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Mike Edmonson power grab: LSPC meeting agenda includes consideration to fire Executive Director for….competence?

Posted in Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Politicians, State Police, Transparency on January 10, 2017| 1 Comment »

Thursday’s meeting of the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) promises to be a bloodbath with number-one coward (there are six cowards on the commission, so we are forced to give them numbers) T.J. Doss leading the way—running interference, as it were, for his boss.

The agenda for Thursday’s 9 a.m. meeting includes two significant items:

  • Executive session for discussion of professional competence of Director of State Police Commission (Cathy Derbonne);
  • Consideration of whether employment of the Director of State Police Commission should be continued or terminated.

While there was no immediate indication what precipitated this sudden move, rest assured that State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson’s DNA is all over it.

There’s no guarantee, of course that Derbonne’s fate has already been decided and that the “discussion” and “consideration” are mere formalities (read: B.S.)—but that’s where the smart money is.

Here is a copy of an ANONYMOUS-LETTER LouisianaVoice received last Saturday, which apparently was also sent to Derbonne:

Actually, perhaps coward may be the wrong term. A better description would be incompetent, backstabbing, rubber-stamping, salivating lap dogs—owned, wormed and neutered by Edmonson. Did I leave out trained? Sorry.

Like the letter (apparently written by an active Trooper who works at State Police Headquarters in Baton Rouge) says, “The senior command—that would be Edmonson, Jason Starnes and Charlie Dupuy—does not take kindly to not having the LSPC rubber stamp their desires.”

That sentence was likely in reference to an issue raised by the only member with any spine, LLOYD GRAFTON of Ruston. Grafton, a couple of meetings back complained that the commission had been misled by Edmonson when he told commission members the promotion of Starnes to lieutenant colonel so he could take on the financial duties of retired JILL BOUDREAUX (even though he has no background in accounting or finance) would not result in additional costs. “Then I turn around and (the new lieutenant colonel slot) has gone from $125,000 to $150,000. Somebody is not being honest,” Grafton said.

To a member, the remaining five members (Monica Manzella was not yet on the board at the meeting in question)—Doss, Jared J Caruso-Riecke, Donald Breaux, Calvin W. Braxton, Sr., and Eulis Simien, Jr.— went conveniently blank, professing to have no memory of Edmonson’s comment but Derbonne told the commission that he did indeed make that claim.

(An audio recording of the meeting obtained by LouisianaVoice via a public records request confirmed Grafton’s recollection of Edmonson’s testimony as well as Derbonne’s assertion.)

At that point, Doss and the Feeble Four switched their arguments to whether or not, LSPC had any authority over setting salaries. Derbonne’s response was the commission had no authority to exceed the State Police pay grid but that it did have the authority to approve the promotion of Starnes—based on Edmonson’s assurance that no additional cost would be incurred.

Perhaps that anonymous letter should also have pointed out that Edmonson and his lackey commission don’t like to be shown up by facts or to have their flawed collective memories refreshed when it becomes and embarrassment to them.

That, Ms. Derbonne, is apparently an unforgivable sin.

Basically, here is what LouisianaVoice has learned in covering LSPC during the past year:

  • The Louisiana State Troopers Association (LSTA—not to be confused with LSPC, which is the state civil service equivalent that investigates state trooper wrongdoing and hears appeals from disciplined troopers) laundered political campaign contributions through its executive director—in apparent violation of state ethics rules prohibiting campaign contributions from individual troopers. The decision to make the contributions, by necessity, had to have been approved by members of the LSTA board;
  • An “investigation” of the contributions by LSPA hit an abrupt dead-end when Gov. John Bel Edwards pal Taylor Townsend was hired at $75,000 to get to the bottom of the campaign contribution controversy. He promptly declined to submit a written report to the LSPA and instead, made a verbal recommendation that “no action” be taken, a recommendation only too quickly approved by the commission;
  • LSTA operated a bar that served alcohol at the State Police training facility in Zachary where prisoners are also housed, an apparent violation of state law prohibiting the sale and/or the consumption of alcohol at correctional facilities;
  • Former LSPC member William Goldring, who RESIGNED last April after it was revealed he had made political contributions while on the board (a state ethics violation), is owner of an alcohol distributorship in New Orleans, CROWN BEVERAGE, that sold liquor to LSTA for the bar, a cozy business relationship that could also be considered an ethics violation;
  • LSPC member Monica Manzella is a New Orleans attorney who serves as Legal Counsel for the City of New Orleans. As such, she negotiates and approves all Local Area Compensated Enforcement (LACE—a program is run by some district attorneys in the state to pay State Troopers for traffic enforcement, including DWIs) contracts between the city and State Police, contracts that determine what rate is paid the troopers (see above re: ethics);
  • Manzella was never nominated for her position on the commission by a university president as required by state law—even though LSPC and the governor’s office had been notified of this discrepancy with other members well before her appointment by Gov. John Bel Edwards;
  • J. Doss, a rank and file State Trooper, is Chairman of the commission and as such, would be called upon to take the lead in any investigations of State Trooper transgressions—including any investigation that might arise involving his boss, Edmonson, a questionable incestuous arrangement at best.

Here are a couple of STATE-POLICE-CONTRACTS approved by Manzella in her capacity as legal counsel for the City of New Orleans.

Given the multiple ethics breaches, the naked power grab being attempted by Edmonson through his rubber stamp commission and the numerous serious administrative blunders documented on this site, Gov. Edwards needs to seriously consider cutting his losses now before Edmonson causes him irreparable political damage and embarrassment down the road, the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association be damned.

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Terrebonne sheriff, parish president, businessman named defendants in federal lawsuit over unconstitutional search

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Politicians, Public Records on January 3, 2017| 5 Comments »

What’s the difference between Evangeline and Terrebonne parishes?

Apparently only about 120 miles, judging from the manner in which the respective sheriffs’ offices ignore and abuse the constitutional rights of their citizens.

Where the U.S. Justice Department recently issued a report highly critical of the practice of “investigative arrests” in Evangeline, the First Circuit Court of Appeal has ruled unconstitutional a raid carried out by the Terrebonne Parish sheriff last summer because he didn’t like what a blogger said about him.

And, LouisianaVoice has learned, the Terrebonne sheriff and others are targets of a federal investigation over other business dealings of the sheriff’s office.

Following the filing a federal lawsuit filed against Sheriff Jerry Larpenter last August, the anticipated second shoe has now fallen on several other leading business and political leaders of Terrebonne Parish.

The fallout stems from an ill-advised—and unconstitutional—warrant and RAID executed against a Houma police officer on Aug. 2 over no greater offense than criticism of the sheriff’s department on a local Internet blog.

It now has spilled over to a general indictment of Gordon Dove and the parish government’s relationship with a local insurance agency.

Wayne Anderson, a former deputy sheriff and currently a Houma police officer, and his wife, Jennifer, filed suit on Aug. 10 against Larpenter over the raid carried out on their home by sheriff’s deputies and now have amended Parish President Dove and others into the lawsuit.

The latest AMENDED PETITION adds as defendants:

  • Dove, individually, and in his official capacity as President of the Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government;
  • Anthony J. Alford, individually, and in his official capacity as President of the Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District Board of Commissioners;
  • The Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office;
  • The Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government, and
  • The Terrebonne Levee and Conservation District.

The blog, ExposeDat, began posting critical stories of Dove and Larpenter in early July, prompting the illegal raid on the Andersons’ home. While unconstitutional, the raid did have the apparent effect of successfully causing the blog to be taken down, thus infringing on the First Amendment that protects free speech.

But in the interim, Larpenter, who was quoted as saying, “If you’re gonna lie about me and make it under a fictitious name, I’m gonna come after you.”  did just that. Executing a warrant signed by State District Judge Randy Bethancourt instead of the “Duty Judge,” who the latest legal filing says should have reviewed and considered the warrant.

