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Even as Gov. Edwards appoints his sexual harassment task force, BR woman says Edmonson once sexually molested her

December 15, 2017 by tomaswell

As more and more high-profile stories about sexual harassment begin to emerge, a Baton Rouge woman has come forward to say she was sexually assaulted by former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson more than three decades ago.

The woman, who identified herself to LouisianaVoice, has asked that her identity be held in confidence because the sensitivity of her occupation and to shield her teenage children from embarrassment and possible peer intimidation.

She said her husband knows about the incident but the rest of her family does not.

She said her motive in coming forward is not to get attention for herself. Instead, she said, she wants to expose him because her experience with Edmonson has been “a bitter pill” she has lived with for 35 years and that she knows “how he operates.”

“I want you to know what a fraud and phony he is,” she said, adding that she watched him as he rose through the ranks of Louisiana State Police (LSP) over the years. “I cannot imagine I am the only person who has been in a similar situation with him.” She said acquaintances of hers who also know Edmonson have told her how “handsy and flirtatious he is.”

Coincidentally, her revelations come on the same day that Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the appointment of members of his Sexual Harassment and Discrimination Policy Task Force which is charged with the responsibility of reviewing the sexual harassment and discrimination policies of each state agency within the executive branch.

The woman said she was 19 at the time and Edmonson was “probably 25 or 26.” She said her parent’s home was in the same neighborhood as Edmonson’s parents’ home. “I know the family well,” she said. I have known them since I was about in seventh grade.”

She said her family was visiting the Edmonsons and Mike Edmonson asked if she would like to ride to New Orleans with him. “I was very reluctant because I really didn’t know him that well and because of my being 19, he seemed like an ‘older man.’ Another person at the gathering sort of talked me into going, so I went. I’m thinking, ‘Well, I’ll be in good hands because he’s a policeman.’ How naïve I was.”

She said Edmonson took her to Pat O’Brien’s in the French Quarter and bought her Hurricanes with “extra shots.”

“I was probably 5-foot-two and may 115 pounds at the time, so you can imagine the effect this had. After I was completely wasted, he brought me back to his car and headed for home.”

She said Edmonson was not driving his personal vehicle, but a State Police patrol car at the time. She said he had the emergency lights on the entire trip to Baton Rouge.

“But he didn’t bring me back to my parent’s house,” she said. Instead, she said he took her to his home which at the time was in a subdivision north of I-12, just off Millerville Road.

“So, he had me, wasted, in his bed, and (he) proceeded to take off my clothes,” she said. “I was petrified and humiliated (and) I can remember just hugging myself in a ball so that he would leave me alone. He succeeded in getting some of my clothes off, but I guess it got to be too much trouble and eventually, (he) just left me alone.

“The more I think back on this, especially having a teenage daughter of my own now, the more I see how predatory this was. He knew exactly what he was doing.

“I’m still afraid of him, though, because he still has powerful friends. But real men, good men, do not ply women with alcohol to try to take advantage of them.”

LouisianaVoice sent an email to Edmonson in an effort to afford him an opportunity to respond to the woman’s allegations but he did not respond to the email.

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Governor's Office, State Police | 23 Comments »

Edmonson predictably tries to spin LSP audit release as Gov. Edwards, like Lady Macbeth, tries in vain to remove the spot

December 14, 2017 by tomaswell

Legislative Auditor Daryl Purpera has released the investigative audit of Louisiana State Police (LSP) pursuant to receiving an undated letter from former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson in which Edmonson said he felt “constrained” to notify Purpera to release the audit to the State Senate.

At the same time, Edmonson said he would submit his official response to the audit’s “various contentions” by Jan. 15, 2018.

Edmonson, in his rambling, grammar mistake-laden letter, continued to cling to the claim that the audit was released prematurely by Purpera’s office.

Simultaneous to the release of the audit, Gov. John Bel Edwards released a curious two-paragraph statement of his own concerning the findings of the audit report. In his statement, Edwards managed to avoid mentioning Edmonson by name, referring to him instead as LSP’s “previous leader.”

“I have welcomed this investigation from the beginning and instructed the Louisiana State Police to fully cooperate,” Edwards said. “The Legislative Auditor’s report uncovered some troubling findings and serious problems with past abuses of power from its previous leader who left his post in March. I believe that public servants must always hold themselves to the highest ethical standards,” the governor said. “That being said, our men and women of the State Police are honorable public servants who do a tremendous job protecting the citizens of Louisiana, often under very dangerous circumstances. Through the leadership of Col. Kevin Reeves (Edmonson’s successor), who took the helm of this department in March of this year, the department has already taken significant steps to restore public trust and accountability. Col. Reeves is one of the finest individuals I’ve had the pleasure of working with, and I am confident that he is already leading the State Police in a new, positive direction.”

