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Former police officer gets PTI assignment after attempted rape charges reduced to misdemeanor; still employed by VA

March 3, 2019 by tomaswell

On March 27, 1998, barely two years after receiving his cadet appointment to the State Police Academy, Ben Johnson was terminated by State Police Superintendent Col. W.R. “Rut” Whittinton following a long string of disciplinary actions for infractions, including his off-duty altercation with a sheriff’s deputy over a woman Johnson was dating.

He next landed at the Veterans Administration Hospital in Pineville as a police officer.

In March 2009, a WARRANT was executed for his ARREST for attempted forcible rape of a woman in Natchitoches. Here is a page from the POLICE REPORT.

And while he was stripped of his position as police officer for the VA, he still is employed there—in the Human Relations Department where he supposedly has access to employee personnel records, including home addresses and telephone numbers.

In October, the attempted forcible rape, a felony charge, was reduced to a misdemeanor by then-10th Judicial District Attorney Van H. Kyzar. Kyzar is now a JUDGE on Louisiana’s Third Circuit Court of Appeal.

On November 13, 2009, Johnson SIGNED OFF off on an agreement that the charges would be dismissed upon the satisfactory completion of a pre-trial intervention program. (emphasis added.)

Several district attorneys’ offices were consulted and each one that responded said its policy is that those with felony charges are ineligible for pre-trial intervention programs. Click HERE to see the policies of one of those offices.

Of course, having a policy and adhering to that policy may well be two different propositions for some jurisdictions where favors are routinely awarded to friends of or contributors to the local power structure.

The pre-trial intervention (PTI) program must have been fast-tracked like no other in the history of PTIs, because he apparently managed to complete the crash course that same day. According to a DISMISSAL letter from district attorney investigator Danny C. Hall to to Barbara Watkins of the Veterans Medical Center in Pineville, charges against Johnson were dismissed that same day. Hall is no longer employed by the Natchitoches DA’s office.

One former district attorney said it was unheard of to dismiss charges on the same day an individual was assigned to a PTI, especially when the dismissal was contingent upon completion of the program. Moreover, he said, there was no way anyone could have completed such a program in a single day. “The person would have to know somebody,” he said.

A sitting judge said much the same thing. “He knew someone. It usually takes six months or longer for a case to be dismissed that way,” he said. At the same time, he said the district attorney could have seen it as a weak case, particularly in light of the fact the victim waited several days to report the incident. (The victim told police she was “embarrassed and ashamed,” and initially “just wanted to forget about the entire day” but her best friend convinced her to talk to police.)

An undated document signed by Johnson ACKNOWLEDGED that he had been arrested and charged “with the crime of attempted forcible rape, a felony,” that “I freely admit my guilt and misconduct” and that the PTI program was established “to divert me from further criminal conduct.” (emphasis added.)

The victim told police that at one point prior their struggle, he told her she was safe with him because he was a POLICE OFFICER.

Johnson was first hired by Louisiana State Police on December 3, 1995 but by March 27, 1998, he was terminated because of repeated disciplinary problems.

Beginning in July 1996, barely seven months into the job, and virtually every month thereafter until his termination, he was reprimanded by his superiors for such things as:

  • Failure to be in his assigned parish for patrol;
  • Altering accident reports with white correction fluid;
  • Sloppy and error-plagued paperwork and accident reports, including incorrect dates, incorrect mileposts and even incorrect parishes and incorrect judicial districts;
  • Unauthorized attendance at a Northwestern State University football game in uniform while off-duty;
  • Altercations with fellow state troopers;
  • Rude treatment of females stopped for traffic violations;
  • Logging incorrect dates he worked on his time sheets;
  • Losing citations that he had written;
  • Allowing his patrol unit to run out of gas and then attempting to claim mechanical problems;
  • Losing his State Police badge and badge/identification card holder;
  • Failure to search and handcuff a prisoner later found to be in possession of a pocket knife;
  • Possession of radar equipment in his patrol car that had been missing and which caused considerable concern in efforts to locate the equipment.
  • Patrolling in the city limits of Alexandria and Pineville against troop regulations;
  • Calling in traffic stops before violations actually occurred;
  • Inability to locate accident he was directed to even though both vehicles were in the roadway;
  • Untimely submission of paperwork;
  • A five-day suspension for leaving his assigned parish to travel nearly 20 miles off his assigned route.
  • On April 27, 1997, barely four months after his designation as a State Police Trooper, he became embroiled in a confrontation with a Rapides Parish sheriff’s deputy after the deputy allegedly made disparaging remarks about him to a woman Johnson was dating. Johnson appeared at England Air Park where the deputy was assigned while off duty but in his state police vehicle and threatened the deputy with physical harm.

Normally, a State Trooper who resigns in lieu of dismissal can land a job with another law enforcement agency. But Johnson did not resign, he was fired, which makes it difficult to understand how he wound up as a police officer for the VA unless the VA did a rather slipshod of vetting his qualifications—or, a more likely bet, he had connections there.

And it’s equally difficult to understand how he retained his employment, his demotion notwithstanding, after such a serious offense as attempted forcible rape.

Even more baffling is why such a serious felony charge was reduced to a misdemeanor and then how did he manage the “satisfactory completion” of a pre-trial intervention on the same day he was assigned to the program, allowing the charges go away instantly?

 

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Judges, Public Records | 7 Comments »

It’s that unpleasant time again: LouisianaVoice’s fundraiser

March 1, 2019 by tomaswell

It’s that time again.

After forgoing the October fundraiser, I am again doing the most unpleasant chore of maintaining LouisianaVoice: asking for your financial support.

In October, when I felt my diminished eyesight would not allow me to continue at the same pace as before, I opted not to ask for contributions. But since additional consultation indicated the rate of eyesight loss is not as great as originally feared, I’ve returned to the fray and I again am humbly asking for your support.

In fact, I am in the process of obtaining a nonprofit status for LouisianaVoice, which would mean that your future contributions would be tax deductible. In the meantime, however, I have incurred significant legal fees in efforts to set up the 501(3)(C) nonprofit, so in addition to my normal operating expenses of travel, purchasing records for researching stories, normal legal fees, and paying for the internet domain to support LouisianaVoice, I now have that major one-time added expense.

I know some of you don’t agree with some of the things I’ve written. That’s to be expected. No two persons are going to always agree on every subject. But on balance, I believe I have appealed to a lot of readers by exposing official wrongdoing on many levels of government—from the misappropriation of funds, to the misuse of official positions, to outright illegal activity. That, after all, is the underlying basis for the existence of LouisianaVoice.

Investigative journalism has taken a major hit among newspapers both nationally and locally and that’s a significant loss. I have attempted to fill that void when and where I can. I have not always made everyone happy, but I have always attempted to be even-handed and fair.

I’ve written critical stories about our former governor and several of his appointees, as well as other state and local officials. I’ve shown how boards and commissions misuse their powers at the expense of those they regulate through questionable methods of control. I strongly support law enforcement but when I find wrongdoing, whether by state police, a local sheriff, or a municipal officer, I try to expose it. I’ve shown on many occasions how campaign contributions influence the votes of our legislators. It doesn’t matter if the subject is Republican or Democrat—if I find them to be abusing their positions of trust, I do my very best to inform the public.

I’m not perfect nor will I ever be. But I try to give a voice to the average citizen who has become a rather insignificant bit player in a drama dominated by armies of lobbyists, buckets of cash and indifferent elected officials.

