Louisiana Voice

Bloggers generally are written off by the so-called mainstream media and to tell the truth, it’s somewhat understandable that we are not always taken seriously. We often sprinkle personal opinions throughout our posts, a practice that is strictly taboo for the purists in the honorable field of journalism.

I’m keenly aware of the difference. I hold a degree in journalism and I’ve worked as a reporter and editor for several distinguished newspapers in Louisiana over my 40-plus years in the profession. But I’m not retired and do no answer to editors whose job it would be to keep me on the straight and narrow path of objectivity.

And now that I no longer draw a paycheck from any newspaper, I feel free to reveal (if, indeed, there is actually a need to break the news to anyone) that true objectivity is a pipe dream. Every reporter I’ve ever known has opinions. The good ones did – and do – manager to keep those personal feelings concealed from their readers.

My admiration for journalists knows no boundaries. It’s a thankless job and no one goes into journalism as a career for the purpose of getting rich. Joe Namath, in a moment of petulance, once characterized sports writers as “$125-a-week jerks.” He was pretty close to accurate on the $125-a-week jab. Well, Broadway Joe, if your intent is to heap criticism on writers, get in line; we’re used to it. People love to blame the messenger.

My question to an irate reader (and I’ve had to deal with many over the years) who takes issue with something I’d written about some politician is “So, just what did you learn about Mr./Ms. Politician that you’d rather not have known?” (Strangely enough, while it once stopped a Nixon supporter in his tracks, that tactic has never dissuaded a Trump supporter.)

But now that I’m looked upon as a blogger instead of a reporter – probably my writing style has a lot to do with that – sometimes it’s difficult getting people to take what I write seriously. One consistent detractor has taken to even stalking me and posting negative reviews of my books on Amazon when it’s obvious he’s never taken the trouble to actually read them. But that’s okay. I just try to consider the source and dismiss this troll out of hand.

There are those times, however, when my posts get the intended – and deserved, I felt – attention. The attempt to sneak a healthy retirement increase for State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson is a case in point. That story, posted in July 2014, after raising the fuss it warranted, prompted me to take a closer look at Louisiana State Police and I found disturbing trends throughout the Edmonson administration. Unfortunately, the mismanagement has continued long after he left LSP in 2016. It took a while, but eventually The Baton Rouge Advocate jumped on board and, to its credit, broke the story about the San Diego trip by several troopers in a state vehicle. That story was the final blow that forced Edmonson into retirement.

One LSP story the MSM keeps missing is the bogus claim that radio silence imposed during a manhunt was the reason slain Trooper ADAM GAUBERT was not discovered for 15 hours. My story about that elicited the observation from a knowledgeable reader who noted that at the end of the chase for Mathew Mire, the searchers were using a different talk group than they normally do.

There are at least 11 separate talk groups assigned to Troop A in the system used by LSP.

 One of those is designated as “car to car.”

“I believe if state police had leadership and its brass were not caught up in the chase, they would have made a simple broadcast for officers to switch to car-to-car briefly to allow a designated person to go down the roster to check for status,” the reader said.

“If someone didn’t answer, a call to cellphones and home phones should have occurred.

“The radio silence B.S. is just that. Did Troop A work any wrecks that day? How did they communicate that info?

“They didn’t have a plan in place to account for chaos at shift,” he said flatly.

I checked with “Joe,” my original source for my Oct. 12 post and his response was, “There are many, many frequencies to use. Dispatch 1 dispatch 2 car to car. And countless others. There is no reason that a voice option was not used but there are still the non-voice options. There is also the text system in the MDT (mobile data terminal – a laptop computer), which is a common way to send in crash information to the desk/ supervisor.”

Another important story the MSM tried its best to miss was the one I posted on Aug. 4 about the TAXI SCAM being imposed upon ICE detainees. But two-and-a-months later, The Advocate finally “discovered” the injustices detainees are forced to endure in obtaining transportation to airports or bus stations after their release from ICE facilities.

The point of this diatribe is to say that not all bloggers are to be dismissed as malcontents sitting in their underwear in their mothers’ basements (to paraphrase Donald Trump).

Easily the best one in Louisiana is Lamar White’s BAYOU BRIEF. Lamar and writer Sue Lincoln do the best job I’ve seen (and that includes the excellent Advocate writers) of covering the murky world of Louisiana politics. Lamar has sources I can only dream of having and his stories are thorough and riveting.

Any newspaper in the country would be honored to have someone of Lamar and Sue’s ability on their staff. Louisiana is fortunate indeed to have them. Yes, they’re bloggers but they’re damned good.

