of an April 15 letter from Inspector General Stephen Street to 4th JDC District Attorney Jerry Jones “as it is a public record.” The five-paragraph letter of nearly a month ago noted that the 4th JDC management controls “did not make possible a determination of the hours Ms. Campbell worked on any given workday. Investigators confirmed that alleged violations of policy applicable to Ms. Campbell were investigaged (sic) and addressed by 4th JDC authorities.

“Because the available facts do not provide sufficient cause for the arrest of Ms. Campbell for any criminal offense, we are closing our file and taking no further action in this matter.”

So, despite claims by LSP that the investigation remains open, Louisiana’s Inspector General Stephen Street says an investigation by his department along with detectives from the state police found nothing wrong with the work hours of a law clerk for the 4th Judicial District Court.

A state audit had pointed to possible payroll fraud when an inspection of time sheets revealed the chief law clerk had turned in time sheets for work on days she was not even at the courthouse. Those time sheets were approved by her supervising judges.

The 41-year-old law clerk, Allyson Campbell was also a society columnist for the News-Star, the Monroe daily newspaper at the time.

According to lawsuits filed against her by an attorney alleging she destroyed or concealed files in his cases before the court, Campbell, who indicated she might be doing her job at a Monroe restaurant/bar frequented by lawyers, business people and Judges.

Documents show one picture obviously taken in a restaurant was captioned “Seafood nachos at the office.”

In 2014 Campbell published a column entitled A modern guide to handle your scandal, declaring “half the fun is getting there and the other half is in the fix.”

“Send it out,” she wrote. “Lies, half-truths, gorilla dust, whatever you’ve got. You’re no one until someone is out to get you.” She continued, “That special somebody cared enough to try and blacken your reputation and went and turned you into a household name? Bravo. You’re doing something right.”

The allegedly falsified Campbell time sheets, said to have been borne out by courthouse security camera video showing she was a no-show there on the questioned “work days,” and a subsequent allegation of cover-up by four Ouachita Parish District Court Judges, prompted Judge Marchman, to file a federal court lawsuit against all of them for retaliating against her for “trying to expose Campbell’s history of payroll fraud and document destruction” while acting under color of law.

Whether Marchman was aware is not known, but Street had by then already decided interviews his office had conducted at the courthouse led him to conclude “the available facts do not provide sufficient cause for the arrest of Ms. Campbell for any criminal office, [and] we are closing our file and taking no further action in this matter.

In his April 15 letter to Jones, Street outlined how “several 4th Judicial District Judges, as well as other local attorneys, “the current and former court administrator, employees of the Clerk of Court, (Louise Bond),” and other court employees and assistants, as well as Campbell herself, were interviewed. Campbell, he wrote, had denied destroying or hiding or destroying any court records or pleadings.”

District Attorney Jones at the outset referred the allegations of wrongdoing to the State Police who wound up working in concert with the IG’s north Louisiana investigator, Heath Humble.

Since then, the DA has consistently referred all questions regarding the status of the case to the office of the Louisiana Attorney General, Jeff Landry.

Accordingly, my public records request for documentation or any statement regarding the status of the investigation long since closed by the local and state investigators was answered by Shannon Dirmann, an Assistant Attorney General who wrote on May 9: “Our office is in the process of determining what, if any, records are subject to this request, and, if so, whether any privileges or exemptions apply. This may take some time. You will be notified whether records have been located and are responsive.” (Emphasis added) In other words, “we’ll get back to you.”

Interesting indeed, since Lotwick responded to a similar records request one day later (on May 10) from LouisianaVoice with a copy of Street’s letter to Jones—“as it is a public record.”

“I trust that this response is sufficient,” he wrote in his letter to LouisianaVoice.

Well, certainly more sufficient—and much more informative than anything provided by LSP.

 

 

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How did convicted rapist gain access to isolation cell in the Union Parish Detention Center to rape teenage girl—twice?

