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Archive for the ‘Fraud’ Category

After literally dozens of stories by LouisianaVoice since 2014 about Louisiana State Police (LSP) problems through mismanagement from the top, it appears—finally—that matters may be coming to a head with Monday’s arrest of two current and two former state troopers a total of 98 counts of filing false public records, injuring public records, felony theft and malfeasance in office.

Along with the formal LSP news release announcing the four arrests, unconfirmed reports have former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson and his attorney involved in preliminary negotiations for a plea bargain on unspecified charges but believed to be connected to the October 2016 trip in which four troopers drove a state vehicle to a convention in San Diego via tourist stops in Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon.

An official of the Metropolitan Crime Commission in New Orleans even voiced his belief that all the problems of LSP as reported on since 2014 by LouisianaVoice could be laid at the feet of one man: Edmonson.

While the latest arrests stem directly from a news story by New Orleans TV investigative reporter LEE ZURIK last November revealed state troopers were being paid for working Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE) patrol that they in fact did not work, LouisianaVoice reported two years earlier that Rogers was falsifying records in connection to his LACE patrol. LACE is a cooperative program in which local district attorneys pay state police for beefed-up patrol to catch traffic offenders.

In the end, of the 98 counts amassed by the four current and former troopers, 75 were lodged against Rogers. All the counts against the four were in connection to their work in the LACE program, the LSP PRESS RELEASE release said.

The two current state troopers were Master Trooper Daryl Thomas (two counts of filing false public records and one count of felony theft (greater than $15,000), and Wayne Taylor (14 counts of injuring public records and one count of malfeasance in office. Thomas, of New Orleans, currently makes $89,400 per year and Taylor, of Rapides Parish, earns $62,600 per year.

The two former troopers were Byron Sims, a $109,000-per-year polygraphist with 22 years’ experience before leaving LSP (four counts of filing false public records and one count of felony theft greater than $21,000), and Rogers (74 counts of injuring public records and one count of malfeasance in office.

FILING FALSE PUBLIC RECORDS, under Louisiana Title 14 is the filing of any forged or wrongfully-altered document or any document containing a false statement or false representation of a material fact.

INJURING PUBLIC RECORDS is the intentional falsification or concealment of any record or document filed in any public office or with any public officer.

Both are felonies.

Much of the legwork in bringing the charges against Rogers was done by the office of Calcasieu Parish District Attorney John DeRosier.

In Rogers’s case, an LSP INTERNAL AFFAIRS REPORT dated October 20, 2015 said he wrote tickets on his regular detail but putting a later date on the ticket to make it appear he had written it on his LACE detail when in fact he was not even working the LACE shift for which he was paid. Other times, he would put later times for his traffic stops to make it appear he had worked his entire detail when, in fact, he had not.

The IA investigation, provided to LouisianaVoice by the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, initially delved into only Rogers’s 2015 LACE overtime but when discrepancies were discovered, it was decided to expand the investigation to include 2013 and 2014 but then Rogers resigned, effective Nov. 6, 2015 and the investigation was terminated.

Inexplicably, Rogers had a change of heart and on March 7, 2017, sent an EMAIL to Troop D Commander Benny Broussard in which he (a) claimed he had resigned in “good standing,” and (b) said he would like to return to his former job. Ironically, in that email he said, “I was clear (sic) of every claim except altering times on tickets. I am guilty of writing times on tickets later than the stop actually was.”

The only logical reason for writing the wrong times was to cover up his absence from duty by writing driver citations for a small part of the beginning of his shift and then taking the rest of the day off.

One source told LouisianaVoice that Rogers and another former trooper, Ronnie Picou, should not have been able to disappear from their shifts if they had been under a proper level of supervision. “Most jobs have supervisors (who) would notice when someone is not there,” the source said. “Most police supervisors would care about their troopers and check on them if they disappeared. Most police supervisors believe their job is important and officers must be present to accomplish that important job.”

“They were not supervised by people who care about their officers or the citizens they serve. They were supervised by Lt. Paul Brady and Capt. Chris Guillory.

