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Terrebonne Sheriff Larpenter proves to be adept at spending other people’s $$ in 30 year-tenure; $130K on golf tourneys

June 19, 2018 by tomaswell

Louisiana’s campaign finance reports can be very revealing—and awfully embarrassing—when certain contributors are linked to business relationships with the candidate.

And just as eye-opening can be an accounting of how campaign funds are spent.

Take Jerry Larpenter, the sheriff of Terrebonne Parish these past 30 years, for example.

From 2012 through 2017, a period of six years, Larpenter dished out more than $130,000 in campaign funds to pay for golf tournaments, golf tee shirts, embroidered shirts for golf tournaments, camo hats and koozies for golf tournaments, golf trophies, golf bags, insurance for golf tournaments, cups for golf tournaments, signs advertising golf tournaments, guns for golf tournament prizes, food for golf tournaments, cracklings for golf tournaments, golf tournament brochures and envelopes, food for golf tournaments, and $15,482 paid to Web Corp. of St. Charles, Missouri, for bulletproof vests for deputies (the only problem with that is Web Corp. is a web design company, not a bulletproof vest company).

Some of Larpenter’s campaign contributions were also rather interesting. There was $2,500 from City Tele Coin of Bossier City back in 2014. City Tele Coin, according to its WEB PAGE, provides telephone services for correctional facilities. There has been considerable discussion on the Louisiana Public Service Commission about the high rates charged inmates’ families for collect phone calls by these companies.

Another $4,500 came from Anthony Alford Insurance. Tony Alford’s company held a contract with the sheriff’s office and with the Terrebonne Parish Council for insurance coverage. Alford and Dove are business partners in a company called PALOMA ENTERPRISES. With Dove as a business partner while simultaneously serving as parish president, such a business arrangement between Alford and the parish council would appear to be an ethics violation.

Moreover, Larpenter’s wife Priscilla is listed as an officer for both ALL PROPERTY & CASUALTY SERVICES and A&L PROPERTY & CASUALTY SERVICES. Alford is also listed as an officer for both companies.

Louisiana Workforce of St. Francisville (now defunct) and Security Workforce, LLC, of New Roads, both run by Paul Perkins, combined to contribute more than $6400 to Larpenter’s campaigns. The two firms provided prison labor for local jails to hire out to businesses, a practice many equate to legalized slavery.

Perkins is a former BUSINESS PARTNER and subordinate of former Angola warden Burl Cain and current Public Safety and Corrections Secretary Jimmy LeBlanc. Before Louisiana Workforce went under, David Daniel worked as a warden for the company while it contracted with the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office for prison labor. The sheriff of West Feliciana is Austin Daniel, David Daniel’s father.

Louisiana Workforce was at the center of a controversy in 2010 when a state investigation revealed that documents were being FORGED to alter dates on work release agreements. In all, 68 documents were altered or signatures forged so that they would pass state inspections. A 2016 STATE AUDIT called for better oversight of the program.

Correctional Food Services, Inc. of Dallas, about which precious little is known (the company does not have a Web page), but which is presumed to provide food for prisoners, contributed $3,760 to Larpenter’s campaign.

But the most curious contribution was the $3000 from the Terrebonne Men’s Carnival Club of Houma. Larpenter’s campaign finance report indicated that the $3000 came from a “winning ticket” purchased from the Krewe of Hercules.

But if there’s one thing that can be said of Larpenter, it’s that he is not short on imagination when it comes to spending other people’s money.

Take the old FLOWER FUND, run for years by Larpenter—and his predecessor. It was run in a manner eerily reminiscent of Huey Long’s legendary “deduct box,” the scam that required state employees to contribute a percentage of their state salaries to Huey’s campaign fund whether they liked it or not.

The flower fund was a virtual clone of the deduct box and while Larpenter didn’t initiate the practice—it was already in place when he became sheriff—he carried on the tradition in the grand tradition of his old boss, the late Sheriff Charleton Rozands.

