Louisiana Voice

Scenes from the carnage inflicted on the unfortunate folks in Illinois, Arkansas and Kentucky by a 200-mile-long tornado cell were heartbreaking but the victims should be forewarned that their frustration is only beginning as the insurance adjusters move in to give insulting settlement offers to those who have lost everything.

And if they are duped into counting on FEMA, I’m afraid that frustration level will only increase.

But while that was happening, another heartbreaking scene, a manufactured one, was unfolding in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

No one was physically hurt (though I can’t vouch for any possible psychological pain), nor did anyone lose their home or possessions but the spectacle should be one that provokes shame and disgust for all Americans.

It seems that a mortgage company had what it thought was a magnanimous IDEA to dump $5,000 in one-dollar bills on an ice-skating rink and allow 10 teachers to dive in and scoop up as much as they could stuff into their clothing in less than five minutes to the cheers of onlooking hockey fans – whatever money they managed to grab to be used for classroom school supplies.

Has it really come down to this? We pay a damn football coach $10 million a year while public school teachers in South Dakota are reduced to scraping up dollar bills on an ice hockey rink while hockey fans cheer them on? Seriously?

We pay U.S. representatives $174,000 a year and U.S. senators $193,400 a year and the governor of South Dakota gets $114,000 a year and teachers are asked to get down on their knees and pick up as many one-dollar bills as they can in five minutes to the entertainment of a hockey crowd. Are you kidding me?

Do we not value our children and their education any higher than turning teachers into court jesters during intermission of a hockey game?

Isn’t it enough that underpaid teachers must reach into their own pockets to purchase classroom supplies?

Isn’t it degrading to know that a local Louisiana school board couldn’t even provide computers for a computer classroom but that an anonymous benefactor all the way out in California had to come to their rescue by donating the money for that specific purpose?

It’s bad enough when convicts in a prison rodeo risk their lives to grab a few dollars attached to an angry bull as paying fans cheer them on but to ask teachers to scramble out onto a public ice rink and to compete with fellow educators for a few dollars to purchase supplies and to pay for classroom repairs is just insulting.

Some might say I am overreacting, but I happen to hold teachers in the highest esteem – not because two of my daughters happen to be teachers but because teachers at Ruston High School more than 60 years ago saved my damn worthless life. I was a kid going nowhere until three English teachers, Miss Charlotte Lewis, Miss Maggie Hinton and Mrs. L.J. (Mary Alice) Garrett and two history/civics teachers, Earvin Ryland and Morgan Peoples, took a personal interest in my development and insisted that I was somehow worth salvaging. I would never have made it without their intervention, care and nurturing.

Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, was equally appalled, tweeting that the spectacle “just feels demeaning. Teachers shouldn’t have to dash for dollars for classroom supplies. No doubt people probably intended it to be fun, but from the outside it feels terrible.”

I couldn’t agree more. To see the video of those teachers scrambling for a few dollars to help their students just broke my heart.

And to know it’s really no better in Louisiana is simply infuriating. Only the ice rink is missing.

First of all, Robert Mann doesn’t need me to defend him. His accomplishments speak for themselves, The Hayride’s cheesy, amateurish PHOTOSHOPPING efforts notwithstanding (that’s about the sloppiest job I’ve ever seen of pasting someone’s head onto a photo of a homeless person, by the way).

The fact that The Hayride and I are poles apart politically is of no consequence; it’s their right to take their position just as it’s my right to take mine.

But for a publication that depends on the protections guaranteed by the First Amendment to personally attack a writer over his First Amendment rights is beyond the pale. To imply that he possesses no qualifications as a journalist is disingenuous, at best.

The Hayride editors and our POS attorney general would be wise to recall a quote attributed to Voltaire: “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.”

To attempt to re-write history by saying Mann “invented the narrative” that the Hurricane Katrina response was the fault of the federal government is flat-out incorrect. Who can forget, “heckuva job, Brownie”?

