Louisiana Voice

There was a time when the New Orleans Police Department was considered one of the – if not the – most corrupt police departments in the nation. In fact, three individual New Orleans cops were ranked as the worst of the worst in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina for their killing of 17-year-old James Brissette on the Danzinger bridge.

But over the past couple of years, that mantle seems to have been passed on to the Louisiana State Police (LSP), now with its third commander within a five-year span and with more internal problems than its leadership seems capable of handling.

Associated Press and one-time Baton Rouge Advocate reporter Jim Mustian summed the agency up in a SINGLE ARTICLE that, sadly, described a fraternity mentality of racism, abuse and nepotism.

And now, we have Jason Boyet, 42, of Ponchatoula, a former Trooper of the Year, of all things, being sentenced to 210 months (17 ½ years) in federal prison for the distribution of kiddie porn, specifically images of sexual exploitation (child rape) of children as young as 3.

Can it possibly get any worse than that?

We have troopers beating and killing black motorists, troopers having sex in their patrol cars, troopers working second jobs while supposedly on duty, troopers taking underage women into casino (and having to pay a fine for their trouble) and then getting promoted to troop commanders, troopers abusing drugs on duty, troopers doing just about whatever they damned well please – and getting away with it.

And now this.

These were just photos he downloaded from the Internet; they’re photos he took himself of a prepubescent girl with his iPhone between December 2019 and February 2020. And then he shared the photos in a chat room.

This story was so lurid that it was picked up by the NEW YORK POST. The official word of Boyet’s guilty plea was issued in a NEWS RELEASE by the US Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Louisiana in New Orleans

Boyet was named Troop L’s Trooper of the Year in 2018.

Obviously, the entirety of LSP can’t be judged by this single act of depravity and LSP administrators can’t be held accountable for the deviant behavior of a single individual.

It would be understandable if this was an isolated incident. But it’s not. The stories that have come out of LSP over the past five seven years are disturbing and indicate an ugly trend toward a complete lack of accountability and responsibility. For that, LSP administration must take responsibility.

It’s time for someone in charge to initiate changes in the attitudes that have been allowed to permeate the agency. If they have to jerk a half-hitch in some upstart who thinks he’s invincible, so be it.

LSP has long set itself apart from the rest of Louisiana’s civil servants. It even has its own State Police Commission to serve as something of a civil service board especially for troopers. A good start would be to abolish the commission and bring state police into civil service like the rest of state employees. If state police ever deserved special treatment, that time has long passed and there is no logical reason to retain the commission.

The requirement that the State Police superintendent must come from within the ranks of Louisiana State Police is outdated and should be scrapped. The good old boy network needs shaking up by an outsider who will come in and revamp the nepotism and buddy system that has brought ruin on a one-time stellar agency.

And finally, the fealty to the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association must end. For too long, decisions ranging from appointments of LSP superintendents, promotions within LSP, and appointments to the LSP Academy itself have depended on the blessings of the sheriffs’ association. No one should have that much power.

That an impartial EXAMINATION OF THE AUTOPSY of Ronald Greene has rejected the Louisiana State Police (LSP) claim that Greene died from injuries suffered in a car crash should come as a surprise to absolutely no one who has followed this latest sorry chapter of the LSP story that has unfolded ever-so-slowly over the past seven years.

LouisianaVoice has chronicled the decadence of LSP since that infamous attempt at the close of the 2014 legislative session to sneak a huge – and illegal – increase in retirement benefits for then-LSP superintendent Mike Edmonson.

And while that effort was thwarted, sources within state police began providing tips that led to LouisianaVoice exclusive stories about:

• Troopers having sex with informants in their patrol cars while on duty;
• Troopers leaving their shifts several hours early to either take naps at home or to work in their personal business;
• Troopers getting into altercations with private citizens;
• Troopers issuing DWI citations to obviously sober drivers just so they could accrue days off;
• The fake retirement of a supervisor at LSP who, when caught, was ordered to repay the state – but never did;
• A Trooper getting a promotion after he was caught sneaking an underage woman who was not his wife into a Mississippi casino;
• A trooper who openly used narcotics while on duty;
• A trooper at the command level who regularly took his state vehicle to football games in Texas to see his brother-in-law play;
• Troopers cheating on their time sheets for supposedly pulling duty in a program funded by local district attorneys;
• A State Police Commission created to serve as a pseudo-civil service especially for State Police but which is riddled with politics and which featured a romantic tryst between members.