Sheriff’s Detective Lt. Glynn Prestenbach Jr., who took the warrant application to Bethancourt for his signature, since said he “just did what (Terrebonne Parish District Attorney) and Jerry (Larpenter) told him to do,” the Andersons’ amended petition says.

Following the raid, law enforcement personnel arrived at the Plaintiffs’ residence, the petition says. Anderson was informed he was being placed on administrative leave indefinitely and was the subject of an internal affairs investigation for failing to uphold the law and for engaging in conduct unbecoming of a law enforcement officer. Anderson was stripped of his badge, his duty weapon, his law enforcement commission card and his marked patrol unit—all in full view of the Andersons’ neighbors, action that they say has caused embarrassment and harm to their reputations.

Bethancourt denied the Plaintiffs’ Motion to Quash, finding the defamation statute to be sufficiently broad to allow him a “look-see” to determine if the evidence wrongfully seized contained defamatory statements. Writs were taken to the Louisiana First Circuit Court of Appeals which quashed the search warrant on August 25 and ruled that the search and seizure (were) unconstitutional.

The amended petition accuses the defendants of conspiring together “to initiate unjustified and factually and legally baseless criminal proceedings against the plaintiffs. The Defendants lacked probable cause and/or any viable legal justification to initiate the said proceedings. The Defendants acted maliciously and as a consequence of these actions, the Plaintiffs suffered deprivation of their liberties and have sustained damages,” the petition says.

“Defendants Gordon Dove, Jerry Larpenter and Anthony Alford all met and/or discussed a jointly accepted and agreed upon the illegal plan discussed hereinabove,” it says. “Sometime immediately after a July 11, 2016, article entitled ‘You Scratch Mine & I’ll Scratch Yours’ was published on the website that detailed the business dealings between the Defendants, Defendant Dove allegedly announced to the entire Synergy Bank4 Board of Directors that he was going to shut the Exposedat website down and that he was having subpoenas issued. Defendant Anthony Alford lodged his criminal complaint within three days of the article’s publication.”

Once Alford filed his complaint, Larpenter wasted no time in initiating an investigation by his office by instructing Prestenbach to immediately conduct an investigation, the Andersons claim. “Prestenbach did as instructed and immediately met with and interviewed Alford. Prestenbach also sought by subpoena records from Facebook relating to John Turner (an alias used by Anderson), and within a period of five days obtained information relating to various IP addresses. Prestenbach searched the IP addresses and noticed that they were assigned to a corresponding AT&T account. Prestenbach then subpoenaed records from AT&T to identify the IP addresses that corresponded to the Facebook posts of John Turner.”

On or about August 1, 2016, Prestenbach received and reviewed the documents which had been subpoenaed from AT&T. These records revealed that the computer used to send the various posts was located at the Plaintiffs’ home address. Prestenbach immediately contacted Larpenter and advised him of the results of his investigation including the fact that the address obtained was the residence of Wayne Anderson, who was a police officer for the Houma Police Department. Larpenter allegedly told Prestenbach to stand by for further action. Later,

TPSO Detective Kody Voisin called Prestenbach and advised him that he had spoken to Defendant Larpenter who wanted a search warrant issued, and that he [Larpenter] had spoken to Terrebonne District Attorney Joe Waitz who also agreed to continue the investigation and obtain a search warrant. HERE is Prestenbach’s report as well as threads from Facebook postings.

The question that must be asked and the issue that must be determined at this point is by what authority did Larpenter obtain the Facebook and AT&T records? Who issued the subpoena for that information? If the search warrant was unconstitutional, it would seem that the subpoena seeking the private records would be as well.

The amended petition is seeking actual and punitive damages, court costs and attorney fees.

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Avoyelles DA Charles Riddle puts aside personal pain in demonstrating the true purpose of being a public servant

Posted in Ethics, Legislature, Legislators, Media, Politicians on December 29, 2016| 15 Comments »

LouisianaVoice was founded more than five years ago on the belief that not enough was being done to expose official wrongdoing. I set out with the stated purpose of connecting the dots between campaign money and bad law and going into any parish, anytime to contribute in some small way to rooting out the rot that has for too long corrupted this state.