Each month, the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office’s 299 employees “contributed” $1 of their pay checks to the flower fund which was occasionally used to actually purchase flowers but which more often went for gifts for the sheriff at Christmas, on his birthdays and on boss’s days. Larpenter was the only member of the sheriff’s department who did not contribute to the fund.

Larpenter became sheriff in April 1987 and the practice continued at least until 2001 and it wasn’t until 1999 that employees learned for certain through an attorney general’s opinion that the “contributions” were not mandatory.

In the interim, flower fund expenditures included:

  • $1,462.41 for s stereo system for Larpenter;
  • $1,000 for Larpenter’s account at a furniture store;
  • $978.53 for a trolling motor, two batteries, and accessories for Larpenter’s birthday;
  • $183 for building materials from Lowe’s (records indicate it was spent for Larpenter’s Christmas present);
  • $631for fishing gear as a gift for Larpenter;
  • $44 for a gift for Larpenter’s first wife;
  • $186 for hunting gear;
  • $220 for fishing equipment for Larpenter for a Boss’s Day gift;
  • $60 for perfume;
  • $258 for a man’s watch;
  • $400 for the purchase of a trolling motor for Larpenter as a combination Boss’s Day and birthday gift;
  • $585 for nine watches from the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, which Larpenter said were gifts for 20-year employees of his office;
  • $110 for flowers for a memorial for a deputy who died in the line of duty.

Following the attorney general’s opinion and a federal investigation into the practice, Larpenter announced that the fund would no longer be used as a slush fund for gifts for him but would instead be used to benefit his employees and to fund two scholarships.

He added that while flower fund money would no longer be used to purchase gifts for him, it did not mean employees could not “put in” themselves to buy him gifts.

Now that’s subtle.

 

Posted in Attorney General, Audit Reports, Campaign Contributions, Ethics, Media, Politicians, Prison | 7 Comments »

For Trump, Sessions, Kennedy, Cassidy, rest of the family values clique, life begins at conception, ends at US border

June 17, 2018 by tomaswell

In the rancid, distorted, bigoted world of Donald Trump and Jeff Sessions, human life begins at conception and ends at America’s southern border.

And I’m not so sure the same can’t be said of the ass clowns we refer to as our Louisiana Congressional delegation.

Another certainty is that Session’s quoting the Bible notwithstanding, neither man can lay legitimate claim to being a Christian. That right was forfeited the instant the decision was made that innocent children, some of them still breast-feeding, should be ripped from their mother’s arms and warehoused in an empty Walmart store in Brownsville, Texas.

Acquaintances have ridiculed me for previous comparisons of idiot Trump to Hitler. Those comparisons were never more valid than now. When is the last time you saw an American president:

  • Rip more than 1300 children from their families for no greater offense than seeking asylum?
  • Incorrectly cite a Bible verse as justification for doing so?
  • Express the desire to emulate China’s President Xi in becoming President for life?
  • Have his lackeys follow the example of North Korea’s Kim Jong-un’s lackeys by sitting at attention when Dear Leader speaks? (and before you try to tell me he was “just kidding,” save your breath. He wasn’t. He was dead serious.)
  • Call the media “America’s greatest enemy”? (Okay, that may not be Hitler, per se, but it’s pretty darn close to another mad man named Nixon.)

And while we’re on the subject, I wonder if anyone has bothered to check to see if these might be private prisons contracting to hold these kids—for a nice profit, of course.

Oh, and don’t even bother to invoke the names of Obama or Clinton. Obama had his flaws as any human does, but he never once pulled the stunts and uttered the nonsense Trump has and while he had some less than stellar appointments to his cabinet, not one of them was named Scott Pruitt or Mick Mulvaney or Ben Carson or Betsy Devos or Wilbur Ross (Ross is the Commerce Secretary who was head of the Bank of Cyprus, an acknowledged vehicle for massive Russian money laundering. No Russian collusion? You can do your own Google search). And Clinton is not, was not, and will never be President so don’t even try to bring her into the mix.