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Prison, State Police on May 10, 2016| 12 Comments »

Sometimes you just have to wonder what thought process is employed in the making of incredibly bad decisions.

Take, for example, recent events at the Union Parish Detention Center in Farmerville.

What transpired there in mid-April is incompetence at best and criminal at worst.

The Ruston Daily Leader reported on Tuesday, May 3, that a convicted rapist was admitted into an isolation cell where a 17-year-old girl thought to be high on meth was being held and that he raped the girl twice.

Demarcus Shavez Peyton, 28, of Homer, is being held in the detention center until his scheduled sentencing in Claiborne Parish after his conviction of aggravated rape in that parish.

Union Parish deputies confirmed that the Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office had told them that Peyton is known as a serial rapist and that he had been convicted of aggravated rape.

Yet, on April 19, he was allowed inside an isolation cell with the teen after she was booked into the detention center, reportedly high on meth.

An arrest affidavit reported that Peyton admitted to authorities that a detention center staff member opened the isolation cell door for him to enter and again when he was ready to leave. He further admitted to twice having sex with the victim while inside the cell.

A detention center nurse confirmed that the girl was under the influence of meth both at the time of her arrest and when she was raped. And while the victim said she could not remember much of the incident because of the meth influence, she did say that at one time during the encounter, a female guard walked up to the cell and opened the door but did nothing. She said she did not cry out for fear of her life.

As if all that were not egregious enough, Union Parish detectives said that Peyton wrote a letter to the victim following the rape telling her that she could possibly be carrying his child.

The name of the detention center staffer who allowed Peyton into the isolation cell with the girl was not immediately provided.

The Union Parish Detention Center is a public-run facility overseen by an operation committee composed of District Attorney John Belton, Union Parish Sheriff Dusty Gates, the Union Parish Police Jury and the Farmerville Police Chief.

No employee of the sheriff’s office or the district attorney is involved in the day-to-day operations of the jail, the Daily Leader quoted officials as saying.

While this is old news in the strictest terms of current events, this entire episode warrants a thorough investigation—and not just by the local DA and the sheriff’s office. This is an inexcusable tragedy that should be investigated by the Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Attorney General’s office.

Normally, the attorney general does not intervene in local matters but because the 2nd Judicial District Attorney’s office is one of those charged with oversight of the detention center, Belton’s office should recuse itself from the investigation immediately—as should the sheriff’s office—and an outside investigation initiated.

This is far too serious a screw-up to be left to local officials. It would amount to their investigating themselves.

One issue not addressed by local media is the existence or non-existence of video surveillance cameras. There should certainly be surveillance cameras in place that might reveal who the detention staff member was who opened the door to the isolation cell to allow Peyton access to the helpless teenager. Surveillance video might even show if that person stood by the door until Peyton was ready to exit. Video, if it exists, should also reveal the identity of the female staffer who opened the cell door during the assault but did nothing. Was it the same person who allowed Peyton into the cell?

Too many questions to be left to the locals. It was a local screw-up of monumental proportions that screams out for an independent investigation.

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One week after LouisianaVoice story, feds hand down three-count indictment of Iberia Parish Sheriff Ackal, top deputy

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Lawsuits, Politicians, Prison on March 9, 2016| 2 Comments »

As much as we would love to take credit, the three-count federal indictment of Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal and Lt. Col. Gerald Savoy was in the works long before our initial story on March 2. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/02/iberia-sheriff-burning-hotter-than-tobasco-on-a-fever-blister-after-beatings-deaths-political-payoffs-fight-with-reporters/

Our story, after all, was about one incident, that god-awful video of the deputy beating a prisoner and then turning a vicious dog loose on the man as he lay on the floor helpless to defend himself.

There were others, in the prison chapel, of all places, because there were no video surveillance there.