Well, Gov. Edwards, I’m sorry, but you don’t get off that easily.

You have been governor now just a couple of weeks shy of two years. I have been writing about Mike Edmonson since June 2014, beginning with that bill amendment sneaked into the legislature on the last day of the 2014 session which would have given Edmonson an illegal boost to his retirement of about $100,000 per year. You voted for that amendment but then, to your credit, called for an investigation when the ruse was exposed by LouisianaVoice.

That story, which LouisianaVoice was first to break, put you and every other member of the Louisiana Legislature on notice of just what Edmonson was capable of. You knew from that day forward that despite his denials, he had encouraged Sen. Neil Riser to slip that amendment into the bill.

But LouisianaVoice didn’t stop there. We kept writing stories about Edmonson’s mismanagement:

  • About his promotion of a supervisor who was hooked on prescription drugs;
  • About his promotion of a trooper who tried to sneak an underaged woman (not his wife) into a Mississippi casino;
  • About his lack of disciplinary action when a trooper had sex (twice) with a woman in his patrol vehicle while on duty;
  • About a trooper who was allowed over an extended period of time to work a fraction of his shift before going home and going to bed;
  • About how he lied to the State Police Commission about the creation of a lieutenant colonel position for a specific member of his inner circle;
  • About how he lied when he said the raises he pushed through for State Troopers would not benefit him or the command officers immediately under him (they did);

There were dozens more such stories published by LouisianaVoice.

Yes, Governor, I wrote consistently about Mike Edmonson for the year before you were elected and for the two-plus years since. You knew what the problems were. Still, you re-appointed him.

You even danced the old bureaucratic shuffle on that issue when I emailed you on Oct. 27, 2015, following your election:

“Please tell me your intentions as to the re-appointment of Mike Edmonson.”

Your response:

“I don’t intend one way or the other.”

But you did intend. You already knew, thanks to your endorsement by the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association, that you had no choice other than to re-appoint him.

Edmonson himself told the Baton Rouge Advocate that you told him on the night of the election, at a party at the Hotel Monteleone, “that he had never even considered another candidate for superintendent.”

But you did have a choice. You had the West Point Honor Code to fall back on. You could have done the right thing and cut Edmonson loose because you already knew he was a liability.

Still, you re-appointed him. The Sheriffs’ Association endorsement meant a lot, didn’t it?

So please, Governor, don’t try to take the high road on this issue. The auditor’s report did not uncover a single problem that had not already been publicized on LouisianaVoice.

For three years.

And now, like Lady Macbeth, you’re trying to get the spot out. But it won’t wash.

But enough of that. Back to Mike Edmonson’s letter.

“As you of all people know,” he wrote to Purpera, “the protocol used…is to provide the recipient (of an audit), whether it is an individual, a public board, or another public body, with a confidential draft report to afford the responding party and opportunity to address the statements in the draft report before it is publicly disseminated.

“For inexplicable reasons, the confidential draft report regarding me and the Louisiana State Police was leaked to the media and the contents of the draft then was (sic) disseminated to media outlets throughout the State—all before I could respond to the various contentions (sic). Realizing the inherent unfairness to me, the residents of our State, as well as respect for the normal procedures, I trust your office has begun an investigation into this improper conduct and will soon report your findings.

“…Given the publication of large segments of a preliminary commentary, and the apparent breach of normal practices that seems to have disclosed the entirety of the confidential draft report, I am now constrained (sic) to notify you that you can release the report and provide your report to the Louisiana State Senate this week. I, in turn, will promptly deliver my response feeling confident the residents of this State will not prematurely reach conclusions until all of the facts are presented. That is the way the process works, that is the only impartial and objective approach, and I strongly believe that is what our fellow citizens expect.”

First of all, Mike, the contents of the audit were not disseminated to “media outlets throughout the state.” Two media outlets had it and they were news partners—the Baton Rouge Advocate and WWL-TV in New Orleans. That was it. Not throughout the state. Not even throughout Baton Rouge.

Second, there were only two copies of the audit. One went to LSP and the other to Edmonson. And the one to Edmonson was the only one with a cover letter to Edmonson himself—and that was the one that was released. WWL-TV even flashed a copy of that COVER LETTER on screen when it aired its story about the audit.

Ergo, there is only one way that audit could have been leaked: from Mike Edmonson himself or someone acting on his behalf. The motive could only be what Edmonson expressed in his letter: to allow him to claim he was treated unfairly and that his defense has been compromised by the prejudicial release of the audit before he could respond.

