Louisiana Voice

There was a recent story in the Baton Rouge Advocate that caught my attention and at the same time elicited my skepticism and more than a little amusement at the thought of my local Denham Springs Police Department conducting an undercover investigation of human trafficking and prostitution.

The story related how a local citizen, thinking he would receive “legitimate treatment from a licensed masseuse,” was instead greeted by a “scantily-clad woman,” prompting his suspicion that he had stumbled onto prostitution operating in plain sight in once sleepy Denham Springs.

When I moved out here in 1981, Denham, as the locals refer to it, was indeed sleepy. You could practically fire a cannon down Range Avenue, the main north-south drag, and not hit anything.

Not today. The Baton Rouge bedroom community, along with the entirety of Livingston Parish, has exploded in population over the past three decades and along with that growth came the usual problems of traffic congestion and crime.

And apparently prostitution. Undercover investigators began surveillance of three local massage parlors. They were the Green Land Spa on South Range Avenue, Apple Spa on Florida Boulevard (U.S. 190, erstwhile the main east-west artery before Interstate 12 was built, and Massage Life on Hummel Street.

Given the methods once employed by cops in Hawaii, Arkansas, and Michigan (where they actually engaged in sex in order to make a bust), I was given to wonder just what the so-called “undercover” operation entailed in investigating these massage parlors. (When the Hawaii legislator was considering abolishing the practice, police officers testified that the actual engagement of sex was a valuable “tool” for law enforcement. Most of my redneck wag friends would snicker at the use of that particular word.)

“There’s no secret that there’s sex trafficking going on in this country,” said Denham Mayor Gerald Landry, belaboring the obvious. “And there’s no secret that massage parlors are ways for these young ladies to be abused. There are not enough local ordinances for us to properly manage those kinds of facilities.”

That’s certainly more incisive than what I heard from a Denham cop a few days before Christmas in my carport several years back.

We were keeping our twin grandchildren while their parents, my eldest daughter and her husband, were out of town. We let them sleep in our bed and I was assigned to the guest bedroom and my wife opted for the sofa in the living room.

The layout of the living room is unique in that it has windows in the back of the room that look out into our carport which at the time did not have an enclosure (that was remedied after the flood of 2016). The carport has a motion-activate light and at 4 a.m. my wife came into the guest bedroom to wake me with the news that someone was in our carport.

I got up and looked out the window and saw someone going through my wife’s vehicle, apparently looking for anything of value he could steal and sell – most probably to purchase drugs. When I opened the door leading into the carport, he bolted, and disappeared down our driveway.

The Denham police were summoned in the vain hope that they might apprehend the would-be thief. How foolish of me to make such an assumption.

The officer who responded stood at least six feet from my wife’s vehicle and proclaimed, apparently seriously, “I don’t see any fingerprints.”

I was incredulous, but said nothing until we started down the drive, tracing the thief’s steps, and I spotted an object that he attempted to take but dropped on his way out. I forget now what it was but the officer picked it up and somberly said, “I don’t see any fingerprints on this, either.”

At that point, I blurted, “Well, I bet my fingerprints are all over it and the car, too. You can’t just stand next to something and see fingerprints.”

Given all that, I have to wonder if undercover officers found any fingerprints at those massage parlors.

When House Speaker Clay Schexnayder (R-Gonzales) decided to put Gov. John Bel Edwards in his crosshairs over the Ronald Greene beating death, he made sure to pack his House committee with familiar faces of South Louisiana members.

To tell the truth, that little move was overlooked by me but not by a sharp-eyed LouisianaVoice reader who was quick to question the makeup of the so-called bipartisan committee formed to study Greene’s death at the hands of five state troopers on May 10, 2019.

I say “so-called bipartisan” because while Schexnayder was careful to make certain that four of the eight-member committee were Democrats, he snubbed legislators – Republicans and Democrats alike – from North Louisiana, particularly Northeast Louisiana, where Greene was from and where he died.

Schexnayder’s appointment of four Democrats notwithstanding, this alleged “investigation” is a thinly-disguised hatchet job intended to take down Edwards. Not that he needs and help – Edwards has contributed significantly to his own political demise by keeping quiet so long when he knew damned well Greene died during a struggle with cops but still stuck to the lie that he died from a car crash that was the culmination of a two-parish police chase.

But to ignore North Louisiana House members when appointing the committee was not only ill-advised, but politically not smart. A politician worth his salt would never commit such a blunder. A man died at the hands of Troop F state troopers run amok – where driving while black is apparently a criminal offense. It would seem that legislators from that area would have a stake in any investigation into events occurring in that region.

The chase originated in Ouachita Parish and ended in Union Parish. They are both decidedly North Louisiana parishes: Union abuts Arkansas and Ouachita is just one parish removed from the Arkansas border. You don’t get any more “North Louisiana” than that.

Yet, one must look all the way to East Baton Rouge and West Baton Rouge parishes to find the northernmost member of the committee. That’s roughly 220 miles south of where Greene died.