If the charges contained in the grand jury indictment are true, Ackal would have to be considered something of a sadist with a penchant for meting out—or at least condoning—particularly harsh punishment to black prisoners. http://www.katc.com/story/31430512/iberia-sheriff-indicted-for-their-parts-i

In a related issue, Roberta Boudreaux has yet to receive a response from the Louisiana Board of Ethics over her official complaint against Ackal. https://louisianavoice.com/2016/03/03/between-beating-guilty-pleas-sexual-harassment-lawsuit-and-ethics-complaint-iberia-sheriff-louis-ackal-has-his-plate-full/

Ackal defeated Boudreaux in the general election last November after giving a job to the third place finisher who subsequently endorsed him for re-election—the second consecutive election in which he hired the third place finisher in exchange for an endorsement in the general election. Giving anything of value in exchange for a political endorsement is against state law.

Boudreaux, contacted by LouisianaVoice, said it has been 60 days since she lodged the ethics complaint but the commission has been strangely silent in its response. That apparently is the legacy left us in Bobby Jindal’s “gold standard of ethics” about which he was so quick to boast in his ludicrous quest for the Republican presidential nomination.

“This is a sad day for law enforcement and for Iberia Parish,” Boudreaux said, adding that it was her understanding that there will be “more to follow” she said, adding, “I just hope the good guys at the department stick around.”

LouisianaVoice will continue to monitor the Ethics Commission to determine if it is actually staffed by warm bodies or Jindalesque see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil monkeys.

But back to the INDICTMENT, which brings to 10 current and former Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office (IPSO) employees who have been charged in the federal investigation of the department.

It was the plan and purpose of the conspiracy that Ackal, deputies and supervisors “would punish and retaliate against inmates and pre-trial detainees by taking them to the chapel of the (Iberia Parish Jail), where there were no video surveillance cameras, to unlawfully assault them,” the indictment said. “It was further part of the agreement that the officers and supervisors who witnessed these unlawful assaults would not intervene to stop them.”

The document charged that deputy Byron Lassalle, “understanding that Ackal wanted him to assault the detainee to retaliate against him for (a) lewd comment, Lassalle, in the presence of Ackal and Savoy, asked (Wesley) Hayes where there was a place at the jail without cameras, and Hayes responded, ‘the chapel.’”

The indictment said while the prisoner was being hit “multiple times with a baton, he “was compliant and not posing a threat to anyone” and no officer in the chapel attempted to stop “the unlawful assault.”

It said that up learning another prisoner was in jail for a sex offense, “Lassalle took his baton, held it between his own legs as if it were a penis, and forced it into (the prisoner’s) mouth,” causing him to choke.

As first and then another prisoner, while being beaten, blamed the lewd comment on someone else, deputies would bring the newest accused into the chapel to be beaten, apparently without making any real effort to determine who actually made the comment. In short, punishment, not seeking the truth, seemed to be the top priority.

If convicted, Ackal and Savoy could face up to 10 years in prison, plus fines of $250,000 for each count.

As further evidence of the complete deterioration of law and order in Iberia Parish, LouisianaVoice has obtained additional documents that show unrestrained lawlessness on the part of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.

In that case, which will be laid out in greater detail in a future post, LouisianaVoice will chronicle how deputies not only raided the home of an Iberia Parish Teach of the Year on the basis of an informant who was paid $45 by a deputy, but one of the deputies later pleaded guilty to stealing jewelry, a gun, money, and knives from the teacher’s home during the raid.

In perhaps the most implausible thing to come out of that raid was a list of evidence found in the teacher’s home that included “counterfeit five dollar bills,” prompting a retired state police officer to simply shake his head in disbelief. “Who makes counterfeit five dollar bills?” he asked rhetorically. “I’ve never seen counterfeit bills in denominations smaller than twenties.”

There is probably no more interesting sight than seeing the expression on one’s face the moment he realizes he is wrong. That look most surely crossed the face of the district attorney at some point in time.

The raid and the ensuing charges against the teacher, which cost him his job, are so egregious in nature that the district attorney’s office has offered him the opportunity to plea to a misdemeanor with no jail time, no probation, and complete expungement of his record. No such deal would ever be offered if prosecutors weren’t fully aware they had laid an egg.