But Mann isn’t a journalist, according to The Hayride. To that, I would refer The Hayride editors to a few of Mann’s excellent books: A Grand Delusion: America’s Descent into Vietnam (probably the preeminent examination of how the US became involved in that debacle); The Walls of Jericho: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Russell and the Struggle for Civil Rights; or Daisy Petals and Mushroom Clouds: LBJ, Barry Goldwater, and the Ad that Changed American Politics. That, folks, is journalism at its finest. And to The Hayride’s contention that Mann is not a journalist, I would respectfully ask how many books has Scott McKay, aka MacAoidh, written?

But I digress. This whole thing has its roots in Mann’s description of one of POS Attorney General Jeff Landry’s flunkies as a flunky when the flunky was dispatched to a meeting of the LSU Faculty Senate meeting to read a letter attacking covid vaccines, a move that Mann suggested was in contrast to Landry’s staking out a position of pro-life.

The Hayride, following Landry’s cue, went BERSERK over Mann’s tweet.

When I say they took their cue from POS Landry, it was no exaggeration. Landry immediately DEMANDED that Mann be drawn and quartered by the LSU administration for daring to criticize our idiot AG. And I don’t use the term idiot lightly.

Fortunately, LSU President WILLIAM TATE immediately issued a firm commitment to protecting Mann’s First Amendment rights, POS Landry’s bruised feelings be damned.

Lest we forget, Landry has abused his office since the day he was sworn in. Following the first primary in 2015, Landry trailed incumbent AG Buddy Caldwell by two percentage points. Geradine Broussard Baloney was third at 18 percent. Baloney endorsed Landry in the November runoff and after Landry was elected, Baloney’s daughter, Quendi Baloney, WAS HIRED for the AG’s Fraud Section, which was somehow appropriate, given that in 1999, she had been charged with 11 felony counts of credit card fraud and theft, eventually pleading guilty to three counts and receiving a suspended prison sentence.

Landry was involved up to his neck in a $17 MILLION SCAM to hire Mexican welders and pipe fitters under H-2B visa rules through three companies owned by him and his brother, Ben Landry. Nice chops for an AG who opposes immigration.

He tried, unsuccessfully, it turned out, to force Gov. John Bel Edwards to appoint Carolyn Prator, a conservative operative and wife of Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator, to the Red River Waterway Commission. (Sheriff Prator, you may recall, opposed Edwards’ early release of some prisoners because it took away his department’s car washers.)

Landry, along with State Treasurer John Schroder, ramrodded a provision through the STATE BOND COMMISSION that barred the state from doing business with any financial institution that discriminates against a firearm entity or firearm trade association – a silly, asinine, knee-jerk move that could conceivably cost the state millions of dollars. That, my friends, is the very definition of putting politics ahead of the interests of the citizens of Louisiana.

Landry put supporter, contributor and oilman Shane Guidry on the AG’s payroll as an investigator of some sort and later had AG AGENTS combing the state and neighboring Mississippi on Guidry’s behalf, looking for the biological mother of Guidry’s adopted daughter in order to stop her from communicating with the daughter – even though no crime had been committed.

Landry even managed to ignore his own stipulation that any employee of the AG’s office who runs for public office must resign when he gave his blessings for Assistant AG LIZ MURRILL to announce that she would run for attorney general should her boss run, as expected, for governor in 2023 – and keep her job.

With all that baggage, you’d think that Landry had enough to worry about without getting his drawers in a wad over Mann’s observations, but I guess not.

This, folks, is your attorney general, elected by the good citizens of Louisiana. And we wonder how we wind up at the bottom of all the good lists and at the top of all the bad ones.

In two simple words, it’s leadership and integrity – or the lack thereof. So long as we continue electing people like Landry, and about 95 percent of the legislature, we are going to continue to wallow in the sticky mud of political corruption, ineptitude and indifference.

And we have only ourselves – not Bob Mann or The Hayride – to blame.