Of course, there have been the occasional book reviews, stories about friends (and pets) who have died, and a couple of April Fool’s stories that apparently were of sufficient originality to have tricked some of my readers. But those aside, I have stuck steadfastly to my original mission of shining a light into the dark corners of the state that I love in the hope of somehow bringing about a change in the way public officials have historically treated the citizenry like so many serfs in some personal fiefdom.

And while there has been no shortage of such stories to write (notwithstanding my wife’s tongue-in-cheek prediction of a couple of years ago that I’d have nothing to write about when Bobby Jindal left office), there is the occasional story that merits special attention.

This is one of those.

It’s about a man who carried out what is probably one of the most painful things a man can do: turn in his own son for suspected criminal activity, in this case committed against the district attorney’s office in the 12th Judicial District in Avoyelles Parish.

The father’s name is Charles Riddle III.

He is the District Attorney for Avoyelles Parish.

Riddle is a former State Representative who, in 1999 introduced legislation that became Act 1118 which prohibited the state from recovery of the costs paid by the state under Medicaid for individuals residing in nursing homes. The act protected the patients’ homes from seizure.

He co-authored the bill that made Louisiana State University in Alexandria a four-year school and in 1997. He also introduced the constitutional amendment that ultimately allowed LSU to take control of the Louisiana Charity Hospital System which created one of the premier teaching hospitals in the nation until the system was dismantled by Bobby Jindal.

He was reelected in 1995 and 1999 and resigned from the legislature in 2003 after being elected as district attorney. He was re-elected without opposition both in 2008 and 2014 and in 2008 he was elected President of the Louisiana District Attorneys Association.

His selection in 2012 to the Louisiana Justice Hall of Fame appears in retrospect to have been justified by his subsequent candor as a father and his dedication as a public official sworn to uphold the law impartially, uniformly and fairly.

Riddle took to Facebook with what the BATON ROUGE ADVOCATE described as “an emotional post that his son, John Riddle, is also being investigated for possible wrongdoing in Avoyelles Parish—in a case where the DA’s Office is the alleged victim and his father is the complainant.”

Riddle told The Advocate he could not discuss the case in which his office was victimized in detail but did say his son took advantage of his access to “certain things” because of their relationship. He said he personally called Marksville police to report what he felt was a criminal violation by his son.

In an apparently unrelated development, John Riddle was arrested by St. Tammany officials for trashing a hotel room and for possessing counterfeit money.

The elder Riddle said he wanted to defuse the story about his son because, he said, people have tried to use his son’s legal problems “in an effort to gain a more favorable result by threatening me in a form of blackmail, thinking that I would do anything to protect my son,” Charles Riddle wrote.

Riddle said his office would be recused from involvement in any case filed against his son in Avoyelles Parish; instead, the matter would be handled by the state Attorney General’s Office.

“Know that as a parent, I love my son and will do what any parent would do to obtain the correct result. Yet, I will not compromise this office. I do not condone any action that he is accused of doing,” he said.

In light of recent stories by LouisianaVoice about preferential treatment accorded by district attorneys in St. Landry and Livingston parishes to an individual with a laundry list of felonies and misdemeanors, including multiple DWIs, Charles Riddle’s story, while heartbreaking, is nonetheless a refreshing change from the norm.

In short, Charles Riddle’s character and honesty has shone through in this unfortunate incident and his handling of a difficult matter has shown all of us what public service should be about.

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Trump wants tort reform…except in libel cases & Ariz. Sen. wants to shield records from public; can it get any weirder?

Posted in ALEC, American Legislative Exchange Council, Corruption, DOA, Ethics, Legislature, Legislators, Media, Politicians, Public Records, State Police on December 27, 2016| 22 Comments »

Two seemingly unrelated news stories appeared in my laptop emails on Monday, one noteworthy for nothing more than its abject absurdity and the other even more so for the ominous threat it poses to the ability to hold elected officials accountable.