The significance of that move was not lost on the teacher, Darius Sias, who has a civil lawsuit pending against the sheriff’s office. He rolled the dice in turning down the plea offer so that he could pursue his civil suit. “I want to go to trial on this,” he said.

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Between beating guilty pleas, sexual harassment lawsuit and ethics complaint, Iberia Sheriff Louis Ackal has his plate full

Posted in Courts, Crime, Elections, Ethics, Lawsuits, Politicians on March 3, 2016| 1 Comment »

The hiring of David “Spike” Boudoin by Iberia Parish Sheriff Louis Ackal to the newly-created position of director of community relations, while prompting an official complaint with the State Board of Ethics, would appear to be the least of Ackal’s problems.

Boudoin finished in third place behind Ackal and parish jail warden Roberta Boudreaux in the October 24 primary election and on Oct. 30 Boudoin was hired and simultaneously announced his endorsement for Ackal’s re-election.

And though Boudreaux fired off a three-page letter to the ethics commission in filing an official complaint of a possible felony in connection with the hiring/endorsement, Ackal has plenty other matters on his plate.

For starters, a half-dozen current and former Iberia Parish deputies recently entered guilty pleas to five felony charges and one misdemeanor in Western District Federal Court in Lafayette in connection with inmate beatings. http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/14969306-123/three-former-two-current-iberia-parish-sheriffs-employees-plead-guilty-in-beating-inmates-at-the-par

This, of course, was after a prisoner allegedly managed to shoot himself in the chest, according to a coroner’s report, as he sat in a sheriff’s department patrol car with his hands handcuffed behind his back.

Five of the six, former deputies Wade Bergeron, 40, of Milton, Wesley Hayes, 36, of St. Martinville, and Jesse James Hayes, 36, of St. Martinville and current employees Ben LaSalle, 34, of Erath, and Brett Broussard, 35, of Broussard, face up to 10 years in prison and fines of $250,000 each while former deputy Robert Burns, 46, of Youngsville, could be sentenced to up to a year in prison and fined $100,000.

Along with Boudreaux’s ethics complaint and the federal indictments and resulting guilty pleas, Ackal also has just been hit with a federal sexual harassment lawsuit by a former female employee who says one of Ackal’s protégés made repeated sexual advances even though Ackal was aware of the problem but did nothing to stop it.

In her ETHICS COMPLAINT, Boudreaux, who said she intends to seek the sheriff’s office again, cited a Louisiana statute which addresses election offenses involving bribery, threats or intimidation of election officials or candidates.

The section referenced by her says “No person shall knowingly, willfully, or intentionally:

“Give or offer to give, directly, or indirectly, any money or anything of apparent present or prospective value to any person who has withdrawn or who was eliminated prior or subsequent to the primary election as a candidate for public office, for the purpose of securing or giving his political support to any remaining candidate or candidates for public office in the primary or general election.

“When such person is a candidate for public office who has withdrawn or was eliminated prior to or subsequent to the primary election, accept(s) or offer(s) to accept directly or indirectly, any money, or anything of apparent present or prospective value that is given for the purpose of securing or giving his political support to any remaining candidate or candidates for public office in the primary or general election.

“Whoever violates any provision of this section shall be fined not more than $2000 or be imprisoned, with or without hard labor, for not more than two years, or both, for the first offense. On a second offense, or any subsequent offense, the penalty shall be a fine of not more than $5,000 or imprisonment at hard labor for not more than five years, or both.”

What makes this particularly knotty for Ackal is this is his second trip down that same road. The good news is no complaint was filed when he did the same thing four years ago. In the 2011 election, he hired third place finisher Bobby Jackson as an intelligence analyst but never gave him working space, equipment or any direction as to his duties, said Jackson, who quit after only two months on the job because he said he had no desire to walk around “with my thumb in my rear.” As for Ackal’s most recent hire of third-place finisher Boudoin, Jackson said he sees “history repeating itself.”