In the words of Kris Kristofferson:

I think that what they’ve done Is well worth doing

And they’re doing it the best way that they can

You’re the only one that you are fooling

When You put down what you don’t understand

–If You Don’t Like Hank Williams

A retired Louisiana State Trooper isn’t buying the radio silence reason for the body of Master Trooper Adam Gaubert’s body going undiscovered for 15 hours after being ambushed as he sat in his patrol unit doing paperwork.

Gaubert, a 19-year-veteran, was gunned down along with four other individuals, one of whom also died, in a shooting spree that covered three parishes. She was identified as Pamela Adair, 37, of Ascension Parish and was the half-sister of the suspected gunman, 31-year-old Matthew Mire. The other two, who received less severe wounds, were in Livingston Parish.

Surveillance video shows Mire drive up to Gauder’s vehicle around 2:30 a.m. Saturday as he sat behind a bank in Prairieville completing paperwork on an accident he had worked earlier. His body was not discovered until 5 p.m. by a fellow trooper who went looking for him.

State Police Superintendent Lamar Davis called the delay in finding Gaubert “ABSOLUTELY UNACCEPTABLE.” That much seems accurate, the retired trooper said.

Davis said the frantic search for Mire and the imposed radio silence created a “perfect storm” that allowed Gaubert’s murder to go unnoticed until Saturday evening. “There are some inconsistences, information we’re trying to gather,” Davis said He PROMISED LSP would make immediate changes to prevent a similar occurrence in the future.

But why weren’t those changes made years ago? It’s not like LSP supervisors haven’t failed in the past to keep up with the whereabouts of troopers in a timely manner.

In 2016, State Trooper RONNIE PICOU was finally terminated after LouisianaVoice revealed that he would often leave work after only a couple of hours on shift to either go home and sleep or to work at the construction company he owned.

In 2015, we wrote that Picou “habitually works the first two or three hours of his 12-hour night shift (or four-to-six hours of his 12-hour day shift) and then goes on radio silence for the remainder of his shift.”

Then, in 2018, it was REVEALED  that Trooper Jimmy Rogers and three other troopers in Troop D (the same troop as Picou) were being paid for working Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE) patrol that they in fact did not work. In fact, we wrote in 2016 the Rogers was falsifying records in connection with his LACE patrol. LACE is a cooperative program whereby local district attorneys pay state police for beefed-up patrol to catch traffic offenders.

So, how did Picou and Rogers get away with not working the hours they were supposed to work? A retired longtime state trooper explained it in a single word: laziness.

“LSP has a hard and fast regulation that when a trooper’s shift ends, he goes ’10-7.’ That means, ‘My shift’s over and I’m headed home.’ If that doesn’t happen, you better know the reason why. There’s also an unwritten policy that supervisors are supposed to check on the whereabouts of the troopers under their command every single hour,” said the retired trooper, whom I’ll call Joe. “There are plenty ways to check on troopers without resorting to radio,” he added.

“With Rogers and Picou, you had payroll fraud, which was bad enough,” he said. “In this case, you have a trooper who was murdered and no one knew where he was for 15 hours.”

Asked about Davis’s claim that Gaubert was not found for 15 hours partly because LSP was on radio silence during the manhunt for Mire, Joe was adamant, even angry, in his dismissal of that excuse.

“Bull F*****g S**t!” he practically shouted. That’s the most cowardly excuse I’ve ever heard! Every trooper has a cell phone, every trooper has a mobile data terminal (MDT) in his vehicle. That’s a laptop that every car is equipped with. His supervisors could have used those methods to try and communicate with him.

“Louisiana State Police has been doing this for years,” Joe said. “It’s pure laziness. Every single shift has at least two sergeants and one lieutenant whose job it is to keep up with the whereabouts and the well-being of troopers under their command.

“Police departments are paramilitary in their makeup. They even say they are paramilitary. They have the same rankings, the same chain of command and the same responsibilities to know where their people are at all times, to know they are safe, and to know what they need to do their jobs.

“Saturday night, you had three supervisors – at least – making more than $100,000 each who went home and went to bed without knowing where one of their men was,” said Joe. “Who knows? If they’d done their jobs, Adam Gaubert might still be alive. We’ll never know, will we?

“But I repeat, using radio silence as justification for not finding him for 15 hours is b***s**t.”

“For the sake of my kids and grand kids (sic), let’s just do this Civil War thing now before I get to (sic) old to fight. I just can’t believe what these antifa (sic) leftist little punks are doing and getting away with right now. I’m fed up with it.

Where do I sign up..”

—Facebook post by BRANDON BROWNING on June 11, 2020.

Brandon Browning was an unsuccessful candidate for Livingston Parish tax assessor in 2019, losing to incumbent Jeff Taylor by a convincing 57-43 margin.

Browning, the Denham Springs resident, apparently was unaware that antifa is short for anti-fascist and it was the anti-fascists who defeated Hitler and who today stand in opposition to the likes of David Duke.