And while LouisianaVoice rarely delves into national politics because, well, truth be told, it’s admittedly way beyond my pay grade (and I was always taught to “write what you know”), both these stories have potential trickle down repercussions if any legislator is dumb enough to take his (or her) cue from the Man with the Golden Hair.

In the first story, Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway issued a dire warning, heavy with legal overtones, to “be careful” BE CAREFUL what we say about her boss. Her remarks, of course, were directed to retiring Senate Minority Leader, Nevada Democrat Harry Reid.

Reid last week said the election of Trump “has emboldened the forces of hate and bigotry in America” And that, in the minds of Conway—and presumably Trump—borders on libel (and, of course, “crooked Hillary” is simply campaign rhetoric).

It’s no secret that Trump, on the one hand, champions tort reform whereby corporations can be better protected from lawsuits over such trivial oversights as exploding batteries, toxic dumping, sexual harassment, etc. On the other hand, however, Trump has made it equally well know that he favors more liberal libel laws which would make it easier for public officials to sue.

Well, Trumper, you can’t have it both ways. The landmark case Sullivan v. New York Times makes it quite clear there must be a “reckless disregard for the truth” for a public official to recover damages.

Were that not the case, there might well have never been a Watergate scandal, the White House plumbers, Bebe Rebozo Iran-Contra revelations, Sen. John Edwards, the all-too-cozy relationship between Wall Street and The Clintons, Bushes, and even Obama or any number of other investigative pieces about public corruption. And to quote an old Baton Rouge State-Times editor responding to a reader who was irate over the treatment the paper was according Richard Nixon: “Exactly what is it about Watergate you would rather not have known?”

And out in Arizona, we have a bill pending BILL PENDING before the state legislature that appears to be right out of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) playbook and if it is, you can look for clones of this bill to pop up across the landscape, including, in all likelihood, Louisiana.

State Sen. John Kavanagh, R-Fountain Hills (wouldn’t you just know it would be a Republican who wants to put the kibosh on the public’s right to know?) has introduced a bill that would make it more difficult to obtain public records if public officials feel the requests are “unduly burdensome or harassing.”

That’s pretty open-ended and a decided advantage to any public servant who feels my request might be “unduly burdensome.” Wouldn’t Kristy Nichols have loved that? No, wait. It wouldn’t have mattered with her; she simply ignored my requests until she was damned good and ready to comply—if she even decided to comply. Okay, Mike Edmonson. He’d feast on a law like that.

Lest you think such a bill would never pass, consider this: this is Kavanagh’s second attempt at passing the bill and last it passed the Senate by a 22-7 vote, but lost in the House by a 40-19 vote.

LouisianaVoice will be watching closely to see if any similar such legislation is introduced in the 2017 session. If it is, then we will know without a doubt that this is an ALEC-sponsored bill.

ALEC, you may recall, meets at retreats, mini-conventions and conferences to draft “model bills” for members to introduce in their respective legislatures back home.

More recently, it has launched a sister organization, American City Council Exchange (ACCE) that has the same goals as ALEC, only on a municipal as opposed to state level. One of ACCE’s objectives, outlined in an Indianapolis conference last July, is to have its members become familiar with public records laws and to “be on the lookout for frivolous or abusive requests.”

Sen. Kavanagh couldn’t have said it better himself.

But what he conveniently overlooks is this: In any company, be it a mom and pop hardware or one of those mega box stores, management has the unchallenged right to know what its employees are doing when representing the company, be it processing orders, reducing errors, or one-on-one contact with the customer.

The President, Congress, 50 governors, Kavanagh, his fellow legislators and other elected officials throughout the land are chosen by the people. They in turn hire subordinates to carry out the day-to-day functions of government. So Kavanagh and every other elected or appointed public official in this country works for…the people.

And we, the people, have a right to examine the work they’re doing on our behalf.