Boudreaux said she believes that Ackal violated the provisions she cited by offering Boudoin the captain’s position at a salary of $50,658 “in exchange for Mr. Boudoin’s endorsement in the Nov. 21, 2015, runoff election.

Boudoin signed his oath of office as Iberia Parish deputy on Nov. 2, 2015, only two weeks after the primary election and less than three weeks before the runoff, records show. DAVID BOUDOIN OATH OF OFFICE

(CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE)

            The SEXUAL HARASSMENT LAWSUIT, filed by former employee Laurie Segura, said Bert Berry, Chief of the Criminal Department began in 2012 and lasted for 10 months. She said she attempted to avoid Berry when possible but did not report him for 10 months because she feared retaliation, a fear she said was realized once she did complain.

Segura, who began working at the sheriff’s office in July 2008, resigned in January 2015 when the work environment became intolerable, she said.

She says in her petition that Berry, who moved into her suit of offices in 2012, rubbed his hands and crotch against her body and that he would sneak up on her and kiss her and that he made “inappropriate inquiries” about her sex life. She said he talked “graphically about his fantasies of having sex with her, (tried) to convince her to engage in phone sex with him,” and that he simulated sex acts in her presence and talked about his penis.

She said he ignored her repeated requests that he leave her alone, so she began evasive tactics. “When the security cameras showed he was coming into the office, she immediately picked up the phone and pretended she was in the middle of a phone call,” her petition says.

“In order to intimidate her from taking action,” the suit says, “Berry constantly brought up his relationship with Sheriff Ackal and how the sheriff had practically raised him.”

After she finally reported him to Human Resources, “retaliation was swift and sustained,” the petition says. She said that Ackal “sanctioned” Berry’s behavior even though Berry admitted to Ackal that he had committed the harassment.

Instead of reprimanding Berry, Ackal instead met with the sheriff office’s legal counsel, Ackal’s chief deputy and Berry (by telephone), and prepared a letter of accusations against Segura in an effort to get her to drop her complaint.

Ackal met with Segura the following day, the petition says, and accused her of exposing her breasts in public and of bragging about her sexual activities. “Even though Segura had anticipated retaliation, she was shocked at this letter and asked who had made these false allegations,” the lawsuit says. While Ackal refused to reveal his source, he did tell her that he would communicate with Berry that she denied the allegations, “making clear that Berry was involved with the letter,” she said.

“Instead of taking action and dismissing a man who had admittedly engaged in egregious harassment, the sheriff tried to make Segura guilty for making the complaint,” the petition says. “He talked about how hard this situation was for him because he basically raised Berry. He would not even put a reprimand in Berry’s file after he learned it would be part of Berry’s public record.” She said Ackal refused to move Berry, claiming there was nowhere to put him, “which was absolutely untrue,” she said.

She says Ackal gave raises totaling $35,000 a year to three subordinates who immediately “tried in a variety of different ways to intimidate Segura into dropping her complaint” and that the sheriff’s legal counsel tried to pressure her to quit her job.

She said Ackal approached the situation not as her problem but one that might hurt his chances of re-election “and he needed four more years on the job.”

She said that Berry ordered an audit of her computer following her filing of an EEOC complaint against him.

After the retaliation reached the point of physical threats, she said, she finally left her job in January of 2015. “But even then the retaliation did not cease,” she said. Instead Ackal began “falsely accusing her of stealing his campaign funds.”

When Ackal failed to respond to her EEOC complaints, she finally resorted to her federal lawsuit.

 

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Iberia Sheriff’s life is hotter than Tabasco on a fever blister after beatings, deaths, political payoffs, fight with reporters

Posted in Campaign Contributions, Congress, Corruption, Courts, Crime, Elections, Ethics, Jobs, Lawsuits, Media, Politicians, Prison, State Police on March 2, 2016| 3 Comments »

Though it is probably far too late, Louis Ackal would be wise to take the advice of an adage steeped in indisputable wisdom of the ages.