Brady helped popularize the coined term “Brady Days,” an unwritten policy that gave troopers time off for issuing DWI citations, which can encourage arrests of people who were not actually impaired. Brady supervised Picou who was initially fired after LouisianaVoice requested records on alleged payroll fraud. Brady supervised Picou when an LSP investigative report showed he was absent from duty much of the time.

Brady was suspended for reportedly ordering Troopers to claim more time than they worked. Those allegations were also discovered after LouisianaVoice made public records requests. Brady also supervised Rogers. Sources reported Picou and Rogers were able to shuck their duties under the supervision of Brady, leaving their fellow troopers and citizens abandoned.

LouisianaVoice has received reports that the allegations which led to the arrest of Rogers were known to LSP for years. Rogers was under the protection of Brady and Guillory, former Troop D Commander. Capt. Guillory reportedly has a position in Baton Rouge but he lives in Sulphur.

LSP knew about Rogers, Picou, Brady and Guillory and did nothing until forced by public exposure.

Instead, Edmonson, rather than take proactive measures to eliminate problems exposed in Troop D, went to considerable lengths to expose LouisianaVoice’s SOURCES–until it became painfully obvious that the primary problem was Edmonson.

Perhaps Anthony “Tony” Radosti, Vice-President of the Metropolitan Crime Commission, said it best when he told LouisianaVoice on Monday, “Jimmy Rogers was a symptom. Mike Edmonson was the disease.”

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Anyone remember Allyson Campbell?

If not, that’s understandable. After all, it’s been a couple of years since we had a STORY about her exploits in the 4th Judicial Court in Monroe. She’s the Monroe News-Star society columnist who showed up occasionally at her supposed full-time job as law clerk for 4th JDC Judge Wilson Rambo (gotta love that name; wonder if they have a judge named Rocky?).

On Wednesday, 12 of the 13 judges of the First Circuit Court of Appeal (only Judge Curtis Calloway did not hear arguments) dealt the self-promoting columnist/clerk a major setback when it ruled in an en banc (full court) decision that she does not enjoy “absolute immunity” from her actions in destroying court files and that a lawsuit against her may go forward.

But it was the dissenting opinion of one of the three judges who gave written opinions that makes for the best reading.

The ruling comes nearly two years after Louisiana Inspector General STEPHEN STREET found there was no “sufficient cause” to bring charges against Campbell for what witnesses said were repeated instances of her destroying or concealing trial briefs. For that matter, Louisiana State Police and the Louisiana Attorney General’s office also declined to pursue the matter, leaving only one state official, Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera, with the integrity and courage to call Campbell out for her actions.

She was also the central figure in:

  • The controversy that erupted when the Ouachita Citizen made a legal request for public records from the court—and was promptly sued by the judges for seeking those same public records.
  • The filing of a lawsuit by Judge Sharon Marchman against four fellow judges and Campbell over Campbell’s claiming time worked when she was actually absent—including time when she was in restaurants and/or bars for which she claimed time—and the four judges who Judge Marchman said were complicit in covering for her.
  • A complaint by Monroe attorney Cody Rials that Campbell had boasted in a local bar that she had destroyed Rials’ court document in a case he had pending before Judge Carl Sharp so that Sharp could not review it. One witness interviewed by Judges Sharp and Ben Jones quoted Campbell as saying that she had “taken great pleasure I shredding Rials’ judgment” and that she had given Rials a “legal f—ing.”

Now a DECISION by the First Circuit Court of Appeal, in overturning a lower court’s 2015 decision, has held that a lawsuit by Stanley Palowsky, III, against Campbell for damages incurred when she “spoliated, concealed, removed, destroyed, shredded, withheld, and/or improperly handled” his petition for damages against former business partner Brandon Cork may proceed.

At the same time, the First Circuit ruled that the five judges he added as defendants—Stephens Winters, Sharp, Rambo, Frederic Amman and Jones—for allowing Campbell “free rein to do as she pleased and then conspiring to conceal (her) acts” enjoyed “absolute immunity” from being sued and were dismissed as defendants despite their repeated denials that any documents were missing from the Palowsky file.