Unsurprisingly, when LouisianaVoice first called attention to WWL’s posting a copy of that cover letter, the station promptly took the story down. But screen shots of the letter were captured by viewers who apparently anticipated just such a move.

oOo

Editor’s Note: There’s a lot going on with this audit that cannot be covered in a single story. For example, Reeves and several of the troopers involved in that San Diego trip have responded to the audit in writing. One of those responses was 16 pages in length.

Plus, there was a meeting Thursday of the Legislative Audit Advisory Committee which had some interesting exchanges.

LouisianaVoice will be taking these on in separate stories over the coming days.

 

Posted in Audit Reports, Auditor, Corruption, Ethics, Governor's Office, Media, Public Records, State Police, Transparency | 16 Comments »

HIPAA, LSP, DPS, WBRZ, with a little MYOB thrown into the mix, and you have a salacious, confusing, interesting lawsuit

December 13, 2017 by tomaswell

Controversy surrounding that preliminary default judgment levied against a Baton Rouge television station just won’t go away and now a second lawsuit has been filed naming the plaintiff in the first lawsuit and his employer, Louisiana State Police (LSP), as defendants.

And just to make matters a bit more confusing, the name of that defendant (and the plaintiff in the litigation against WBRZ-TV) is the same name—but not the same person—as an occasional writer for LouisianaVoice.

Throw in illegal background searches and claims of violations of the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA), a police officer posing as a police officer, and a nasty divorce, and you’ve got the ingredients for a salacious story that would send a counsellor scrambling for the cabinet where the hard liquor is stashed.

Got it? Didn’t think so. Okay then, let’s review:

Back in October, 21st Judicial District Court Judge Doug Hughes signed a $2.5 million preliminary default judgment against WBRZ after the TV station failed to answer a defamation LAWSUIT against it and its investigative reporter Chris Nakamoto filed by State Trooper Robert Burns of Livingston Parish—a different person altogether than the Robert Burns who periodically writes for LouisianaVoice.

Nakamoto had reported a story about a 64-hour suspension imposed on Burns by LSP following an Internal Affairs investigation into his conducting 52 illegal computer searches on his ex-wife, one Carmen Hawkins, her current fiancé and a former boyfriend over a period of nearly three years—from November 2013 to October 2016.

Nakamoto’s story was taken exclusively from public records he obtained from LSP, so there should have been no question as to the story’s legitimacy. Had the station’s attorney filed an answer, the suit in all probability, would have been dismissed with prejudice, meaning the dismissal would be final. By failing to answer, WBRZ attorney Stephen Babcock of Baton Rouge left Judge Hughes no choice but to enter the preliminary default. That judgment, of course is now under appeal, if somewhat belatedly, and is likely to be reversed.

Burns, in appealing his suspension, said on 46 of those 52 searches, he was conducting a search of his own license plate and that the “spin-off” searches of his wife were a result of “unintended inquiries generated by an automated system.”

IA didn’t buy that explanation, especially since “spin-of” searches generated by an “automated system” couldn’t explain away the two searches on his former wife’s current fiancé and the four searches on her ex-boyfriend. Those searches, besides vehicle and driver’s license records, also included computerized criminal histories on the two men.

Moreover, Burns subsequently disseminated some of the information (we’ll get to that shortly) and then texted his ex-wife to request that she not report his actions because he “could get fired for doing so.”

The searches, according to a letter to him from LSP, were for “non-law enforcement purposes, in violation of department policy and federal law.”

Hughes signed the preliminary JUDGMENT on Sept. 28. On Oct. 19, the day after the LouisianaVoice STORY, Carmen Hawkins weighed in with her own LAWSUIT against the Department of Public Safety (DPS), LSP, and Burns and this is where things really get dicey.

She claims in her petition that she had her vehicle in an auto body shop in Walker when her ex-husband, Burns, appeared at the shop “in uniform and identifying himself as acting under the color of law and within his capacity as an employee of…Louisiana State Police, and proceeded to ask questions about plaintiff’s vehicle and the circumstances surrounding it(s) needing repair.”

Some time following his visit to the repair shop, she says in her lawsuit, Burns appeared at the Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Department “dressed in uniform and identifying himself as acting under the color of law and within his capacity as an employee of…Louisiana State Police (and) proceeded without probable cause to request that a warrant be issued” for her arrest “on allegations he knew to be false or which were based upon reckless disregard for the truth.”