Browning, the self-described super-patriot, has been strangely quiet about the “punks” who invaded the U.S. Capitol back on Jan. 6, intent on overturning the election that unseated Donald Trump.

Without getting into the merits of Trump v. Biden (the face-off that again had me asking if this was the best choice this country has to offer), an armed incursion is not the manner in which our Constitution meant for us to seek redress for our grievances.

Undaunted by his failure to unseat Taylor, Browning is again seeking public office, this time for sheriff of Livingston Parish.

In an unusually drawn-out (49 minutes) YouTube PRESENTATION, Browning laid out his reasons for trying to dislodge incumbent Jason Ard who the last time he was opposed – in 2015 – dispatched his opponent with a whopping 92 percent of the vote.

It took more than five minutes for him to get to the crux of his motivation for running. In giving his platform, he used the same tired arguments of sexual orientation, immigration, crime and family that all candidates rely on to inspire voters.

Browning, a 12-year veteran of the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office and five more with the Baton Rouge Police Department. He also served as a reserve deputy with Livingston Parish until earlier this year. He currently is employed as a realtor.

While his YouTube announcement was for the most part low-key, Browning, with that 2020 quote promoting a Civil War, nevertheless sounds like an advocate of the so-called constitutional sheriff movement which takes the position that sheriffs do not answer to the judiciary, the legislature, the governor, Congress or even the U.S. President. Instead, they answer only to voters.

The Constitutional Sheriffs and Peace Officers Association (CSPOA) is a radical MOVEMENT that espouses complete autonomy, allowing sheriffs to literally pick and choose which laws they want to enforce and which to ignore. No other elected official in America has that option – at least not on paper.

There is much wrong with the country today. We are divided like we’ve never been since the Civil War. Division means weakness but Democrats and Republicans alike in Congress appear to be unwilling to practice the art of compromise where no one gets everything they want but somehow, things still get accomplished. Social Security, Medicare, Civil Rights, voting rights would never get out of committee today, much less get enacted into law. And make no mistake: both sides share equally in the blame.

Maybe the comic was correct when he observed that con is the opposite of pro; therefore, congress must be the opposite of progress. Except the joke really isn’t very funny these days.

Jason Ard isn’t perfect. I’m sure he’d be the first to tell you so. His hiring of accused sex predator Dennis Perkins will forever be a negative mark on his tenure as sheriff, no matter what positives he achieves. But do we really need a sheriff who openly condones another Civil War? And between whom? Whites v. Blacks? Christians v. Jews? Republicans v. Democrats? Antifa v. the white nationalists? Straights v. gays? Conservatives v. liberals? Who, Mr. Browning, who?

And while the Democrats and Republicans are busy sniping at each other in Washington, and while all the other factions are drawing lines in the dust, the last thing we need is a bunch of sheriffs deciding they can cherry-pick which laws to enforce.

The Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association has enough political clout already, thank you, without the added influence of the CSPOA.

Slip and fall lawsuits don’t normally grab the media’s attention because they’re as common as those lawyer ads that give local TV news programs a reason to exist.

(And speaking of lawyer ads, we really have some beauties on the Baton Rouge stations. While the joke at one time was that TV news existed only to keep the lawyer ads from bumping together, that’s no longer a valid observation. Today, it’s not unusual to have three different lawyer ads back-to-back-to-back during local news programs. We have one with a talking dog that’s especially bad and another features a lawyer hiking in the woods – in wing-tip shoes. And the ones with paid shills giving testimonies about how much they got in their lawsuit but they fail to tell us how much of that so-called award went to attorney’s fees, expert costs, court costs, court reporter costs, etc.)

Oh, yes, slip and fall lawsuits. There was one in Hammond where a family was walking in a large chain store and Mama slipped and fell. And wouldn’t you know, Junior just happened to be recording the whole thing on his video camera – just in case Mama fell, I suppose. It took only a nano-second for that lawsuit to get thrown out.

But there’s an unusual slip and fall case pending in federal court in Lafayette that might bear closer scrutiny because of an existing policy of the defendant that makes the chain a target for future similar litigation.

Plaintiff Sharon Blanchard is suing Circle K convenience store after she slipped on standing water inside a story in Youngsville on Sept. 3, 2018, and struck her head and coccyx (tailbone), resulting in “traumatic brain injury, post traumatic headaches, multi-level lumbar disc injuries requiring surgery and psychological/emotional injuries.

Nothing out of the ordinary for such a lawsuit so far.

But then there’s the deposition of Circle K employee Corey Crochet on De. 1, 2020, that could conceivably attract more slip and fall cases like ants to a picnic. Shoot, it could even produce a class-action slip and fall action. Now a class-action slip and fall suit would truly be unique.