Way back in 1955, the introduction of new car models was a major event, shrouded in mystery, until a nationally-coordinated introduction date when crowds would swarm into the local dealerships to gawk at a flashy new Chevrolet model that still stands as the benchmark of automotive design.

Oh, Ford and Chrysler also had new models, but they could never compare to the Chevy (can anyone recall what the ’55 Plymouth looked like?). Our entire Cooktown Road neighborhood in Ruston was elevated in status when Allen Carpenter’s parents purchased a green and white model that made such an impression that many years later, Allen would set out on a quest to obtain his own ’55 model. His is red and white, but no less impressive than that one of more than 65 years ago.

That same year, LSU hired a relatively-unknown assistant coach from the US Military Academy named Paul Dietzel. It took him three years of winning three, three and five games before he introduced the White Team, the Go Team and the Chinese Bandits that would win a national championship with a perfect 10-0 regular season capped by a 7-0 win over Clemson in the Sugar Bowl on New Year’s Day.

The 1959 season was spoiled by Tennessee’s 14-13 upset of the Tigers but not until that immortal 89-yard punt return by Billy Cannon gave the Tigers that breathtaking 7-3 win over Ole Miss on Halloween night that captured the Heisman Trophy for Cannon, who rushed for an eye-popping 759 yards and five touchdowns that year.

When Dietzel came to Baton Rouge, his SALARY was a whopping $13,000 or $18,500 a year, depending on your SOURCE – and LSU wouldn’t even pay his moving expenses.

Gasoline was somewhere in the neighborhood of 30 cents a gallon and that ’55 Chevy sold for as little as $1500 to as high as $2000, depending on the model. Even as late as 1964, when I purchased my first car, a sparkling new Volkswagen Beetle right off the showroom floor, I paid only $1600.

Which brings us to 2021 and the hiring a new coach at LSU.

Yes, times are different. Gasoline is hovering around $3 a gallon, a 10-fold increase from ’55 and new cars can go for considerably more than $1500 for that ’55 Chevy. A new home that might’ve cost $12,000 to $15,000 – provided you were moving into an upscale neighborhood – now starts at around $200,000.

But football coaches at LSU? Those salaries have escalated into the stratosphere.

LSU’s newest hire, Brian Kelly, will receive about $10 million a year. That equates to about $769,000 per game, for a 13-game season that would include 12 regular-season games and a bowl appearance. Should his teams advance to the national championship game, it would mean a 15-game season, or $667,000 per game – or almost as much per quarter ($11,000) as Dietzel earned for an entire season.

And remember, LSU refused to pay Dietzel’s moving expenses when he came from West Point to Baton Rouge. Kelly, on the other hand, is to receive an interest-free loan of up to $1.2 million for the purchase of a home in some exclusively Baton Rouge gated community and relocation funds.

Meanwhile, down Interstate 10 about 50 miles, we have the University of Louisiana-Lafayette, which also just hired a new coach in Michal Desormeaux, who signed a $3.875 million contract to lead the Ragin’ Cajuns for the next five years.

That comes out to $775,000 per year, or roughly what Kelly will make per game at LSU.

So, where is all this money for Kelly coming from? Obviously, not from public funds. The state simply does not have the money for such lavish expenditures as a coach’s salary.

Instead, it will be coming from private contributions, funneled through the Tiger Athletic Foundation (TAF) from business interests who bitch and moan about unfair taxes for such extravagant expenditures as public defender offices.

We can’t seem to find the funds for university libraries, teacher salaries, or lower college tuition, but by gawd, the sky’s the limit for a coach who just might beat Alabama.

We can’t repair our state’s deplorable roads but if we pin Nick Saban’s ears back, what’re a few potholes to dodge?

Oh yes, I’m aware I’m comparing apples to oranges – public funds to private money. I admit it, I can see no justification for the outpouring of private dollars on lobbying, campaign contributions and yes, coach’s salaries, while neglecting basic needs that cry out for attention.