Palowsky argued that Campbell undertook her acts with malice and to obtain advantages for his opponents in the lawsuit. Moreover, he argued that Campbell’s supervising judges, Amman and Rambo, “did not just sit back quietly and let Campbell commit such acts, they actively worked and schemed to cover up her actions.”

Palowsky also said that Campbell’s wrongdoings “have been reported time and again by different attorneys in different cases and investigated time and again by defendant judges but have nevertheless been allowed to continue. It is now painfully apparent that not only has Campbell been unsupervised and uncontrollable for years, but defendant judges have actively schemed to allow her conduct to continue unabatedly (sic).”

Campbell, who doubles as a society columnist of sorts (if one really stretches the definition of the term) for the News-Star, is obviously her own biggest fan—unless you count her stated infatuation for Cork’s attorney Thomas Haynes, III, about whom she wrote in one of her columns that he…had the “IT” factor, “a somewhat undefinable quality that makes you and everyone else around stand taller when they enter the room, listen a little more closely, encourage you to take fashion or life risks, make each occasion a little more fun and generally inspire you to aim to achieve that ‘IT’ factor for yourself.”

If they taught that method of courtroom coverage in my Louisiana Tech journalism classes, I must have been absent that day.

Needless to say, the First Circuit upheld the lower court in expunging that paragraph from Palowsky’s petition.

In fact, the lower court struck 46 paragraphs from his lawsuit against Campbell and the five judges, but the First Circuit restored 21 paragraphs to the petition. The 25 it allowed to remain removed involved matters not directly related to Campbell’s alleged destruction of files, the judges said.

In 2014, Campbell published a column entitled, “A Modern Guide to Handle Your Scandal,” in which she wrote, “Half the fun is getting there, and the other half is in the fix.” She then went on to advise her readers to “keep the crowd guessing. Send it out—lies, half-truths, gorilla dust, whatever you’ve got.” She told readers, “You’re no one until someone is out to get you.”

(There’s a line in there somewhere about Trump, but it’s just too easy.)

In July 2015, she wrote in her column, “It’s not cheating if it’s in our favor.”

That paragraph was removed from Palowsky’s petition as was one that noted that on one occasion, 52 writ applications went missing for more than a year before it was discovered that Campbell had used the applications as an end table in her office.

Say what?!!?

One paragraph left in the petition was one in which Palowsky pointed out that the five judges might not be out of the woods yet, if the Louisiana Judiciary Commission does its job. The Louisiana State Constitution provides as follows: “On recommendation of the judiciary commission, the (Louisiana) Supreme Court may censure, suspend with or without salary, remove from office, or retire involuntarily a judge for willful misconduct relating to his official duty, willful and persistent failure to perform his duty, persistent and public conduct prejudicial to the administration of justice that brings the judicial office into disrepute, conduct while in office which could constitute a felony, or conviction of a felony.”

It would appear in consideration of the judicial protection of Campbell, a case could be made that the judges are guilty at least of slipshod management at best and criminal malfeasance at worst.

All the judges in the 4th JDC recused themselves when Palowsky sued and his case was heard by Ad Hoc Judge Jerome Barbera, III, who cited in his Dec. 11, 2015, ruling dismissing the five judges as defendants an 1871 ruling that said, “It is a general principle of the highest importance to the proper administration of justice that a judicial officer, in exercising the authority vested in him, shall be free to act upon his own convictions, without apprehension of personal consequences to himself.”

Even though Palowsky was claiming that the judges protected Campbell despite their full knowledge of what she had done, Barbera said, “Allegations of bad faith or malice are not sufficient to overcome judicial immunity.”

Another way of putting it is that the judges are untouchable and that their edicts, like those of the Pope, are infallible, divinely inspired.

Barbera extended the immunity to Campbell but the First Circuit opinion, written by  Judge Page McClendon, overturned Barbera on that point. While two of the Appeal Court judges, Vanessa Whipple and Guy Holdridge upheld immunity for the five district court judges in their written opinions, all three rejected the idea of immunity for Campbell and all three voted to reinstate 21 of the paragraphs in Palowsky’s petition.