If you share my sense of frustration at the manner in which the powerful interests have shoved the rest of us aside, I ask that you contribute what you feel you can afford. You may do so in one of two ways: You can click on the yellow DONATE button at the upper right and pay by credit card or you may send checks to:

LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, Louisiana 70627

Posted in Politics | 2 Comments »

Clay Higgins didn’t even need ’15 minutes of fame’ to make idiot of self at Cohen congressional testimony Wednesday

February 27, 2019 by tomaswell

Watching former Trump attorney Michael Cohen’s testimony before the House Oversight and Reform Committee, it was impossible to ignore the grandstanding by Democrats out for blood and Republicans just as determined to protect the damaged goods personified in Donald Trump.

But it was the brief appearance of 3rd District U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins that provided a brief moment of unintended comedy.

During his five minutes in attempting to defend Trump from Cohen’s bombshell charges, Higgins managed to allude to “the many arrests” he had made in his law enforcement career.

Following is an excerpt from a chapter on Higgins included in my manuscript for Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption, a book about corrupt sheriffs and law enforcement officers of Louisiana that puts that law enforcement record in perspective:

If ever there was a living caricature of the Barney Fife character from the old Andy Griffith Show, it would have to be Clay Higgins, aka the self-anointed “Cajun John Wayne,” a Dirty Harry wannabe.

Originally a patrolman and a member of the Opelousas Police Department’s SWAT team, Higgins, a former used car salesman, resigned from the OPD on May 18, 2007, in lieu of accepting disciplinary action from Police Chief Perry Gallow.

“Pfc. Clay Higgins used unnecessary force on a subject during the execution of a warrant and later gave false statements during an internal investigation. Although he later recanted his story and admitted to striking a suspect in handcuffs and later releasing him …” read the minutes of the Opelousas Police Department’s Discipline Review Board concerning the March 14, 2007, incident.

Among the actions that had been recommended by the review board:

  • Demotion from Patrolman First Class to Patrolman;
  • Reassignment to a patrol shift for more direct supervision and training;
  • Immediate removal from the SWAT Team;
  • 160 hours suspension from duty without pay.

Rather than be subjected to the disciplinary action, Higgins turned in his equipment and resigned, although his version of events varies somewhat with the official account.

The incident in question occurred, he said, when he and fellow SWAT Team members were guarding the perimeter of a drug bust and a car breached the perimeter. The driver claimed to have cash in the suspected drug house and wanted to retrieve it, according to Higgins. The man was detained and handcuffed, Higgins claimed, and threatened the officers and Higgins slapped a cigarette out of the man’s mouth.

The man, who was subsequently released, filed a complaint and Higgins admittedly lied about slapping the man but later confessed to slapping him. While awaiting a determination of his punishment, he said he jokingly referred to Gallow as a peacock. “I decided right then, on that day, that my career was over at OPD—that I would never, ever recover from this peacock thing. He was infuriated by it. So, because of that I went into the chief’s office the following week and I turned in my badge and my gear and I resigned.”

That’s not the way it happened, according to Captain Craig Thomas, who headed up Internal Affairs for the OPD. He said Higgins lied in saying that the driver of the vehicle, Andre Richard, committed a battery upon Higgins and that Higgins only came forward to tell the truth after learning that Sergeant Bill Ortego did not go along with the story told by Higgins and another officer. Ortego said that he, Higgins and a third officer were standing outside the home where the warrant was being executed when a young black man pulled up in a red vehicle, got out and approached the three officers, but did not breach a perimeter as claimed by Higgins because “there was no perimeter set up for Richard to see,” Thomas said. “He was parked in the street.”

When Higgins walked to the driver’s side of the vehicle and started looking in the car through the open door, Richard attempted to close the door while Higgins was still standing in the doorway, at which time Higgins and the second officer threw Richard to the ground, Ortego wrote in his statement. Ortego made it clear that the driver had not placed his hands on Higgins before trying to close his car door.