There were many more such stories, actually hundreds, so I won’t even attempt to list them all.

And while not an exclusive – The Advocate actually broke the story – there was our account of that infamous trip by car by several troopers to San Diego via Las Vegas, the Grand Canyon and Hoover Dam back in 2016 (and strangely enough, the troopers were held blameless by investigators who said they were told to take the vehicle and the one who told them to, Edmonson, was somehow also exonerated. Go figure.)

LouisianaVoice also was the first to delve into the Ronald Greene matter that LSP had successfully managed to COVER UP for 15 months and even then LSP had only disciplined one of the officers involved in what was actually the beating death of Greene – not an auto accident – and he was merely placed on leave at the time.

And yes, Greene did flee from police when they first attempted to pull him over and yes, the chase involved speeds in excess of 100 mph. But when he exited his vehicle apologizing for running, he was handcuffed. That should have been enough. When cuffed and not resisting, it would seem to the outside observer that beatings were unnecessary at that point.

The Greene beating wasn’t the only one for Troop F, headquartered in Monroe and responsible for patrol in several northeast Louisiana parishes. That same month, May 2019, Larry Bowman was struck in the head 18 times with a metal flashlight by state troopers even though he was not resisting officers.

The danger of driving while black in northeast Louisiana even got the attention of NPR.

And now, the FBI report says what we knew all along – Greene did not die from the car crash. He died at the hands of state police who then first tried to cover up the incident and then flat-out lied about it. Even the Union Parish coroner went along with the ruse, attributing Greene’s death to the vehicle accident.

And the district attorney for the 3^rd Judicial District, which includes Lincoln and Union parishes, has been strangely quiet on the matter. John Belton is an announced candidate for Louisiana Attorney General and one might think he’d be leading the effort to bring the troopers to justice.

And, of course, LSP has not responded to the latest findings.

As one retired trooper told LouisianaVoice early on, they’ve circled the wagons.

When I woke up Friday morning, it was 2012 all over again.

The only things missing were Bobby Jindal his own self, along with cow chip-kicking political guru Timmy Teepell, and former Commissioner of Administration Kristy Nichols.

But there it was, in black and white in Friday’s Baton Rouge Advocate: the ghost of nightmares past in a pious pose, being prayed over by State Rep. Rick Edmonds (R-Baton Rouge), who also is an outreach pastor and vice president of Louisiana’s Family Forum, and Ben Clapper, executive director of Louisiana Right to Life.

The event was a statewide pro-life demonstration and Liz was there as the Louisiana Attorney General’s Office’s Solicitor General prior to her unsuccessful defense of the state’s anti-abortion law before the U.S. Supreme Court.

That rally was in January 2020 and the Supreme Court’s 5-4 decision came the following June but now Lizzie’s back in full campaign mode – that is, so long as her boss, AG Jeff Landry opts for promotion to the fourth-floor suite across the Capitol Lake in the 2023 gubernatorial election.

That was the gist of The Advocate’s story last Friday. If Landry runs for governor as expected, Murrill intends to run for her boss’s job as the top legal mind (and I use that term ever-so-loosely) in the state. Actually, I prefer the term I heard used by an old friend from my Ruston Daily Leader reporting days, former Ruston City Council attorney Hale Walker, who somewhat cynically referred to the attorney general as “just another lawyer.”

But Landry as governor? Liz Murrill as AG? Folks, we’re looking at Jindal 2.0. (Actually, with the political baggage that Landry is totin’ around, I don’t think there’s a chance in hell he can get elected governor or possibly even reelected AG.)

Be that as it may, Murrill definitely has her sights set on bigger and better things. And why not? Her career track record is reflective of one who is never satisfied with the status quo. And while there’s nothing wrong with that – who, after all, wouldn’t want their career to progress? – it’s interesting to see WHERE SHE’S BEEN to get an idea of where she would probably like to go, and to consider the possible obstacles in her path.

Let’s go back to Oct. 1, 2012. That’s the date that Jindal named Nichols as his Commissioner of Administration. Murrill, meanwhile, worked in the governor’s office from November 2008 and served for 2 ½ years as Jindal’s Deputy Executive Counsel before she was elevated to Executive Counsel, which is the chief legal advisor to the governor.

