Louisiana Voice

I have written extensively about Louisiana’s sheriffs – on this website and in my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption. In fact, I have finished the manuscript for a sequel, tentatively entitled America’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption. In that book, I have taken each state alphabetically and related instances of corruption, malfeasance, theft, drug use, drug dealing, and sexual misconduct.

Along the way, LouisianaVoice has singled out several Louisiana sheriffs’ offices, namely Iberia, Terrebonne, St. Tammany, Tangipahoa, Winn, and Livingston for various sordid accounts involving deaths of inmates, drug dealing, illegal raids and arrests, and sexual assault against minors and animals.

Today, we add another parish sheriff’s office – Calcasieu – to our list and in the coming days, we will be taking a hard look at another, Ascension Parish.

LouisianaVoice has learned of the exodus of several deputies in Calcasieu, once the state’s second-largest sheriff’s department in terms of the number of deputies employed. At its peak, Calcasieu had 930 full-time deputies to patrol 1,063 square miles. Jefferson, with 1,409 deputies to patrol only 665 square miles, is the largest in the state.

With more than 441,000 residents, however, it has twice Calcasieu’s 220,000 residents. But the Calcasieu Sheriff’s Office (CPSO) patrols all the incorporated municipalities in the parish: Lake Charles, Vinton, Iowa, and Sulphur, whereas most sheriff’s departments patrol only unincorporated areas of a parish or county.

The parish nearest Calcasieu in terms of population and land area is St. Tammany, which has 1,124 square miles and 280,000 residents. That parish has 732 full-time deputies, nearly 200 fewer than Calcasieu had at its peak.

The problem is, deputies have been leaving CPSO in pretty large numbers – 23 in 2021 and 25 already this year. More are expected to resign this year as several have applied for positions at the petrochemical plants in the Lake Charles area and are waiting for calls from the plants

The reason: poor pay and low morale, according to one deputy who recently left the department. “Last year, I worked (private) security every day I was off and was barely able to clear $45,000,” he said. “My buddy, who doesn’t work security, and who has been at the CPSO for 10 years, made only $28,000 last year while some commanders in the department were pulling down $130,000.

“During Mardi Gras, every single deputy is required to work at least one parade but no one is compensated for it,” he said. No one is given extra time off and if you have a vacation or family event scheduled during this time, you have to cancel it or you will be disciplined. Lake Charles police, State Police and marshal’s office all pay overtime for working parades.”

He said captains and lieutenants in the department received pay raises of $15,000 a year before the Covid pandemic and before the hurricanes that devastated the Lake Charles area in 2020.

“The department as a whole went without a pay raise from 2006 until this month when everyone at the rank of sergeant and below got a $5,000 pay raise which in reality, amounted to a net of about and extra $150 per pay check,” he said.

He said deputies were assured by the CPSO administration that the sheriff’s office would see to the tarping of deputies’ roofs following the 2020 hurricanes since the deputies were having to work around the clock. “But that never happened,” he said. “Not long after the hurricanes, we found that they did have a tarping crew but that only the homes of administrative personnel were tarped.”

He said following those hurricanes, patrol personnel were assigned to schools in the parish and were left there, forced to eat food prepared by prisoners while administrative staff sheltered in the Laubege/Golden Nugget Casino-Hotel and dining on catered food.

He said Mancuso said some six years earlier that “we had a hurricane fund in the amount of more than $34 million for just purpose but when the hurricanes hit in 2020, we were told we’d have to wait for FEMA to reimburse the parish before we could get paid for our overtime work. “But Lake Charles found the funds to pay its officers for their overtime work following the storms,” he said.

He said now that Sheriff Tony Mancuso has announced that this is his last term, “his (Mancuso’s) cronies – and those they brought with them – are being promoted to ensure that they will get the full three years’ service at highest pay for retirement purposes.”

Deputies, like Louisiana civil service employees, receive defined retirement benefits based on a percentage of the three highest years average pay received on the job, so it benefits an employee to get promoted at least three years before retirement.

But it isn’t just the salaries for top brass that sticks in the former deputy’s throat. “The sheriff and several members of the administrative staff drive sheriff’s office trucks to Toledo Bend and to west Texas to their hunting camps on a routine basis,” he said. “They are able to do that because they had oversized fuel tanks installed on the vehicles and they fill up before they leave and the fuel lasts until they return to Calcasieu. And guess who pays for that diesel? The taxpayers of Calcasieu Parish.”

Patrol Commander Gene Pittman, he said, accepted $3000 from the FBI National Academy Graduates Fund following Laura when the funds were awarded to academy graduates impacted by the storms. “But he (Pittman) neglected to inform other academy graduates in the CPSO about the fund so no one else was able to receive that money, which could have really helped several hurricane victims,” he said.

“The road patrol at one time had 30 deputies per shift on patrol but now they’re operating with eight to nine deputies – if they’re lucky – for each of the four shifts per day,” he said. “Pittman has run that department into the ground. All he’s concerned about is the $75,000 swimming pool being built at his house and getting his wife a job at the sheriff’s office after she retired from the FBI.