But it was that third judge, William Crain, who wrote that none of the defendants deserved immunity from events in the 4th JDC.

“Judicial immunity is of the highest order of importance in maintaining an independent judiciary, free of threats or intimidation. But it is a judge-created doctrine policed by judges.” (emphasis mine)

He also said that when judicial actors “perform non-judicial acts, they are not protected by this otherwise sweeping immunity doctrine.

“The duty to maintain records in cases involves many non-judicial actors and can only be considered a ministerial, not judicial act,” he wrote.

“For the same reasons (that) the law clerk is not immunized for her non-judicial acts related to maintaining court records, the judges are not immunized for allegedly aiding, abetting, then concealing those acts. Failing to supervise a law clerk relative to a non-judicial act is not a judicial act for purposes of immunity.

“The doctrine of judicial immunity does not shield judicial actors from civil liability for criminal acts (and) while later cases suggest judicial immunity extends even to judicial acts performed with malice, those cases do not immunize judicial actors from criminal conduct grounded in malice or corruption.

“Extending the doctrine of judicial immunity to include civil liability for alleged criminal conduct, as in this case, risks undermining the public’s trust in the judiciary, which I cannot countenance.”

So, how, you might ask, has Campbell managed to withstand the barrage of charges of payroll fraud, absenteeism, records destruction, and critical audit reports and still keep her job?

And continue to flaunt her actions in a newspaper column?

That can be explained in one word: Connections.

Campbell’s father is George Campbell, an executive with Regions Bank. George Campbell is married to the daughter of influential attorney Billy Boles who was instrumental in the growth of Century Telephone and who is a major contributor to various political campaigns.

Allyson Campbell is also the sister of Catherine Creed of the Monroe personal injury law firm of Creed and Creed. Christian Creed, Campbell’s brother-in-law, contributed $5,000 to Attorney General Jeff Landry’s 2015 campaign, which could explain, in part, why the AG backed off its investigation of Campbell the following year.

In a town the size of Monroe, those connections are sufficient, apparently.

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Where to start.

There are so many inconsistencies and short circuiting of the system by the State Ethics Board regarding those four state troopers who went sightseeing to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas en route to San Diego in October 2016 that one has to wonder if the board exists in some sort of parallel universe.

The ethics board last month CLEARED the four troopers of any wrongdoing even though they knowingly went several hundred miles out of the way to make their side trip—for which they claimed to be on the clock and were paid overtime.

First of all, the board concluded that they four were instructed by their then-boss, State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson to take the “northern” route in their drive to San Diego, the route that took them on their taxpayer-paid sightseeing vacation.

But regardless of whether Edmonson so instructed or not, the Louisiana State Police (LSP) Policy and Procedure Manual addresses the very issue of carrying out orders that are contrary to state law.

It’s right there in black and white on page 360:

  • “A commissioned officer shall promptly obey and execute any and all lawful orders of a superior officer. A “lawful order” is any order or assignment issued either verbally or in writing by a superior or ranking officer.” (emphasis mine)
  • “A commissioned officer shall not obey any order which he knows, or should have known, would require him to commit an illegal act. If in doubt as to the legality of an order, officers shall request the issuing officer to clarify the order.” (emphasis mine)

Of course, the decision—or perhaps non-decision would be a better description—sets up the four for a strong appeal of their discipline imposed by Edmonson’s successor, Col. Kevin Reeves.

In demoting Rodney Hyatt and Derrell Williams and reducing their pay, Reeves admonished them for “indifference” to what he called the “common sense notion” that it is not proper to claim pay for time when they were sightseeing or sleeping. Hyatt was demoted from lieutenant to sergeant and Williams from major and head of LSP’s Internal Affairs, to lieutenant.

Their appeal claims that their discipline was improper on procedural grounds because LSP took too long to complete its internal affairs investigation. They say the agency violated its owns policies by failing to request an extension of the internal investigation within 60 days.

But wait.