In other words, let’s keep the conversation about a man who:

  • Repeatedly declared bankruptcy but always came back—with other people’s money, much of it from the Deutsche Bank, another bank that plays ball with the Russians who have money to wash;
  • Has a bad habit of not paying his contractors;
  • Ran a bogus real estate college in Florida that bilked students out of millions while failing to deliver on its promises—a college that was under investigation by the Florida attorney general…until Trump made a generous contribution to her election campaign, and then the investigation was conveniently dropped;
  • A man who has no respect for women whatsoever (don’t take Stormy Daniels’ word for it; just listen to the Billy Bush tape);
  • A man who does everything in his power to discredit, insult, and humiliate his justice department, the FBI, the IRS, the media, Congress, and anyone else who dares criticize him;
  • A man who cannot, for the life of him, maintain any consistency in his positions on issues, positions which sometimes change hourly;
  • A man who steadfastly refuses to make public his income taxes (gee, what could he be afraid of?);
  • A man who uses his position to help his family and himself financially (just look at the way in which he gave the Chinese firm ZTE a big break on his tariffs just as his daughter got nine trademark approvals from the Chinese government.)

I could go on, but why bother? If you are a Trump devotee, you’re not going to change your mind if it were proven that he was a serial axe murderer. You would simply regurgitate his and Fox News’ favorite response: fake news.

So, I will just end by saying this: If you are going to run around spewing your mantra of family values—whether as a Republican candidate or as a supporter of said candidate—while looking the other way as children are torn from their families, then you, my friend, are a damned liar and a hypocrite.

That goes for John Neely Kennedy, Bill Cassidy, Garrett Graves, Clay Higgins, Steve Scalise, Mike Johnson, or Ralph Abraham.

You are lying cowards, one and all, if you can advocate family values on one hand and imprisonment of children on the other.

And you’re certainly no Christian.

 

Posted in Attorney General, Congress, Corruption, Ethics, House, Senate, Politicians, Prison | 35 Comments »

Notable Quotables (in their own words)

June 17, 2018 by tomaswell

“You may obtain an original birth certificate or birth card at our office if you were born in Louisiana.  If not born in Louisiana, you must contact the state you were born in.  You may also obtain a death certificate if you died in Louisiana.”

—From the Assumption Parish Clerk of Court’s Web page. 

http://assumptionclerk.com/birth-certificates/

Posted in Politics | 4 Comments »

The Case of the Mysterious ‘X’ (or how Jerry Larpenter went from a deputy to chief criminal deputy to sheriff within days

June 14, 2018 by tomaswell

This is the story of the “Mysterious X” that catapulted Jerry Larpenter into the Terrebonne Parish Sheriff’s Office way back in April 1987.

Going into the beginning of April of that year, Charlton P. Rozands was still the sheriff, but at that particular point in time, he was:

  • Under federal indictment;
  • Dying of cancer.

Rozands and his two sons, along with Chief of Detectives Aubrey Authement and deputy Elmore Songe were all INDICTED on charges ranging from malfeasance in office, improper removal of weapons from the sheriff’s office, unauthorized and illegal personal use of weapons being held as evidence, and the disposal of weapons being held as evidence but which had been in Authement’s possession.

In fact, the sheriff’s cancer was so advanced that he was said to have been heavily medicated on morphine that he was unable to be arraigned and could not perform the simplest of tasks.

ROZANDS DIED ON APRIL 19 (from the Houma Daily Courier)

Six days before his death, on April 13, Larpenter signed the required OATH OF OFFICE oath of office as Rozands’ Chief Criminal Deputy.

On the second page of that document, in the left-hand margin, is the signature, “C.P. Rozands, Sheriff.”

Except it’s not Rozands’ signature. A comparison of that signature with a document actually signed by Rozands makes that point abundantly clear.

COMPARE SIGNATURES

Several people who were in positions to know have told LouisianaVoice that Rozands would have been physically unable to sign anything because of the advanced stages of his cancer and because he was heavily medicated with morphine. What is not clear is who actually signed his name.