“I love law enforcement,” he said, “but I’m fed up. I was a cop through-and-through but now I’m pursuing a career outside law enforcement. This is not a deputy problem. The deputies show up every day and do their jobs for next to nothing in pay. The administration has lost sight of what made this department so great.

“I never wanted to speak like this about a place I loved so much, but I care about the people I left behind and I pray something will eventually change. They’re not losing deputies because of the pay, but because of the leadership void. Deputies are deciding it’s not worth the stress and time away from family.”

At the risk of being accused of a terminal case of sour grapes, I have to say I’m more than a little taken aback at the self-serving HEADLINE of last Thursday (June 8) on the website of Baton Rouge TV station WBRZ.

Meaning no disrespect to Chris Nakamoto, who I would be the first to say, has done a herculean job of covering the sordid mess that is Louisiana State Police (LSP) and its affiliates, the State Police Commission (SPC), and the Louisiana State Police Association (LSPA).

Plus, I am keenly aware as a former newspaper reporter that reporters do not write the headlines to their stories. That is done by editors (although now operating as a one-person show, I am fully responsible for the headlines on LouisianaVoice stories, including this one).

But someone – I suppose we will never know whom – chose to word that headline to imply that the US Justice Department opened its civil rights investigation into LSP “amid years-long Nakamoto investigation.”

As a courtesy, news organizations generally give credit to competing services but not this time.

No mention was made of the early-on efforts of Maya Lau to cover LSP and its parent organization, the Louisiana Department of Corrections. Maya, a Vassar alumnus who has worked for The Shreveport Times and the Baton Rouge Advocate, had gone on to a much larger beat: the corruption-laden Los Angeles Sheriff’s Office (amont other major stories), as an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times.

Nor were the probing reports of Jim Mustian, formerly of The Advocate and now with Associated Press cited. Mustian went even deeper into the LSP and was the first to report on the infamous tour-by-state police car taken by four troopers on their way to a San Diego confab where then-LSP Superintendent Mike Edmonson was being honored. The four took side trips to the Hoover Dam, Las Vegas and the Grand Canyon en route to San Diego in that state vehicle – and charged overtime for the trip. The trip was the tipping point that led to Edmonson’s early departure as head of state police.

Mustian has continued his investigation of LSP in his current position at AP but of course, no mention was made of that in the headline.

And then there’s Robert Burns. No trained reporter he, but he seems to know which questions to ask – and when. And most times, they’ve been pretty embarrassing to the LSP brass. And Burns has demonstrated his superior knowledge of the court system and can usually predict in advance how a knotty case will be decided. But did Burns get any credit in that headline? Nope.

And Lea Skene of The Advocate and Melinda Deslatte, another stellar reporter for AP, along with reporters for Daily Kos, the New York Post, USA Today, WAFB TV of Baton Rouge, and writers for a host of several other news organizations have also contributed to the ongoing story of LSP, particularly as it pertains to troopers’ treatment of black motorists.

And lastly, there’s yours truly. Beginning in July 2014 (almost 8 long years ago), when LouisianaVoice broke the initial story of the attempt to sneak a bill through the legislature that would’ve increased Edmonson’s retirement (illegally) by some $100,000, I reported non-stop on corruption, sexual behavior (while on duty), drug use (while on duty) and a wide assortment of other misbehavior by state police from command staff all the way down to road troopers. I wrote dozens of stories over a period of at least two years before it became cool for others to do so. Gradually, other news organizations began to pay attention with WBRZ, quite truthfully, coming in in the late stages – long after Lau, Mustian, Burns, and LouisianaVoice – just in time to garner the plaudits for sound investigative reporting.

Okay, that’s a little unfair. Nakamoto did a helluva job when other TV stations in the Baton Rouge market paid scant attention. Hats off to him. He’s a tireless reporter and he deserves credit for a great job who also has to simultaneously cover corrupt behavior in other agencies.

But to ignore the efforts of the others seems a bit of an oversight, too.

Send your contributions to John N. Kennedy today (and to Ted “Cancun” Cruz, even though he’s not up for reelection this year) – and any other deserving candidate who might be an appreciative recipient!

“There will come a time when Donald Trump will be gone – but your dishonor will remain.”

— Rep. Liz Cheney (R-Wyoming), to her Repugnantcan colleagues in her opening statement in the House Select Committee’s hearings on the Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol insurrection on Thursday. (For some reason, the names Ted Cruz, John N. Kennedy, and Lindsey Graham come to mind.)

President Joe Biden and several activists have ramped up their demands that the LEGAL AGE for purchasing guns be increased from 18 to 21 and that assault weapons be BANNED altogether..

An idea whose time has come. Again. You see, we once had such a PROHIBITION on assault weapons. It was enacted in 1994 following a mass shooting the previous year on a schoolyard in Stockton, California, that claimed the lives of five children and injured 29 others, including a teacher.

Ten years later and the Repugnantcan Party had taken firm control of Congress and the ban was allowed to expire quietly, though President Obama attempted, without success, even after Sandy Hook, to renew the ban.