Back on June 8, retired state trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet appeared before the State Police Commission and advised commissioners of his belief that LSP was not adhering to commission rules regarding timely conducting investigations.

That was during the time that the commission seemed to be deliberately dragging its feet in its investigation, presumably on the pretense that there were vacancies on the commission and it was desired that new members coming onto the commission should have an opportunity to participate in the investigation.

In response to Millet’s concerns, Lt. Col. Mike Noel specifically said it was permissible for an employee to agree to an extension of time in accordance with the police officer’s Bill of Rights—and that the employees in question (Hyatt and Williams) “have agreed to the extension,” (emphasis mine) according to OFFICIAL MINUTES of that June 8 meeting published on the commission website.

State police are in a unique position in that they do not fall under the jurisdiction of the State Civil Service Commission but instead come under the moribund State Police Commission which is more prone to rubber-stamping recommendations to not investigate political activity by the Louisiana State Troopers Association.

Millet was told by the Board of Ethics on April 24, 2017, that the board declined to investigate as activity by two commission members because the LSTA “is not a public entity subject to the ethics code which includes the whistleblower statute.”

Yet, the ethics commission fined LSTA and its executive director David Young $5,000 for the LSTA’s action of funneling political contributions to political candidates, including but not limited to Bobby Jindal and John Bel Edwards, through Young’s personal bank account.

Some observers might call the claim that it had no jurisdiction over LSTA because it “is not a public entity” and the $5,000 fine inconsistent.

But hey, to be fair, consistency has been the hallmark of both the State Police Commission and the Ethics Board. They both have been consistently weak. Consistently able to avoid doing their jobs. Consistently ineffective and irrelevant. Consistently useless.

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…And we thought that Attorney General Jeff Landry was a horn-tooting self-promoter, who loved to tout his prosecutorial “accomplishments” while conveniently ignoring more blatant wrongdoing.

Turns out Landry should be watching State Inspector General Stephen B. Street and taking notes on how to fool all the people all the time—or at least make a pretty decent effort at doing so.

Street has just released his 29-page 2017 ANNUAL REPORT and network television must already be poring over it as the possible basis for a weekly series on crime fighting. Or maybe a sitcom. Either way, with all the tax breaks for movie and television production being given away by the state, the show is certain to be profitable while making Street a star in the process.

Eleven photographs are included in the annual report and Street’s smiling face is included in every single one. Here’s what one observer said of the photos: “…only one other staff member, an investigator, gets in one. Boy he must have done something really special to merit being the single staff member to be picked to be in a picture with the boss in the annual report. I am sure this did wonders for office morale.

“Street couldn’t even see the way clear to have a group picture of the whole staff in what only can be considered his annual report? I guess he couldn’t get the, as described very limited, 14 staff members in the same room to have one taken (probably has a shortage of meeting space also).”

Street, who undoubtedly wears a large red “S” on his chest, chronicles how his office beat back efforts by legislators in 2012 and 2016 to shut his office down for ineffectiveness—although his office, like most other agencies, has endured appropriations cutbacks.

Of those efforts to shut him down, Street, somewhat smugly philosophizes: “The 2016 OIG funding fight in Louisiana was simply the latest reminder of what comes with the territory in the Inspector General business. If you do the job aggressively – and we have — folks will come after you. It’s absolutely guaranteed. It was also a great reminder that the public is overwhelmingly supportive of Inspectors General, and we should never forget this.”

So, let’s review just how he has done his job “aggressively” to see who it prompted to “come after” him.

Street’s office, in response to a November 2016 public records request from LouisianaVoice, provided a list of FUNDS RECOVERED totaling more than $5.3 million since July 1, 2013, for which he claimed credit. No one on that list who might “come after” street—just low-hanging fruit. Easy pickings don’t often “go after” anyone.

Of course, the recovery of funds is quite different from orders of restitution, which was what each of these cases was. An order of restitution means little if there are no funds to be recovered.

“We have no information regarding amounts collected by those office and we receive none of the funds,” said OIG General Counsel Joseph Lotwick in a letter to LouisianaVoice.