Louisiana is a poor state – FOURTH-POOREST in the nation – behind, in order, only Mississippi, West Virginia and New Mexico and barely ahead of Alabama. Accordingly, it makes no sense to pour all our resources into something as trivial as football.

I love sports. In fact, my first choice for a career was to be a baseball coach but thanks to the salesmanship of the late Wiley Hilburn, I became a journalist and never looked back. And as a journalist, my first duty is to observe the entire spectrum and that field includes human needs that I just cannot ignore.

Football coaches, no matter the urgency of competing on a national level with the Alabamas, the Oklahomas, the Ohio States, and the Clemsons of the world, do not – or should not – stand as the number-one priority of the fourth-poorest state in the country.

It remains to be seen if the Senate Select Committee on State Police Oversight will come up with any significant recommendations to rein in an increasingly rogue department when it convenes in its inaugural meeting Monday at 10 a.m. in Senate Committee Room A-B.

The more pressing question, however, is whether or not any forthcoming recommendations will actually be implemented by an agency conditioned to autonomy in its day-to-day operations or if they will be placed on a shelf somewhere to be forgotten, along with countless other efficiency and operational studies.

But former State Police Commission member and retired US Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and ATF agent Lloyd Grafton will offer some pointed recommendations that should be taken under serious consideration by Gov. Edwards and State Police Superintendent Col. Lamar Davis.

An agency that answers only to the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association isn’t likely to be receptive to change – even in the aftermath of national negative headlines about the beatings of black motorists RONALD GREENE and LARRY BOWMAN by troopers assigned to Monroe’s Troop F.

An effort in the legislature to limit the qualified immunity doctrine that shields officers from lawsuits, after all, went down in flames last year after the legislature cobbled together the 25-member Police Training Screening and De-escalation TASK FORCE in the wake of the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police.

As might be expected, it was Senate Republicans who came together to KILL Rep. Edmond Jordan’s House Bill 609 that would have limited immunity enjoyed by out-of-control law enforcement officers.

But that was before all hell broke loose over the killing – and the blatant lies that followed – of Greene at the hands of state troopers. Greene was killed in May 2020 but it took a full 16 months for the details to surface, thanks to desperate attempts by State Police to keep a lid on the facts.

Just as a refresher, the official reason given for Greene’s death was a traffic accident that occurred when he struck a tree during his attempt to flee police (that was a lie: he was very much alive when pulled from his vehicle). Moreover, it was initially claimed that there was no body cam video from the incident (another lie). And only when more accurate details began to leak out did LSP take any official action to suspend and later fire officers.

The official agenda for Monday’s committee meeting calls for Davis to lead off the proceedings with an “agency overview.” Following that, there will be discussions and testimony on:

• Excessive Force Policy and Procedures
• Use of Force Training
• Internal Investigations
• Use of Force Review Board

Somewhere in all that, committee Vice Chair Sen. Cleo Fields (D-Baton Rouge), is expected to enter into the record a scathing two-page list of recommendations submitted by Grafton:

• The Head of the State Police should be selected from a national search and not from the present requirement of a graduate of the Louisiana State Police Academy.  A Blue-Ribbon Committee formed by the legislature could select the superintendent.

• Abolish the Louisiana State Police Commission and place the State Police under the Louisiana Civil Service Board. (Required Constitutional Amendment)

• Remove the State Police from the State Capitol Building and allow the Capitol Police to work the Capitol building and grounds.

Anyone who has ever visited the State Capitol during a legislative session could not help observing the presence of uniformed state police who at times appear to rival lobbyists in their numbers. There are Capitol Police who possess the same training as State Police and their job is to police the State Capitol. Grafton is simply suggesting that they be allowed to do their jobs and free up State Police to “work traffic and other functions.”

Simply put, Grafton says State Police “should build a reputation on service to the public, not politicians.”