So, what did Crochet say in his deposition that would make it so… well, convenient to join in the fun of suing your friendly neighborhood Circle K store?

Besides Blanchard’s claim that Crochet knew of the accumulated water at the store entrance, Crochet’s testimony “detailed Circle K policy of not using mats or rugs at entrance areas and of his own personal experience of concern for the slippery condition of the floor at the store entrance,” the court noted.

Blanchard attempted unsuccessfully to amend Circle K Regional Director of Operations Olajuwan Alexander into her lawsuit as a defendant because, Blanchard says, Alexander was the “policymaker who implemented an oral policy of removing floor mats from stores within his region beginning in 2018.

“The uncontested evidence before this Court [is] that Alexander was tasked by Circle K with implementing a policy regarding the use of floor mats in stores within his region,” U.S. District Judge Patrick J. Hanna ruled. “Alexander determined that the use of floor mats, which often became warped, torn or otherwise unserviceable, created a trip hazard for guests and orally directed stores within his region to cease using mats for this reason. As an alternative, Alexander directed that stores would display ‘wet floor’ warning signs and periodically wet and dry mop floors on rainy days to mitigate slip and fall hazards,” Hanna wrote.

Though Blanchard’s attempt to amend Crochet and Alexander into her litigation as defendants wad denied, Judge Hanna said his denial would have no effect on her claim against Circle K.

Much media attention has been focused, and rightly so, on whistleblower Frances Haugen calling out Facebook for placing profits over integrity. But there’s a whistleblower lawsuit pending in Louisiana’s Middle District Federal Court in Baton Rouge that potentially could have a direct impact on the physical safety and lives of tens of thousands of people living in proximity to dozens of petrochemical plants in South Louisiana.

Johnny Taylor’s lawsuit, claiming that his termination by Union Pacific Railroad was in violation of the Federal Railroad Safety Act (FRSA) because he was fired for engaging in activities protected under that statute, is scheduled to be heard Nov. 1.

Basically, Taylor is claiming that he was fired because he took one rail line out of service and issued a slow order on another section of track because of safety concerns and refused orders to return them to service.

Union Pacific disagreed, contending that Taylor was terminated for disrespectful conduct surrounding those actions and that Taylor had “significant performance issues” and a history of “insubordination and outright refusal to alter his behavior.”

A motion for summary judgment (dismissal) by Union Pacific was denied by U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick, allowing the lawsuit to move forward.

In her ruling, Judge Dick noted cited a requirement of FRSA which said that a railroad or its representatives “shall not discharge, demote, suspend, reprimand, or in other way discriminate against an employee” for reporting in good faith a hazardous safety or security condition.

Taylor took the Avondale “Tail Track” out of service on March 28, 2017. Approximately 20 derailments had occurred in the Avondale yard during Taylor’s tenure. On Nov. 2, 2017, he took “No. 1 Mainline” track in Avondale out service, based on his impression that it was defective and could result in a derailment. Three derailments occurred at the “Switch 16” track in Avondale in October and November 2017, Taylor says.

Similarly, he took the “Switch 16” track at Avondale out of service on Jan. 10, 2018, because the track was “severely out of alignment” and ran the risk of causing a derailment. He issued a “slow order” on a track on White Castle on Jan. 22, 2018.

She further noted that an employee’s refusal is protected under several provisions which applied in Taylor’s case.

Taylor cited four examples of his claimed protected activity:

• Taking tracks out of service;
• Refusal to put “Switch 16” back into service;
• Issuance of a slow order in White Castle, Louisiana (in an area along the Mississippi River in Iberville Parish where dozens of petrochemical plants are located), and
• Cooperation with Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) and of reports to Union Pacific’s EEO Department.

Taylor, who was employed by Union Pacific on Se.t. 12, 2007, said in his petition that he was responsible for railroad tracks from Avondale to Livonia.

On March 5,2014, Taylor says a supervisor threatened to fire him if he reported “any additional safety issues regarding tie clusters in the tracks under his management.”

Taylor says Union Pacific “falsely reported” the cause of several derailments to the FRA.

He says that he was cited for his attitude but otherwise received only positive evaluations and quoted from one evaluation in which his supervisor said, “You lead your team in a positive way from what I have seen so far. Make sure that everyone above you knows and understands the good things that you are doing. Don’t be afraid to brag on yourself.”

Taylor said he qualified for a performance bonus for 2017 and received a letter in October 2017 from Superintendent Cliff Bowman commending him on his “diligence, dedication, professionalism, and continued commitment to safety.”

The trial is scheduled for 9 a.m. in the Russell B. Long Federal Building in Baton Rouge.

Taylor is represented by J. Arthur Smith, III, and Robert M. Schmidt of the Smith Law Firm of Baton Rouge.