Now, with people like Ted “Cancun” Cruz, John “Weed Killer” Kennedy, Steve KKK. Scalise, Clay Pigeon Higgins, and scores of like-minded mental giants, no one is talking seriously about a ban. In fact, no Repugnantcan in Congress supports even raising the age limit for purchase of a kid killer. That would include, of course, every single member of our congressional delegation of the Repugnantcan stripe: Sens. Kornpone Kennedy and Bill Cassidy, and Reps. Scalise, Higgins, Mike Johnson, Julia Letlow and Garret Graves.

But really, who truly needs and assault weapon? I’ve said here before that if you need a 30-round clip to take out that buck, then you should consider another hobby. Hunting just ain’t your strong suit. And that goes for Betsy Devos and her grizzly bears in the classroom and for Cassidy’s feral hogs, as well.

A reader correctly pointed out that AR-15s are technically not “assault” weapons, but are semi-automatics that require one to squeeze the trigger with each shot. But they are capable of accommodating 15-, 30-, 42-, and even 100-round clips, which makes them a bit more deadly than your typical bolt-action.

Assault weapons are designed for one purpose and one purpose only: war. They are killing machines intended for the military to use in times of war. Killing human beings. They were not designed to be placed in the hands of a bunch of well-intentioned, but ill-trained citizens. And if my reader will pardon my impudence, when they’re used to slaughter innocent children at point-blank range, they are “assault” weapons in the truest sense of the word.

(Another reader questioned my courage in the case of a school shooting while noting that I had never served in the military and that in the end, he would have my back. Well, he was wrong about my military experience. While his apparent role model Trump did not serve, I did. Maybe he got us confused. But I also seriously doubt I could really count on him in a crisis, his boisterous, puffed-up claim notwithstanding. But that’s another argument for another day.)

I just can’t understand why politicians are dancing all around the real issue: keeping these weapons out of the hands of the nut cases. Yeah, I know if you ban them, only the gangstas, the bad guys, will have them. But you have to start somewhere and I suggest making the penalty for possession an assault weapon severe enough to at least make them take notice.

If they’re banned altogether, it would be much more difficult for the likes of the Columbine shooters to obtain the weapons through a “straw-man” purchase the way they did 23 years ago. Eric Harris was 18 and Dylan Klebold 17 when they went on that rampage that left 15 dead, including themselves. The Parkland, Florida, shooter was 19, the Sandy Hook assassin was 20, and the killers at Buffalo and Uvalde were each 18.

Those ages have prompted knee-jerk reactions like arming teachers and raising the legal purchase age for an assault weapon from 18 to 21. Arming teachers is pure insanity; the last thing we need is a Dodge City shoot-out in a room full of hysterical children and is raising the minimum age for legal purchase really going to help?

No!

Harris and Klebold were both under 18 at the time their weapons used at Columbine were purchased. The simply had a friend who was 18 make the buy – from an unlicensed gun dealer – for them. Do you really believe an 18-year-old wouldn’t have a 21-year-old friend who could purchase an AR-15 for him?

Let’s take a moment to examine the mental maturity of the average male.

We’re all blessed with something called the frontal cortex. That’s part of the brain and as the name implies, it’s at the front of the head – and it’s the very last part of the human brain to reach full maturity, generally in the mid-twenties.

Not 18, not 21, but the mid-twenties, as in 25 YEARS OF AGE.

And what is the FUNCTION of the frontal cortex?

Some pretty crucial responsibilities there: self-control, emotional control, self-monitoring, voluntary behavior, problem-solving, intelligence…

There are two frontal lobes – the left and right hemispheres. Both lobes are the home of our personalities with the left lobe being the most dominant, working on such mundane tasks as logical thinking and analytical reasoning.

Our brain develops in a back-to-front fashion. The rear part of the brain starts to develop first, and the development moves from the rear to the front. The Prefrontal cortex is developed last. It is why teenage till young adulthood is critical as in this time frame, the prefrontal cortex is still developing, and our experiences, social interactions, and learning can impact the development of this region.

And again, the frontal cortex does not mature until the mid-twenties.

In some cases, never. An online story in today’s Baton Rouge Advocate tells of a 66-year-old man in Walker, in Livingston Parish where I call home, who was arrested for threatening, not once, but twice, to shoot a Florida Vietnamese-American US representative.

Charles T. Germany, who resided in trailer 31 at a mobile home park, twice called the office of Rep. Stephanie Murphy and, believe it or not, left voice messages saying:

“Yeah. Um, emergency response would be nice. You democratic buffoons. What are you doing to our f****** country? What the hell? I swear to God. If I could get up there, I’d kill every one of you. Y’all the stupidest mother******* on this planet. What the f*** is wrong with you? Don’t you see what you doing to this country? That buffoon you got as a president, which he got elected very wrongly and you know it, look at his son. What the f*** are you doing in our country? I’ll kill you myself, you b****.”

And:

“Hello? Some congresswoman. You Joe Biden f****** piece of s***. F*** you!”

Of course, he got a visit from the black SUVs in short order, as well might be expected.

Like I said, some frontal cortexes take a little longer to mature.