The sheriff of Iberia Parish, however, apparently has never heard the expression attributed to a host of well-known politicians, amateur philosophers and gifted writers: “Never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel.”

We’ll get to Ackal momentarily, but first a little background on that famous quote.

Mark Twain didn’t say it, though he is often cited as the one who coined the phrase. Neither was the quote original with publicist William Greener, Jr., as quoted in the September 28, 1978, Wall Street Journal.

The phrase of uncertain origin has also been attributed to the late Louisiana Congressman F. Edward Hebert, who served in the U.S. House of Representatives from 1941 to 1977. A former newspaper reporter and editor for the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Hebert, who died in 1979, covered the Louisiana Hayride scandals of 1939 that led to the convictions of Gov. Richard Leche and LSU President James Monroe Smith. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Felix_Edward_H%C3%A9bert

Hebert, according to legend, added to the phrase when he said, “I never argue with someone who buys ink by the barrel and paper by the trainload.” (Emphasis added.)

The quote was intended to illustrate just how futile it is to pick a fight with a crusading newspaper. Some clarification is needed here for our younger readers: the term crusading newspaper is passé, long gone from the vernacular used to describe the style of journalism depicted in the classic movies The Front Page (the 1931 original starring Pat O’Brien and Mae Clark or the 1974 remake starring Walter Matthau, Jack Lemmon, Susan Sarandon, Charles Durning, and Carol Burnett); 1940’s His Girl Friday, starring Cary Grant, Rosalind Russell and Ralph Bellamy; or of course, All the President’s Men, the 1976 movie about Watergate and the fall of Richard Nixon, starring Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman, Jason Robards, Jack Warden, Hal Holbrook, Martin Balsam, Ned Beatty and Jane Alexander.

No, sadly, those days are long gone. Newspapers have felt the impact of the perfect storm of shrinking ad revenue and declining circulation along with waning influence as reflected in inverse proportion to the explosion of the Internet and the fourth estate. Once the epitome of independence, newspapers now find themselves subjected more to corporate pressure than to any need to inform its readership. The same gots for television news, of course, only if anything, to an even greater degree.

That famous and once chillingly accurate phrase could now be replaced by any one of several similar but equally relevant versions currently floating around out there in cyberspace:

  • Never pick a fight with someone who buys their bandwidth by the gigabyte.
  • Never pick a fight with someone who has a camera and a Twitter following.
  • Never pick a fight with someone who knows how to use the Internet better than you.
  • Never pick a fight with someone who has access to Google to prove you wrong immediately.
  • Never pick a fight with someone when your own video cameras or those of witnesses may contradict you.

To those might be added another pearl of wisdom: Never underestimate the intelligence of your constituency (the emergence of Donald Trump and Ted Cruz notwithstanding).

Ackal previously served as a Louisiana State Trooper where he served for awhile as a captain and Commander of Troop I. He retired abruptly in 1984 after being placed in charge of the narcotics squad of Region II which covered all of Southwest Louisiana.

He later resurfaced as a private investigator before running for High Sheriff of Iberia Parish in 2007. Now, not even four months from winning re-election sheriff, he seems not to have absorbed an iota of any of that advice about picking quarrels with those possessing generous supplies of ink and paper—and online access.

Even before he beat challenger Roberta Boudreaux last November in a runoff election, Ackal was already fighting a public relations disaster that culminated in his choosing to pick a fight with the Acadiana Advocate, sister publication of the Baton Rouge Advocate.