When Nichols was appointed Commissioner of Administration, she brought Murrill over a month later, in November 2012, as Executive Counsel to the Commissioner, where she remained for two years.

While working for Nichols, Murrill became embroiled in a difference of interpretation of regulations by then Attorney General Buddy Caldwell and then-State Rep. John Bel Edwards when the Jindal administration gutted the Office of Group Benefits’ reserve fund. Through all the testimony during legislative committee hearings, Murrill was caught on camera as she continually exchanged TEXT MESSAGES with someone, probably some staffer in the governor’s office.

She left the commissioner’s office soon after that hearing and bounced around several jobs before joining Landry’s office in January 2017.

Back in 2009, while employed in Jindal’s office, Murrill became involved in a DISPUTE with LouisianaVoice over the release of public records related to the LSU Board of Supervisors’ decision to cut health care spending and to privatize state hospitals. Shelby McKenzie, an attorney retained by LSU, said that Murrill had advised him that the board should invoke the so-called “deliberative process” in order to deny the release of the records.

The deliberative process gambit is a loose interpretation by which public officials, afraid of any light being shone on what they’re doing, may refuse to allow the public to see what they’re doing or to understand the motivations behind their actions.

But let’s re-examine the employment of Shelby McKenzie in this particular issue.

Shelby was an attorney with the Baton Rouge law firm Taylor Porter at the time he gave that advice to the LSU Board. He currently serves OF COUNSEL to the firm and is an adjunct professor of law at the LSU Law Center and has taught Insurance Law there since 1971.

Likewise, one JOHN P. MURRILL is currently a partner at Taylor Porter and serves on the firm’s Executive Committee. He is married to Liz Murrill.

Taylor Porter currently has at least a dozen contracts with the State of Louisiana totaling more than $3 million and until earlier this year, was the legal counsel for LSU. Such legal contracts with state agencies are generally issued by the Attorney General’s Office with the concurrence of the agency to be represented.

State law prohibits any person holding at least a 25 percent ownership in an entity from doing business with an agency that employs an immediate family member. It’s highly doubtful that John Murrill is a 25 percent stakeholder in a large firm such as Taylor Porter, which would allow the firm to legally contract with the state.

Still…

Cory Porter is a candidate for New Iberia city marshal in the Nov. 13 election.

Problem is, he has CRS Syndrome. Cleaning it up just a bit, CRS means Can’t Remember Stuff.

In June 2019, less than a year after the New Iberia Police Department was reactivated, Porter was the subject of a complaint that resulted in a 17-page report that found Porter guilty of departmental policy violations of professional conduct and abuse of power while clearing him of intimidation and harassment charges.

It seems that Porter was taking online courses with Central Christian College, though it’s unclear if that was Central Christian College of Kansas of Central Christian College of the Bible in Missouri of even some other Central Christian College.

Either way, it just seems sort of wrong on several levels that Porter would seek help from fellow officers in writing essays, doing other homework assignments and taking exams in his name – at any Christian college. That’s generally considered cheating and only allowed at big-time college football programs where such activity is the norm.

But the complaint went a little further in asserting that in addition to soliciting the writing and testing skills of the other officers, who just happened to be female, Porter attempted to get one such officer, Det. Coquina Mitchell to attend a New Orleans Saints game with him. Mitchell said when she informed him that she didn’t date fellow officers, Porter told her he had fathered a child with another co-worker.

She said he also once demanded to know why she didn’t answer her home phone on one occasion when he called her and that he drove slowly past her house several times. On still another occasion, she said he was assisting with a traffic stop when Porter appeared at the scene and demanded that she leave with him because he had a class assignment due that night that she needed to finish.

Several other officers were interviewed in the internal investigation and, for the most part, corroborated Mitchell’s story – particularly the story of his demanding that she leave the scene of a traffic stop in order to complete his class assignment.

Porter, when interviewed by Capt. Seth Pellerin, denied asking her to attend the Saints game, contending that he had never even been to a Saints game. He also denied seeking a relationship with Mitchell and said he never asked Mitchell to help him with school work but that she volunteered her assistance.