In the case of Deborah Loper, for example, most of the million dollars ordered repaid had long since disappeared into slot machines at area casinos so any real chance of restitution is, for all intents and purposes, non-existent. Still, Street listed that as a recovery of funds.

The LouisianaVoice request was made pursuant to Street’s claim for an accounting of public funds recovery stemming from OIG investigations.

Moreover, what Street’s office did not say, the difficulty of actually collecting notwithstanding, is that the OIG’s role in many of the above investigations was secondary to the U.S. Attorney’s role and restitution payments, if any, are made through either U.S. Probation or, in the case of the state’s being the lead prosecutor, to Louisiana Probation and Parole.

Nor did Street happen to mention the investigations by his office that either blew up in his face or simply did not occur. Even though most, if not all, actually occurred prior to 2017, they’re still worth mentioning:

  • The Murphy Painter fiasco, orchestrated by Bobby Jindal and Steve Waguespack, which resulted in the federal criminal trial of Painter who was cleared of all charges and the state had to pony up his legal fees of $474,000;
  • The illegal raid on the home and offices of Corey DelaHoussaye under the mistaken assumption (Street’s an attorney: attorneys should never “assume”) that DelaHoussaye was contracted to the Governor’s Office of Homeland Security and Emergency Preparedness (GOHSEP) when in fact, he was contracted to the Livingston Parish Council where he had no jurisdiction (embarrassing). DelaHoussaye was subsequently exonerated of all charges.
  • Likewise, it was Street’s office that investigated and found no wrongdoing in the case of two assistant district attorneys in CADDO PARISHwho applied for a grant to obtain eight automatic M-16 rifles from the Department of Defense’s Law Enforcement Support Office (LESO). The two claimed on their application that they, as part of a Special Investigations Section (SIS), “routinely participate in high-risk surveillance and arrests (sic) activities with the Shreveport Police and Caddo Sheriff.” Persons interviewed from both agencies, however, refuted the claim that SIS employees took part in such operations.
  • Street also failed to follow through on an investigation into widespread abuses by the Louisiana State Board of Dentistry. The board, with the aid of its investigator who employed questionable methods, was imposing excessively high fines against dentists for relative minor infractions and even bankrupted one dentist who blew the whistle on faulty jaw implants developed by a dentist at the LSU School of Dentistry.
  • Retired State Trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet said he filed a formal complaint on February 19 with Street’s office against the four State Troopers who drove the state vehicle to San Diego last October but never received an acknowledgement from Street. “I know he received because I sent the complaint by certified return receipt mail,” Millet said. Of course, it turned out that what Street’s office could not or would not do, the Baton Rouge Advocate’s Jim Mustian, New Orleans TV investigative reporter Lee Zurik and LouisianaVoice did—and we know the outcome of that.
  • Street said there was nothing to investigate when a gravity drainage district in Calcasieu Parish refused to pay contractor Billy Broussard a million dollars for work he did in dredging canals after hurricanes in 2005 and 2006. Broussard performed the work he was asked to do and the district refused to pay him, yet Street said there was nothing to investigate.
  • And he’s done nothing toward investigating possible human trafficking in the baby adoption racket in Louisiana, despite the persistent efforts of Craig Mills to get both Street and Landry involved in the investigation.

Of course, in listing the successful prosecutions (again, low-hanging fruit—people who are a lock not to “go after” him), Street is careful to see to it that his office is cited in all 10 reports—even if he had to insert the recognition himself, which he does in eight of the cases. Five of the reports were actually press releases from the U.S. Attorney’s office but Street piggy-backed them in his annual report.

But perhaps the best indicator of the effectiveness of Street’s office turns up in the report on 2017 travel expenses for his office.

That report shows that the office spent only $57.13 for in-state travel to conferences and just $509.11 on instate field travel (investigations).

But the office spent $2,564.46 on out-of-state travel to conventions and conferences.

Of 376 complaints received in 2017, OIG opened 60 investigations. The 2016 numbers showed 42 investigations opened on 401 complaints.

 

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