Once the man was on the ground, Higgins asked for handcuffs and when the cuffs were on, Higgins grabbed him by the hair and told him to contact his lawyer, Ortego said, adding that the two officers began searching Richard’s vehicle, which they did not have permission to do, and noted that Ortego himself and Lieutenant Craig Leblanc, who was also present, helped the man off the ground, at which time Richard told Higgins, “It’s all right, everybody got to die someday.” Higgins took it as an implied threat and it really pissed Higgins off, prompting him to remove the cuffs and push the man onto the car, then put his hand around his neck before slapping him in the face and telling him to leave, according to Ortego’s statement. Higgins then pulled the cigarette out of Richard’s mouth and pushed him toward his vehicle, Ortego said.

Following his departure from the OPD, Higgins next showed up as a public information officer for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. His career there took an even more bizarre turn and established him as something of a pseudo folk hero in what he perceived as the mold of some kind of super cop, or better yet, the reincarnation of John Wayne himself. But his blatant—and oddly comical—self-parody bathed him more in the light of Deputy Fife than the Duke.

While employed by the SLP Sheriff’s Office, Higgins took it upon himself to make a series of macho videos of himself in full battle garb and armed to the teeth. With a full contingent of law enforcement personnel, armaments and a police dog standing alertly in the background, Higgins embarked on a rant against thugs, gang members, and assorted criminals, promising them there was no safe haven for them as long as he was on the job.

The videos gained him instant notoriety on YouTube, garnering thousands of hits. That only encouraged Higgins to branch out and to begin offering commemorative cups, caps and T-shirts to an adoring public. Soon, he was appearing as a paid guest on talk shows, giving paid speeches and doing paid advertisements, all of which naturally, in today’s media-dominated society, morphed into a TV reality show. Saying he had his reasons for preferring payment in cash, he charged $1500 for a television production, a thousand dollars for a radio production and one hundred fifty dollars an hour in travel time and another thousand for a photo session.

It also prompted swift action on the part of St. Landry Parish Sheriff Bobby Guidroz. After Higgins’s forced resignation, Guidroz said, “Clay Higgins formed a personal business venture to raise money by selling mugs, T-shirts and other trinkets using department badge and uniform.” Explaining that using the sheriff’s office to promote his businesses was against departmental policy, Guidroz said, “I reined Higgins in.” He said that Higgins needed to take his own advice to not be disrespectful and to “follow the law.” Guidroz said he never authorized Higgins to appear on mugs, T-shirts or any other paraphernalia.

The personal business to which Guidroz referred, Captain Higgins Gear Company, LLC, was incorporated on October 15, 2015.

Guidroz related an incident in which Higgins requested extra body armor and an AR-15. He also asked to take the sheriff’s department decals off his car because, Higgins said, “My wife is home alone a lot and I don’t want them (those he had targeted in his videos) to see that I’m a policeman living in this area with the decals on my car.”

Guidroz said he told Higgins, “No, and I’ll tell you why: You put a target on fifty-five other deputies in this parish that have marked units. By calling these guys (gang members) out on the street, claiming to be a bad-ass, you put that target on them. Why should I grant you that request to unmark your car?”

As his supersized ego continued to grow, so, too, did his dream of a TV reality show in which he would out-Seagal actor Steven Seagal who at one time had his own TV reality cop show in which he did ride-alongs with the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department. Higgins, expanding on that theme, actually envisioned himself popping in on various police department SWAT teams around the country and inviting himself to raids where he would personally arrest perps and then exact confessions from them during on-camera interrogations. Left unexplained was just how he intended to convince local police departments to allow him to swoop in and claim the glory after what may have been months of investigation and surveillance on their part.

Only after he left the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office was it learned that Higgins had not paid federal income taxes for several years, and his salary there was being garnished by the IRS. Moreover, it was also learned belatedly that Higgins was being sued by one of his ex-wives for one hundred thousand dollars after falling behind on child support payments a decade earlier.

Higgins, who denied an accusation by another ex-wife (not the one who sued him for child support) that he put a gun to her head during an argument in 1991, landed on his feet, this time as a reserve deputy for Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope who was himself indicted by a grand jury in August of 2016.