Porter said he did drive in front of Mitchell’s house but it was for the purpose of surveilling a burglary suspect in the neighborhood.

He was unable to remember, however, just when she began her help although he did remember installing his class program on her computer. Nor did he remember ever phoning her or asking help on assignments from clerk Kristen Broussard even though Broussard had computer screen printouts of work she’d done for him. Porter also could not recall arriving at the traffic stop and demanding that Mitchell leave with him.

“I told Capt. Porter that this was a huge conflict of interest, having a subordinate of his do his online college courses,” Pellerin wrote in his June 21 report.  “Capt. Porter stated that he did not realize it at the time (probably couldn’t remember the regulations) but can see it now. Capt. Porter sated in all his years in law enforcement he has only tried to help people, including his co-workers.”

In his conclusion, Pellerin wrote, “After reviewing all the documentation and interviews, the alleged policy violations against Capt. Corey Porter are sustained. Capt. Porter violated New Iberia Police Department General Order 113 Professional Conduct and New Iberia Police Department General Order 115 Abuse of Power. After reading the policies to Capt. Porter, I asked him if he admits to violating the above-mentioned policies and he said yes.”

Pellerin wrote that he found no evidence that indicated Porter had romantic feelings for Mitchell. Nor did he feel that Porter was seeking retribution against Mitchell.

The Internal Affairs report became public during a court procedure during which Porter was impeached as a witness, a source told LouisianaVoice.

Nor is Porter the only candidate with a certain amount of political baggage.

During a recent forum, candidate Brett Lang was asked about his service with the Iberia Sheriff’s Office, and particularly whether or not the rumors floating around about him being on the Brady List were true.

The Brady List is part of the Brady Disclosure Doctrine, which requires that the prosecution disclose any and all evidence that is favorable to the defendant, also known as exculpatory evidence. The Brady List is a list kept by DAs containing the names of law enforcement officers who are known to have lied, coerced, mislead or withheld information during their scope of duty as a police officer.

The prosecution must make the defense aware if a particular officer played any part in the arrest investigation, handling of evidence etc. of the defendant’s case. This essentially means that any officer who is on the Brady List has no standing in court. The officer, for lack of a better term, is impeached. Though there may be no legal charges against them, his testimony is not tainted.

“As a former police officer, I know that a Law Enforcement Officer’s most important weapon is his word,” said an observer. “It is extremely concerning that Mr. Lang admitted to being on the Brady List. He also mentioned at the same meeting that he would have himself removed from the list, which, as far as I know, cannot be done, nor has he ever re-addressed being removed to by knowledge.”

There are three candidates for the Iberia City Marshal’s office: Porter, a Democrat; Lang, No Party, and Dickie Fremin, a Republican.

How twisted are our priorities that a college football coach, surrounded on Saturdays by 85 behemoth-like scholarship football players we affectionately refer to as student-athletes, must still have the protective services of a Louisiana State Trooper when vulnerable female students must live unprotected and in fear of those very coaches, players, and other sexual predators?

How warped have our sensibilities become that coaches who ignore – or worse, condone or even participate in – sexual harassment/assault are paid huge settlement packages when – and if – they finally leave while those who attempt to protect the university’s integrity are unceremoniously shown the door?

How discouraging is it for faculty members to devote themselves to the task of encouraging and challenging students and to conduct meaningful research when hiring and firing is done on a whim and on the basis not of merit but of political expediency?

How embarrassing is it that in 2019, the LSU Athletic Department showcased its brand-spanking-new facilities for its pampered (and from all indications, shielded) players that included a players’ lounge and a locker room that includes, of all things, sleeping pods for each individual player (remember: they’re 85 scholarship players) all for the bargain price of $28 million – while at the same time, the rest of the campus has a $510 million backlog in maintenance and renovation?

How disgraceful is it that the LSU Board of Supervisors, the university’s governing board, is comprised for the most part of appointed political hacks who owe their positions of power to their fealty to the state’s sitting governor and not necessarily to the more noble calling of academic excellence – and acts accordingly?

Let’s concentrate on that last question because anything concerning LSU, be it academics, physical plant, athletics or administration, begins and ends with the Board of Supervisors. It’s comprised of an appointed group of individuals who, for the most part, are contributors to the governor’s campaign. “For the most part” must be said because some members are holdovers from the previous governor and are not necessarily campaign contributors to the current governor.