In March of 2014, a 22-year-old black man, Victor White, III, died after being shot while handcuffed in a sheriff’s department patrol car. Deputies said he pulled the gun and fired one round, striking himself in the back. The Iberia Parish coroner, however, ruled he was shot in the chest, immediately raising the question of how he could shoot himself in the chest with his hands handcuffed behind his back. The Iberia Parish district attorney, following a State Police report that the wound was self-inflicted, has declined to pursue criminal charges against deputies. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/da-charges-handcuffed-man-police-car-shooting_us_56b8f75de4b08069c7a8548b

The U.S. Attorney’s office likewise concluded an investigation of more than a year with the announcement that it would not pursue charges against the sheriff’s office. http://www.iberianet.com/news/feds-no-charges/article_087eda70-9e8f-11e5-a1e6-03aa54a2fd19.html

None of those findings, however, kept the Advocate group from publishing a May 6, 2015, story revealing that eight prisoners had died in Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office custody over a 10-year period. http://theadvocate.com/news/neworleans/neworleansnews/12248374-123/8-die-in-custody-of

The family of one of the victims, Robert Sonnier, settled its resulting lawsuit with the sheriff for $450,900 and the family of Michael Jones was awarded $61,000 in his wrongful death. There were other incidents, all of which prompted U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond’s May 19, 2015 LETTER TO ATTORNEY GENERAL LORETTA LYNCH requesting an investigation “into alleged civil rights violations of members of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office.”

Moreover, incriminating video of beatings of and dog attacks on prisoners were reported on by the Acadiana Advocate https://photographyisnotacrime.com/2015/05/04/disturbing-video-surfaces-highlighting-pattern-of-abuse-and-death-in-louisiana-jail/

Easy to see why Ackal may not be too enamored with the Acadiana Advocate, but to declare the paper and its reporters as “persona non grata” is foolish at best. http://theadvocate.com/news/acadiana/13886833-37/iberia-sheriff-mum-on-salary

It’s a war he can’t possibly win. As much adverse publicity as LouisianaVoice has given to the Louisiana State Police administration, Superintendent Mike Edmonson has never gone that far.

But, as those cheesy late-night TV commercials say: wait, there’s more.

First, there was his re-election campaign last fall.

He nearly won in the first primary, pulling in 47 percent of the vote. Parish Jail Warden Roberta Boudreaux got 25 percent and Spike Boudoin received 18 percent. Joe LeBlanc and Bobby Jackson won 7 and 3 percent, respectively.

That was on Oct. 24. On Oct 30, just six days later, Ackal hired Boudoin as something called director of community relations at a salary of $50,658 a year. http://theadvocate.com/news/14013818-123/iberia-sheriff-to-pay-defeated

Coincidentally, Boudoin announced at the same time his endorsement of Ackal in the runoff against Boudreaux. But other than the distribution of a news release announcing Boudoin’s hiring, Ackal said he would not entertain questions about the newly-created position.

Ackal won the runoff election on Nov. 21, receiving 56 percent of the vote against Boudreaux’s 44 percent.

To Jackson, it was déjà vu all over again. In 2007, he finished third with 11 percent of the vote behind Ackal and David Landry, both of whom got 42 percent. LeBlanc, who also ran in 2007, got the remaining 5 percent. After that primary, Jackson endorsed Ackal and was rewarded with a job as intelligence analyst, a role he had held in the U.S. Army. The difference with the sheriff’s department was he was denied working space, equipment and any direction as to his duties, all while being paid. He quit in disgust after little more than two months walking around “with my thumb in my rear,” he said, adding that he now sees “history repeating itself.”

Public servants are prohibited from using their positions to “compel or coerce any person or other public servant to engage in political activity,” according to the Louisiana Code of Governmental Ethics. Political activity is defined, in part, as “an effort to support or oppose the election of a candidate for political office in an election.”

It is also illegal for anyone to give money or anything of value “to any person who has withdrawn or who was eliminated prior or subsequent to the primary election as a candidate for public office, for the purpose of securing or giving his political support to any remaining candidate or candidates for public office in the primary or general election.” (Emphasis added.)

Robert Travis Scott, president of the Public Affairs Research Council, told the Acadiana Advocate that Ackal’s simultaneous hiring and endorsement raises questions of whether taxpayer money, i.e. Boudoin’s salary, was used to secure an endorsement.

Tomorrow: ethics complaint, sexual harassment lawsuit and guilty pleas over beatings and dog attacks are beginning to clutter embattled Louis Ackal’s desk.

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