Meanwhile, Higgins was seeking the seat previously held by Rep. Charles Boustany who ran and lost in his race for the U.S. Senate seat vacated by the retiring David Vitter. Higgins, running as an unabashed supporter of Donald Trump, was pitted in the runoff against Scott Angelle, a member of the Louisiana Public Service Commission who finished third in a four-man race for Louisiana Governor in 2015. In the November primary, Angelle led with 29 percent of the vote to Higgins’s 26 percent. But in the December 10 runoff, Higgins, with 77,671 votes (56 percent), swamped Angelle, who pulled but 60,762 (44 percent). After having lost two major races within a year’s time, Angelle was likely through running for elective office though Trump later hired him to head up the federal Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement.

Days before his runoff victory, Higgins was taped by ex-wife Rosemary Rothkamm-Hambrice as they discussed his delinquent child support payments. “…I really don’t know how much we should talk about this on the phone,” Higgins said. “I’m just learning really about campaign laws but there’s going to be a lot of money floating around…”

Posted in House, Senate, Politicians | 17 Comments »

When it comes to meting out discipline for lawyer misdeeds, consistency is a foreign term to the Louisiana Supreme Court

February 27, 2019 by tomaswell

When comparing the exorbitant fines meted out by the State Board of Dentistry and the State Board of Medical Examiners with the manner in which the Louisiana Supreme Court disciplines wayward attorneys, one comes away wondering if there are two sets of standards of justice in Louisiana—one for attorneys and another for everyone else.

For that matter, it sometimes seems as though there are two standards for attorneys—or at least a good argument for glaring inconsistencies.

Take, for example, the cases of Arthur Gilmore, Jr. of Monroe and E. Eric Guirard of Baton Rouge.

Gilmore, a former Monroe city council member, was convicted of violations of the federal Racketeering and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act in 2013 and subsequently served a 24-month prison sentence in South Dakota. A co-defendant, fellow council member Robert “Red” Stevens pleaded guilty in May 2013 to accepting cash bribe payments and was sentenced to 20 months in prison.

The sentence was below sentencing guidelines. The presiding judge wrote that the government’s main witness “engaged in an ongoing program of planned enticement to provoke (Gilmore) into agreeing to bribes in exchange for perceived favors from his position with the Monroe City Council. Because of that, the guidelines, in my opinion, may overstate the relative seriousness of (Gilmore’s) actions and the application of an equitable sentence.”

In other words, because he was tempted to take the bribe, the gravity of the acceptance of same and the violation of his oath of office and the betrayal of the trust bestowed upon him by voters is somehow mitigated.

The two were accused of accepting bribe payments from an FBI informant in exchange for their assistance with matters pending before the city council in 2008 and 2009.

The Louisiana Supreme Court finally got around to DISBARRING Gilmore in 2016—three years after his conviction. The disbarment was made retroactive to 2013.

Though Gilmore expressed remorse for his actions, the Louisiana Attorney Disciplinary Board found that permanent disbarment was the appropriate action.

But “permanent” is a somewhat relative term, it seems.

Last month Gilmore petitioned the Supreme Court for readmission to the practice of law and “permanent” became temporary when the court’s disciplinary board recommended that he be readmitted to practice, subject to a three-year probationary period.

The Office of Disciplinary Council (ODC) objected to his readmission and three board members dissented, recommended that readmission be denied.

The objection and dissensions notwithstanding, the hearing committee approved Gilmore’s immediate READMISSION to practice law.

Justice Scott J. Crichton wrote in his dissent that Gilmore, “as an official elected government official, committed a serious felony crime involving racketeering and extracting bribes. In my view, he has not proven in his application for readmission that he has the requisite honesty and integrity to practice law, and I would deny readmission.”

GUIRARD received the same punishment in 2009 for what would appear to most to be a far less serious infraction—paying bonuses to non-lawyer case managers employed by his firm to help settle cases, a practice he discontinued five years before his disbarment.