In fact, at some point prior to Larpenter’s signing his oath of office, sources tell LouisianaVoice that a meeting was held to discuss a successor. Said to have been at that meeting were Rozands’ wife Mae, his two sons, and Houma attorney William F. Dodd, legal counsel for the sheriff’s office. He remains the sheriff’s legal counsel today.

The meeting was held to discuss the succession to Rozands who by this time obviously near death. At the time, 1987, state law allowed an official’s widow to assume his seat but Mrs. Rozands let it be known she wasn’t interested in the job. Nor were either of their sons.

The choices were quickly eliminated until there was only Larpenter who, when asked, said he would take the job.

The affidavit was quickly drafted, presumably by Dodd, that named Larpenter as Chief Criminal Deputy, which would make him next in line for the office of sheriff.

But to make the appointment official, Rozands was required to sign it. With him unable to affix his signature, he supposedly signed with an “X.”

But did he? One person close to the series of events said, “I don’t think Rozands would have waited until he was that sick to appoint Jerry Larpenter. They were close, but I think if Rozands had wanted Larpenter as his Chief Criminal Deputy, he would have appointed him while he was well enough to know what he was doing.”

Besides the job promotion and salary boost that came with Larpenter’s ascension into the sheriff’s chair, it also gave him the decided advantage of running as an incumbent in the next regular election only months away in October 1987.

In that election, the incumbency proved beneficial, all right. Larpenter, running against eight opponents, got a whopping 44 per cent of the vote, a full 30 points of his closest competitor, who got 14 percent. In the November runoff, he received 69 per cent of the vote to win his first of seven terms, interrupted only by his unsuccessful run for Parish President in 2007.

Each one of his elections—he was unopposed in 2015—were won by wide margins.

But the details of how he went from obscure deputy to sheriff for those few months in 1987 remain murky and clouded with questions of whether Rozands actually scrawled that “X” or it was done by someone in his name.

It’s almost as big a mystery as that entry in Larpenter’s campaign expense report. He lists an expenditure of $15,400 to an outfit named WEBCORP in Missouri for bulletproof vests for the sheriff’s department.

It’s awfully magnanimous of him to spend his own campaign funds to purchase equipment for his deputies—especially when Web Corp isn’t in the business of bulletproof vests. It’s an Internet web-building company.

Posted in Corruption, Elections, Ethics, Fraud, Politicians | 4 Comments »

Attorney General’s office botches DWI matter on behalf of Terrebonne power structure, so now he tries for a do-over

June 13, 2018 by tomaswell

The offenses are listed as misdemeanors but Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office is spending a lot of state resources pursuing the wife of a blogger who once criticized the Terrebonne Parish power structure.

And apparently, he’s not above being used by others to do their dirty work for them.

Wayne Anderson, a Houma Police officer, you may remember, had his home raided some time back by Sheriff Jerry Larpenter who seized his and his children’s computers.

Here are links to a few of the stories that appeared online then:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160805/04434835163/sheriff-uses-unconstitutional-law-to-raid-home-seize-electronics-belonging-to-watchdog-blogger.shtml

https://theintercept.com/2016/08/04/sheriff-raids-house-to-find-anonymous-blogger-who-called-him-corrupt/

https://reason.com/blog/2016/08/12/louisiana-sheriff-doesnt-like-critical-b

https://www.offthegridnews.com/current-events/blogger-criticizes-sheriff-so-sheriff-raids-home-and-takes-computers/

Anderson and his wife Jennifer, promptly filed suit in federal court and after the presiding judge chewed on Larpenter’s backside for a while, Larpenter decided to SETTLE with the couple for an undetermined amount but which is believed to be about $250,000. Also settling were co-defendants Parish President Gordon Dove and the parish government after a $50,000 settlement of their part of the litigation.

Lesson learned, right? Don’t mess with people’s right to freedom of speech.

Well yes and no.

Jennifer Anderson subsequently was arrested for DWI. Deputies said she had a child in the vehicle at the time but she insists there was no child in the car with her. It’s not for us to say whether or not she was drinking and driving. That should be decided in a court of law, but it should be done so properly and according to legal procedures.  Instead, what has ensued is a series of missteps on the part of prosecutors and those blunders have shown just how vindictive the local power clique can be when crossed.