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National Review writer Dan McLaughlin just won’t let it go; writes pro-Bobby Jindal columns saying Piyush got bad rap

Posted in Boards, Campaign Contributions, Contract, Contracts, Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Finances, Fraud, Governor's Office, Legislators, Media, OGB, Office of Group Benefits, Politicians, Privatization, State Agencies on December 13, 2016| 15 Comments »

In the parlance of the criminal justice system, money laundering is sometimes called “washing” or “scrubbing.”

But dirty money is always dirty money, no matter what efforts are taken to make it appear legitimate.

The same is true of politics. Having just gone through a gut-wrench senatorial campaign, we’ve seen up close and personal how political ads come in all manner of misleading half-truths and outright lies. Case in point: the absurd promises of State Sen. Bodi White (R-Central), who ran ads during his recent unsuccessful campaign for Mayor-President of Baton Rouge about how he was going to improve schools, cut the dropout rate, and attract better teachers.

The problem? Neither City Hall nor the mayor have squat to do with public education; that’s the East Baton Rouge Parish School Board’s turf. What’s more, White was fully aware of this, so his ads amounted to nothing more than pure B.S., or, to be more blunt: bald face lies.

And now, thanks to Stephen Winham, our human Early Warning System who often tips us off to interesting stories, we have the laundering of Bobby Jindal’s image by some groupie/writer for the National Review named Dan McLaughlin.

The scrubbing, however, comes a tad early; even in Louisiana, the citizens aren’t likely to forget the carnage wreaked by Jindal so quickly.

McLaughlin, it seems, is an attorney who practices securities and commercial litigation in New York City. He also is a contributing columnist at National Review Online (Go figure). He is a former contributing editor of RedState (No surprise there), a columnist at the Federalist and the New Ledger. During his spare time he is a baseball blogger at BaseballCrank.com.

McLaughlin has written at least a dozen or so insipid pro-Jindal pabulum-laden claptrap-filled columns, all of which could just as easily have been written by Timmy Teepell.

In his most recent contribution to National Review (the entire story is not contained at this link because I’m too cheap to subscribe), McLaughlin WRITES that “Jindal took on the enormous challenge of cutting government in a state that is culturally deep-red but economically populist, and he paid a great political cost for his efforts.”

Apparent, he wrote that garbage with a straight face.

There’s more from McLaughlin who wrote in an earlier column for RedState that Jindal was the BEST CANDIDATE for the Republican presidential nomination and that (get this) Jindal ruled in one of the presidential debates (never mind Jindal never got past the undercard debates in which all participants were weak also-runs).

McLaughlin wrote that Jindal’s low approval ratings “and the desperate wails of his Democratic successor over the condition of the state’s budget seem to support” the view that Jindal left the state in financial disarray.

Seriously? McLaughlin conveniently overlooks the fact that the “view” that Jindal’s leaving the state in disastrous shape took shape long before John Bel Edwards and long before Jindal abandoned his post for his delusional pursuit of the presidency.

McLaughlin made no mention of Jindal’s administration coming up with a contract to give away two of the state’s learning hospitals that contained 50 blank pages.

He ignores the matter of how Jindal doled out plum board and commission positions to big contributors to his campaign, how he rolled over anyone who disagreed with him by either firing or demoting them, how he took tainted campaign contributions from felons and refused to return the money, or how he gutted the reserve fund of the Office of Group Benefits in order to try to close gaping budget deficits that occurred every single year of his governorship.

“The path to smaller government requires persistence, backbone, and a willingness to accept compromises and a lot of defeats,” he wrote.

Correction, Mr. McLaughlin: the path to Bobby Jindal’s version of smaller government requires ruthlessness, vindictiveness, and unparalleled selfishness.

While one might justifiably think that Jindal’s political career is dead and buried, is it even remotely possible that he might be plotting a comeback?

Already, there are the first rumblings that Jindal is eying the 2019 gubernatorial campaign.

Just in case, perhaps someone should send McLaughlin a copy of my book, Bobby Jindal: His Destiny and Obsession. Not that he would change his mind, but at least he would have no excuse for not knowing.

And just in case you’ve not ordered your copy yet, click on the image of the book at upper right and place your order immediately.

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