The Supreme Court ruled that by paying two case workers to settle nearly 500 cases, Guirard “harmed their clients” by depriving them of individualized and professional case analysis while somehow overlooking larger firms who seemed to operate on an assembly-line basis—trying to sign up as many clients as possible as quickly as possible.

“We recognize a dishonest or selfish motive, a pattern of misconduct…in the practice of law,” the court wrote in its unanimous opinion.

Six years after he was disbarred, in March 2015, a year before Gilmore’s disbarment, Guirard was READMITTED to the bar.

Identical punishment for a far less egregious transgression.

Posted in Boards, Courts, Ethics, Judges | 2 Comments »

DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office subject of second investigative audit in five years; latest examines abuses of LACE program

February 25, 2019 by tomaswell

The hits keep on coming.

The long-awaited investigative audit of the DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office’s Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE) program is finally out after considerable legal wrangling between the Legislative Auditor and the sheriff’s office that, apparently, still is not over.

But the bottom line is the sheriff’s office took yet another hit just five years after an earlier INVESTIGATIVE AUDIT revealed that a former deputy’s private company had run half-a-million dollars in background checks through the sheriff’s office.

The latest AUDIT is far less damaging but nevertheless illustrates a pattern of lax oversight of the LACE program by former Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle who abruptly RESIGNED last March 16 in anticipation of the latest audit.

Thanks to the Haynesville Shale, Arbuckle had been able to administer a payroll of $11.2 million, three times that of neighboring Sabine Parish and $3.3 million more than Natchitoches Parish, which has nearly twice the population as DeSoto.

All of which circles back to the current audit that shows that 23 deputies were paid more than $15,000 for 335 hours of LACE details they may not have worked in the five-month period of January 1 to June 2, 2017.

Although $15,000 is not a particularly mind-boggling amount, even for such a short period of time, interviews with three former deputies reflected a deliberate policy by the department that encourage an atmosphere of payroll fraud and malfeasance.

That, in itself, was most probably the root cause of the Sheriff Jayson Richardson’s decision to employ legal efforts to prevent the Legislative Auditor’s office from gaining access to the department’s personnel records even though it created the appearance that the sheriff’s office may have been attempting to hide embarrassing or incriminating information.

“During the course of our audit, a Legislative subpoena was issued for personnel files of the current Sheriff, Jayson Richardson, and 12 former and current DPSO deputies,” the report reads. “The Sheriff contested the subpoena by means of a declaratory judgment filed in DeSoto Parish.” Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera filed an exception of venue but in a classic example of home cooking, a local court ruled against the auditor’s office. Purpera then filed an Exception of Non-Joinder of Proper Parties (an omission of one or more persons who should have been made a plaintiff or defendant). Again, there was an adverse ruling by the court which ruled that the Louisiana Legislature was not a necessary party in the matter in a determined effort to protect Richardson’s office. The LLA requested supervisory writs from the Second Circuit, which were granted on February 14, 2019. Following decisions from the courts of review, a trial on the merits will proceed before the trial court. “We may issue a supplemental report after the litigation is concluded,” the report said,” the report said.

“The DeSoto Parish Sheriff’s Office (DPSO) has participated in DeSoto Parish’s Local Agency Compensated Enforcement (LACE) program to enhance traffic safety and generate revenue for many years,” the report said. “The LACE program is administered by the District Attorney (DA) for the 42nd Judicial District. The Criminal Court Fund reimbursed DPSO $45.00 per hour for off-duty deputies (i.e., deputies working at times other than their regularly-scheduled work hours) to write tickets and also reimbursed DPSO $10 per hour for operating costs and wear and tear on DPSO’s vehicles for the hours worked through February 2017. However, there was no written contract or agreement between the DA and DPSO to conduct LACE details.