The membership is chaired by Speaker Pro Tem Tanner Magee (R-Houma). Other members include Reps. Richard Nelson (R-Mandeville), C. Denise Marcelle (D-Baton Rouge), Richard Nelson (R-Mandeville), Tony Barcala (R-Prairieville), Jason Hugues (D-New Orleans), Edmond Jordan (D-Brusly), Mandie Landry (D-New Orleans), and Debbie Villio (R-Kenner).

Overlooked were Ouachita Parish Reps. Mike Echols (R-Monroe), Adrian Fisher (D-Monroe), Foy Bryan Gadberry (R-West Monroe), and Pat Moore (D-Monroe), and Jack McFarland (R-Jonesboro), Christopher Turner (R-Ruston), and Francis Thompson (D-Delhi).

There are others from Minden, Alexandria, Pineville, Shreveport, and Vidalia, but those in the preceding paragraph should have been represented because Greene either lived or died in their districts. Yet, not a single one was designated to serve on the committee.

That’s an oversight that cannot be ignored or excused.

Whether it’s the heat generated by the Ronald Greene murder and the subsequent coverup or just the possibility of an ambitious career move, word is Gov. John Bel Edwards may be about to hit the bricks for D.C.

LouisianaVoice has picked up on a fairly strong report that Edwards will be meeting with his cabinet members next week to announce he’ll be taking a position in the Biden administration, most probably in the Energy Department, currently headed by Secretary Jennifer Granholm, like Edwards, a former governor. She was the frst woman elected governor of Michigan, serving two terms from 2003 to 2011.

Rumors have been circulating of late that Edwards was considering a position in Washington and those reports have intensified with the growing questions about his knowledge of details of Greene’s beating death at the hands of State Troopers on May 10, 2019 and the subsequent claims that Greene died as the result of an auto accident at the end of a lengthy police chase through two north Louisiana parishes.

As Louisiana State Police stuck to their story for some 16 months, Trooper John Clary continued to claim there was no body cam footage of the incident. That claim turned out to be a lie when the body cam footage surfaced around September 2020, only about three months after LSP cellphones were wiped clean.

Greene’s death has resulted in the resignations of at least four high-ranking LSP officials and sparked calls for others as more details continue to emerge.

Edwards was reelected after a hard-fought campaign in 2019 and has nearly two years left in his current term.

Art Briles is out before he ever set foot on campus but observers must be asking what in the world was Grambling State University head football coach Hue Jackson thinking in attempting to bring damaged goods onto campus in the first place?

Were it not for the protests of people like Grambling alumnus and former Super Bowl MVP quarterback DOUG WILLIAMS, the hiring of the former Baylor University head coach might actually have made it up to the University of Louisiana System’s board of supervisors where, hopefully, someone would’ve had the cajones to say hold on just a damned minute here.

Briles had been tentatively hired as the Grambling offensive coordinator, pending board concurrence. Offensive would’ve been the operative word in this case.

Briles is a coach who, like Les Miles and Ed Orgeron at LSU, came with considerable baggage in the form of allegations of sexual assault by as many as 19 of his players at Baylor.

The scandal at the Baptist-affiliated university cost Baylor President/Chancellor Kenneth Starr his job. Starr, who served as the self-righteous prosecutor of Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinsky Oval Office affair from June 2010 until May 2016.

Accused of “ignoring sexual assault issues on campus” by NPR, Starr on Aug. 19, 2016, resigned from his professorship at the Baylor Law School, completely severing his ties with the university. He next popped up in January 2020 as a member of Donald Trump’s legal team during his first impeachment trial.

What makes that especially interesting is the claim by LSU-Shreveport associate political science professor Jeff Sadow that Democrats were guilty of a double standard at a recent Mardi Gras event by going unmasked.

Baylor’s board of regents said Briles was aware of the sexual assault charges but failed to inform the school’s judicial affairs staff or the Title IX office in charge of coordinating the school’s response to sexual violence. In all, 17 separate sexual and domestic violence cases involving 19 football players were reported at the university between 2011 and 2016.

The NCAA investigated the claims against Briles and the Baylor program but stopped short of punishing him or the program.

Briles was the Baylor coach from 2008 to 2015. He is the author of the 2014 book Beating Goliath: My Story of Football and Faith.

The Grambling gig was not the only abortive job offer extended to Briles. The Hamilton Tiger-Cats of the Canadian Football League hired him but let him go soon after his 2017 hire. Then, in 2019, University of Southern Mississippi head coach Jay Hopson attempted to hire him but USM President Rodney Bennett put the kibosh to that effort.

Briles did land a Texas high school coaching job for two seasons but nothing surprises us about Texas these days.