Perhaps it was just an oversight that he did not also recommend pulling State Troopers from assignments guarding and protecting state college football coaches at both home and out-of-state games. Their presence seems redundant, given the fact that coaches are surrounded by upwards of 100 beefy, well-conditioned football players.

For a complete text of Grafton’s letter, click on the link below:

Much has been said and written – and it should have been – about the beating death of RONALD GREENE and the beating of LARRY BOWMAN, both at the hands of Louisiana State Police in Troop F in northeast Louisiana.

But for whatever reason, not a word has been uttered by Louisiana media – until now – about the two-minute video of a BRUTAL ATTACK of a vicious Lake Charles Police Department K-9 on a helpless woman named Nicole Edwards and the image of officers trying to handcuff the prone woman even as the dog continues biting her.

Edwards never resisted and the animal ignored repeated shouts by officers to cease its attack. An unidentified officer can even be heard demanding that Edwards put her hands down and stop fighting the dog who is obviously out of control.

The attack occurred on May 3, 2019, but somehow local media never heard about it. Neither, apparently, did the media learn of Edwards’ lawsuit which resulted in a huge but otherwise undisclosed settlement – but not before the department attempted to hide behind the qualified immunity protection given law enforcement officers in many such cases.

New Orleans attorney Glenn McGovern, who represented Edwards, said attacks by law enforcement canines has become a growing problem since 9-11. “That’s when departments really started beefing up their K-9 forces for protection,” McGovern said.

“You have to follow the money. As the demand grew, the ability to properly train enough animals diminished and what happened was the flooding of departments with improperly and inadequately trained dogs. But the demand was there,” he said.

“My wife’s hairdresser and our interior decorator spent thousands upon thousands of dollars to train for their occupations. Police departments spend $370 – the fee to become certified and the certification of both the handlers and the dogs is sadly insufficient,” he said.

McGovern said the emphasis in recent years is to import the Belgian Malinois breed, a dog that closely resembles the German Shepherd breed, and which is generally preferred for use by the military.

But the increase in the use of K-9s has brought a dramatic increase in PROBLEMS , not just in Louisiana, but elsewhere as well.

“Dogs must be trained to bite. Some don’t want to and those are forced in more training to get into the bite mode. As a result, the dog becomes neurotic, unpredictable. The average department has a bite rate of about 20-30 percent. If you have a gun that goes off 30 percent of the time, you’d say that was ridiculous. Baton Rouge had a 90 percent bite rate.”

Police department dogs require “maintenance” each month in order to remain certified, McGovern said. “But the handlers are generally someone who has been stuck in there who is burned out. They don’t even get overtime pay for working with the dogs,” he said.

There are no national standards, he said, adding that 30 percent or more of the time, a dog will not release from an attack and sometimes they even attack the handler/officer.

“Smaller departments have to have dual-purpose dogs that are used for drugs, for tracking, for S.W.A.T. and for apprehension,” McGovern said. “There’s just no way they can adequately train these dogs for all those functions.”

Because of the demand for dogs, breeders flooded the market, selling up to 20 dogs at a time to a trainer – and none were rejected and the departments end up with these animals. “You can’t possible sell 20 dogs at a time and get no rejects,” McGovern said. “The problem is, and what’s really scary, is there are no records of certification of training. When the dogs are green and the officers are green, they can’t handle the animals.

“The mindset is the dog is a wuss if he doesn’t take someone down. Sometimes they take down the wrong person, though. We have a case in Caddo or Bossier where the dog attacked a little girl who just happened to be nearby.”

The Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Department likes to brag about a dog it has that has steel teeth, McGovern said. “They call him Robo-Cop.”

“If you examine the results, you’ll see that the victims are primarily young blacks.

“In another Lake Charles case,” he said, “there were conflicting orders given a motorist. One cop was yelling at him to get out of the car while another was telling him to keep his hands up. Well, you can’t reach for the door handle and keep your hands up at the same time, so you have a choice of getting shot if you reach for the door handle or having the dog set upon you if you remain in the car.”