“DA Gary Evans told us he relied on DPSO to manage the LACE program when he began his first term as district attorney in January 2015; however, two years later, he learned other DAs managed their own LACE programs and used pretrial diversion (PTD) programs to fund them. This prompted DA Evans to create a PTD program for LACE traffic citations and discontinue participation in the LACE program funded by the Criminal Court Fund in March 2017.

“DPSO participated in the DA’s new LACE program from March 23, 2017 to June 2, 2017. A dispute arose as to whether the Criminal Court Fund or the DA should pay DPSO $107,140 for LACE details worked in March, April, and May 2017. Former Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle told us that he paid his deputies for LACE details they worked and was entitled to reimbursement from the DA, who was now diverting LACE tickets. The DA countered that DPSO did not perform all services as invoiced and that he does not owe DPSO reimbursement. The DA did not reimburse DPSO and DPSO stopped working LACE details on June 2, 2017.”

The reported noted that the 42nd Judicial District Criminal Court Fund reimbursed participating law enforcement agencies for the time spent on LACE details through March 2017 when Evans created a pre-trial diversion (PTD) program for LACE traffic citation and discontinued participation in the program funded by the Criminal Court Fund.

DPSO had few written policies on procedures for LACE details during the period covered by the audit, lending to an atmosphere of abuse and falsified time sheets, time sheets approved by then-Captain of Patrols Richardson.

Because LACE details paid more than other off-duty details such as security, there was active competition for open LACE spots, the report says, adding that four current and former deputies who worked LACE were told to “get on and get off” I-49 quickly so that the next deputy could begin his or her LACE detail.

State auditors attempted to speak with deputies but only three former deputies agreed to interviews.

Following are the LLA’s summation of what the former deputies told auditors:

  • Former Lt. Stephanie White told us that she was paid for hours she claimed on LACE details that she did not work on Interstate 49. She further said that she was never told that she had to be on Interstate 49 for her entire LACE shift and ran personal errands after she left the interstate before returning the digiTICKET device. She stated that, in September 2017, former Sheriff Arbuckle asked her before we began our investigation if LLA was going to find any problems with the LACE details; she said she informed him that the deputies did not work all of the hours claimed.
  • Former Deputy Dennis Buckingham said that he was trained to work LACE details by claiming one hour per citation written without regard to hours actually worked. He further said that he wrote numerous citations during the first hours of his LACE shift and then went home for the remainder of his shift. Because he may not have worked all the hours on his LACE time sheet, he may have been paid for hours he did not work.
  • Former Deputy Alphonsa Carter stated that she received compensation for hours she did not work. She stated although she knew it was common practice for other deputies to claim an hour for each citation written and not work full shifts, she should not have done wrong just because they were.

Buckingham filed a written response to the audit in which he denied that he admitted to being paid for lace hours he did not work, although he reiterated that he was instructed to claim a full hour for every ticket written.

“Four former deputies told us that one former deputy routinely called in as starting work for LACE details although the deputy remained at home for several hours after ‘starting’ the LACE detail,” the report said.

“If these deputies claimed time and were paid for hours not actually worked on LACE details, they may have violated state law,” it said. “Additionally, since DPSO billed by the hour for the use of its patrol units for LACE details, DPSO may have over-billed the DA for that same period.”

Richardson’s response, written by James Sterritt, an attorney for the Shreveport law firm Cook, Yancey, King and Galloway, said that the sheriff’s department “became aware of several inconsistencies” while assisting the LLA with information during the audit. “That information led to three deputies being placed on administrative leave,” Sterritt said. “All three resigned shortly afterwards.

At the same time, Sterritt, said that a comparison of deputies’ timesheets to digiTICKET log reports “may not provide a complete picture of time actually worked by deputies performing LACE details. Thus, the hours designated in the report as ‘over-payments’ may have been overestimated.” Sterritt said that when superiors become aware of improper conduct by a deputy, “that deputy is properly disciplined”

 

Posted in Audit Reports, Auditor, Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, Lawsuits | Leave a Comment »

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