Latest items of interest picked up by LouisianaVoice concerning Louisiana State Police (LSP):

• Four months before the beatings of black motorists Aaron Larry Bowman and Ronald Greene, another black motorist was beaten by troopers from State Police Troops E, F, and G, a beating that LSP has tried desperately to keep from going public. Video in the possession of LSP shows troopers beating Damarirca Mims and hurling racial slurs at him.
• LSP and some members of the Legislative Black Caucus are pushing to retain the services of Theron Bowman, Ph.D, a police and city management consultant, as an effort to prevent the implementation of a federal consent decree for State Police.
• Louisiana State Police high command is said to have delayed firing Trooper John Clary for his role in Greene’s beating death on May 10, 2019, until he reached his three-year anniversary date at the rank of lieutenant last November.
• The LSP IT employee who was ordered to sanitize the cellphones of former – and current- employees is described as “stressed” and is said to have expressed concerns over why the department ordered him to wipe the phones of active employees Lt. Col. Doug Cain and attorney Faye Dysart Morrison. It is still unknown as to ordered that the phones be erased.
• Likewise, questions remain as to why Maj. Jason Turner, who is the Region 3 Officer over Troops E, F, and G, blocked Det. Albert Paxton when Paxton attempted to obtain evidence in the Greene matter. Paxton, ultimately retired from State Police but did not go quietly, giving interviews of difficulties of his investigation to a Baton Rouge TV reporter.
• State Police appear to be attempting to keep a lid on an event involving a trooper from Troop L and a young girl, details of which reflect back onto Louisiana’s First Family.
• A State Police lieutenant has been involved in at least two hit and run accidents in the Lake Charles and New Orleans areas. In the latest incident, he attempted to say he was sideswiped by another vehicle, though there are no paint transfers that would indicate contact with another vehicle, leaving skeptics to believe he struck a guardrail.

The Mims beating took place in Caddo Parish in January 2019, just four months before the Bowman and Greene beatings. One of the troopers involved in the Mims beating was Trooper Chris Hollingsworth, who also was involved in the Greene beating death on May 10, 2019. Hollingsworth was subsequently fired and died days later as the result of an auto accident. Troopers involved in the Mims beating were identified as Brent Hardy of Troop G, and Trooper George Hardy, and others.

The bookshelves of Louisiana state government in general and state agencies in particular are filled with dusty consultant studies on how to make operations more efficient. Basically, all they have done is result in the expenditure of tax dollars for expensive studies that produce few tangible results.

Yet, LSP and the Legislative Black Caucus are pushing to retain the services of Theron Bowman, a police and city management consultant in an attempt to head off the implementation of a federal consent decree to oversee state police operations. Bowman is a member of the Management Partners consulting firm of Cincinnati, Ohio.

That’s not to say that Bowman doesn’t possess the chops for the job, he does. He has more than 30 years’ experience in leading and managing complex and sophisticated police and public safety operations, including New Orleans, Maricopa County, Arizona, Cleveland, Los Angeles County, Newark, and others. He spent more than 30 years with the City of Arlington, Texas, Police Department, rising through the ranks to become chief and later deputy city manager.

But two common sense moves continue to elude those in the decision-making positions: (1) abolish the State Police Commission and move state police into State Civil Service like the rest of the working stiffs and (2) abandon the regulation that the state police superintendent must come from within the ranks and not from outside. Those are two things that continue to keep State Police from entering the 21^st century. Neither is a matter of waving a wand and declaring it so, but it’s worth the bureaucratic necessities involved to get them done.

Clary was said to have boasted to fellow officers that LSP Internal Affairs (IA) provided him with interview questions and answers prior to his interview. He was ultimately cleared of any wrongdoing in Greene’s death. Clary lied for more than two years about the existence of body cam footage of the Greene beating but when investigators examined the time/date stamped audit trail of the video, it showed that Clary was periodically going back to check the video to ensure that no one else was seeing it.

No more needs to be said about the concerns of the IT employee over the wiping of State Police cellphones and the concerns of former Det. Albert Paxton have been widely publicized, though Turner needs to be questioned further about his role in blocking Paxton’s investigation of the Greene death.

The identity of the state trooper involved with “inappropriate conduct” with a female member of the LSU band in hotel room during travel to the Mississippi State football game last fall has been kept under wraps like some sort of state secret but LouisianaVoice has learned that the trooper was Thomas Noto from Troop L. Little is known about the complaint filed against Noto other than he and the female band member were drinking in a hotel room while he was on duty.

It’s interesting to note that Noto was also assigned to the security detail for the governor’s son, John Miller Edwards, while he was enrolled at LSU. Noto was placed on administrative leave, but no further announcements of discipline have been forthcoming.

Finally, it is disconcerting that the driving habits of Lt. Chad Lacoste have not come under greater scrutiny. His first incident occurred in Troop L in early 2021 when his patrol unit sideswiped a civilian’s vehicle and Lacoste fled the scene. The civilian, however, got his license number and had a private investigator run it. Rather than arrest Lacoste for hit and run, however, he was merely ticketed.

Then, on Sept. 30, 2021, Lacoste called Troop B and claimed he was traveling on an interstate ramp near the Mercedes Benz Superdome when a white pickup truck sideswiped his unit and fled the scene. Lacoste, a seasoned police officer, failed to get a license plate number and apparently forgot he had a police radio. There was no paint transfer, however, which would have been the case when one vehicle hits another, leaving investigators to believe he sideswiped a guardrail instead and was most likely impaired.