But the board is about as political as the word political can be defined. Members receive coveted perks and privileges over and above the status that goes with sitting on the governing board, micromanaging every aspect of one of the nation’s leading universities. In Louisiana, the only board that even comes close is the so-called Louisiana Stadium and Exposition District, which presides over the John A. Alario Sr. Event Center, the Smoothie King Center, the New Orleans Saints Training Facility and of course, the Superdome.

To say that the LSU Board has been a colossal failure in the responsibility of carrying out its duties is to belabor the obvious. It has allowed a culture of toxicity to exist to the extent that female students ARE NOT SAFE anywhere on campus, whether it’s the ATHLETIC DEPARTMENT, the FRENCH DEPARTMENT, or the once prestigious MED SCHOOL.

It took an independent 250-page REPORT, for which the school paid about $100,000, to tell the board what it should have known all along: that it’s handling of its Title IX obligations was ham-handed and smacked of a clumsy attempt at a coverup. The school’s handling of sexual harassment, and sexual abuse cases was apparently so mishandled that the board belatedly saw fit to FIRE its long-time legal firm and replace it with LEGAL COUNSEL who couldn’t even defend crosstown Southern University in a public records case.

Somehow, everyone missed – or ignored – the EMBEZZLEMENT of half-a-million dollars from a Baton Rouge children’s medical foundation, $180,000 of which somehow found its way into the hands of the father of LSU offensive lineman Vadal Alexander

Even reports of incompetence and nepotism of the HEALTH SCIENCES CENTER in New Orleans were inexcusably ignored.

And of course, the totally predictable action was to PUNISH  the whistleblower (as long as it wasn’t a coach blowing a whistle at practice) or FIRE  anyone who might in any way be considered an EMBARRASSMENT to the university, who might point out a LEGAL LIABILITY, or who might pose a THREAT to grant funding from say, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers.

When that $100,000 report on Title IX violations came out, though, the university administration apparently felt it was obligated to take some form of proactive measures. Accordingly, two “high-ranking” athletic department officials were SUSPENDED  – for 30 and 21 days – for their failure to act when informed of sexual misconduct.  Several legislators, predictably, said that punishment was sufficient.

The events in the LSU athletic department, besides leading to the dismissal of LES MILES, has had a ripple effect beyond the Baton Rouge campus. At the University of Kansas, where Miles landed, he was forced out there as well, along with the athletic director who hired him and former LSU President F. King Alexander was likewise shown the door at Oregon State.

The focus then returned to LSU (if, indeed, it ever left). Momentarily distracted by the glitter of an undefeated season, the national championship and a box of awards, including the school’s second Heisman Trophy winner, people pushed the investigation to the back burner. But two mediocre seasons that followed 2019 has reignited interest in who knew what and when they knew it and has resulted in a $17 million buyout of Coach Ed Orgeron’s contract.

Writer GLENN GUILBEAU wrote an intriguing story that has to be taken seriously considering all that has occurred. Basically, he asks if that generous buyout might be purchasing Coach O’s silence in lieu of firing him for cause, which would cost LSU and boosters nothing but at the risk of much more dirty laundry being aired that LSU would just as soon remain under the proverbial rug.

If indeed that is the case, those responsible at LSU should be summarily fired and any board members who are complicit should immediately resign. Nothing short of a total cleansing is acceptable. A truth enema, as it were, is unequivocally essential.

And not to kick a man when he’s down, but there are the reports of past transgressions by Orgeron that should have been a red flag. In 1982, when he a defensive line coach with the Miami Hurricanes, Orgeron got in a fight in a Baton Rouge bar and was subsequently granted a “voluntary” LEAVE OF ABSENCE by the team for “personal reasons.” Nine years later, in 1991, apparently back in good graces with the team, a Miami-Dade County woman filed a RESTRAINING ORDER against Orgeron, accusing him of repeated violence against her.

It is no longer possible to ignore the fact that there are serious problems throughout Louisiana’s flagship university system and that those problems run deep and have become so entrenched that a sleazy culture of protectionism has been allowed to flourish for a select few at the expense of allowing those of lesser influence and fewer connections to become scapegoats.

And everything about that is wrong.

Everything.