District Attorney Joseph Waltz, Jr. recused himself from the DWI matter because he was prominently mentioned in Wayne Anderson’s blog Exposedat. That was the proper thing to do and the case was referred to Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office.

But when the Assistant Attorney General handling the case, one Angad Ghai, failed to appear for Anderson’s arraignment on four separate occasions, 32nd Judicial District Court Judge John Walker dismissed the case. Dismissals usually are handed down after two misses but the court gave the state every opportunity to prosecute its case in this matter. LouisianaVoice, by the way, was told Monday (June 12) that Ghai is no longer employed by the attorney general’s office.

LouisianaVoice does not condone drinking and driving and this is not a defense of Jennifer Anderson by any stretch. But when prosecutors neglect to show up in for courtroom proceedings not once, not twice, not three times, but four times, then the onus is on them.

Over and done on a technicality, right? Wrong. It’s not a technicality when prosecutors are negligent—or inept. Accordingly, Attorney General Jeff Landry should have simply tucked his tail, admitted his office’s incompetence and skulked back to Baton Rouge.

But no. Landry is an ego-driven politician, so he sent Assistant Attorney General Molly Lancaster into the fray to re-file charges on March 15 of this year—15 months after Anderson’s Jan. 20, 2017, arrest.

It was the classic example of re-filing as a means of judge-shopping and this time the AG got a different judge, Judge George Larke. We don’t know if that was an advantage to Landry or not. It really doesn’t matter.

What does matter is who initiated the new charges.

That would be the parish president, Gordon Dove, which makes no sense since he is not an attorney and, on the surface of it all, has no dog in the hunt. But that wouldn’t stop Dove.

For a little background on Dove, consider this:

  • Dove is a former legislator who not only served on the House Committee on Natural Resources and Environment but was its chairman of that committee.
  • Dove also was owner of Dual Trucking Co. which was cited by the Montana Department of Environmental Equality for dumping oilfield radioactive waste from the nearby Bakken Oilfield.

How ironic.

  • But wait. Dove also owns Vacco Marine, Inc., which was the subject of several investigations, negative reports, citations, and compliance orders by and from the Louisiana Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) over a period of several years.

More irony.

  • And while serving on the House Natural Resources Committee and while sitting as a member of the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority, he joined with 12 other members of the Natural Resources Committee in passing an amendment to a Senate bill that made the prohibition against suing oil companies for damages to the state’s wetlands and marshes retroactive.

Still more irony.

For a more complete dossier on Dove, go HERE.

But now we have Gordon Dove who is so concerned about the safety and welfare of the good folks of Terrebonne Parish (if not the good folks in Montana) that he goes out of his way to pursue charges (which had already been dismissed) against a woman whose husband had the audacity to criticize the political structure of the parish, a structure that features Dove in the mix, along with others already mentioned.

And they’ve got good ol’ Jeff Landry carrying the water for them while the attorney general ignores citizen complaints about the Jennings City Council’s refusal to allow citizens to speak at its meetings without prior approval of a secret “pre-meeting” where the agenda is drawn up.

(LouisianaVoice will have more on that in the days to come. But the point is that Jeff Landry likes to cherry-pick the causes he fights for, generally opting to help political allies and ignore anyone who can’t advance his career.)

The June 11 hearing on the continuance motion for Anderson’s case was one for the books. Anderson was arraigned, she wasn’t arraigned. No one knew for sure. The court’s minute clerk’s records said the case was allotted to Division A, another official said Division B. No one knew for sure (It was finally determined the case was allotted to A).

And during all this, Anderson was somehow never served with any notice of Landry’s renewed efforts.

But never mine, Jeff Landry is happy to dance the two-step with Gordon Dove.

Isn’t it rich, isn’t it queer
Losing my timing this late in my career
But where are the clowns – send in the clowns
Don’t bother they’re here.

—Frank Sinatra: Send in the Clowns

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

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