She was then arrested at her home by sheriff’s deputies but “immediately release when the reason for her arrest was discovered,” she said. But that was far from the end of the matter.

In her petition, she says Burns then “published false and defamatory communications” to her employer, “which communications impugned plaintiff’s professional reputation and included the false allegation that plaintiff had accessed confidential, personal health (HIPAA) information.”

Unauthorized access and dissemination of confidential patient information is a violation of HIPAA regulations.

She said Burns’ claims were false and that it resulted in the termination of her employment.

LouisianaVoice sources have indicated Hawkins’ former employer was Our Lady of the Lake Hospital in Baton Rouge and that she has since obtained employment at another Baton Rouge hospital.

She says little about the alleged HIPAA violations but does say in her lawsuit that her ex-husband’s access to LSP databases had been permitted “by the customs and regular practice” of LSP and former State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson, who she said was believed to have had “actual knowledge that its employees, including…Robert Burns, who were not listed as authorized users, could and were engaging in violations of department policy and state and federal law by using the databases…”

Her attorney, Jonathan Mitchell of Baton Rouge, is asking that DPS, LSP and Burns be held liable in solido (jointly) for damages and losses sustained by his client.

Posted in Corruption, Crime, Ethics, Lawsuits, Media, Public Records, State Police, TV News | 43 Comments »

FCC to vote on repeal of Net Neutrality on Thursday, giving more political clout to ISPs at the expense of Internet users

December 12, 2017 by tomaswell

There is an unnecessary controversy building to a fever pitch as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prepared to vote Thursday on abolishing net neutrality.

Unnecessary because the issue should not even be on the table.

Why, other than to financially benefit a half-dozen or so internet service providers (ISPs), would bureaucrats in Washington even consider taking this matter up for a vote?

Everything about the proposed repeal of net neutrality works against the interest of American consumers and to the distinct advantage of companies like AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, Cox, Time-Warner, CenturyLink, et al.

The proposed changes would mean these companies would be able to decide who is and who is not heard. They could create fast and slow lanes and even create toll lanes on the Internet highway, charging extra fees and relegating users to a slower tier of service.

And if you believe for one Nano-second that any of those companies have your best interests at heart, I have some Bernie Madoff stock options you may be interested in.

A group of inventors and technologists authored a letter to Congress in which they said the FCC’s proposed repeal of net neutrality “is based on a flawed and factually inaccurate understanding of Internet technology. These flaws and inaccuracies were documented in detail in a 43-page-long joint COMMENT signed by over 200 of the most prominent Internet pioneers and engineers and submitted to the FCC on July 17, 2017.” The letter said.

“Despite this comment, the FCC did not correct its misunderstandings, but instead premised the proposed order on the very technical flaws the comment explained. The technically incorrect proposed order dismantles 15 years of targeted oversight from both Republican and Democratic FCC chairs, who understood the threats that Internet access providers could pose to open markets on the Internet.”

But the FCC ignored that analysis and refused to hold any public hearings to consider citizen input, the letter said. So much for a full and open democracy in which citizens have a voice.

More than two dozen senators have called for a delay to the vote following reports that more than 80 percent of the 22 million public comments sent to the FCC were generated by bots, nearly unanimously favoring killing net neutrality. Can you say fake news?

On the other hand, about 95 percent of the legitimate comments submitted supported keeping net neutrality and public polling has shown a vast majority of Americans also favor keeping it.

No matter. Donald Trump’s FCC chair, Ajit Pai, plans to go ahead with the vote on Thursday, pitting telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon against Internet behemoths like Google and Amazon who have warned that rolling back the rules would make the telecom companies powerful gatekeepers to information and entertainment.

So, just exactly is net neutrality? Passed in 2015 under President Obama, it is the principle that Internet service providers must treat all data on the Internet the same and not discriminate or charge differently by user, content, website, platform, application, type of attached equipment or method of communication.

In short, net neutrality means an Internet that enables and protects free speech. It means ISPs should not block or discriminate against any content—just as your telephone company cannot decide who you call and what you say on that call.

Under these principles, Internet service providers are unable to intentionally block, slow down, or charge additional fees for specific websites and online content.

A few examples of net neutrality abuse:

  • The FCC was had to order Comcast, for example, to halt the secret slowing (throttling) of uploads from peer-to-peer file sharing.
  • Madison River Communications was fined in 2004 for restricting access to rival ISP Vonage.
  • AT&T was caught throttling access to FaceTime by restricting access to only those users who paid for AT&T’s new shared data plans.
  • Verizon Wireless was accused of throttling when users experienced slow videos on Netflix and YouTube.

In each case, those practices were deemed illegal. But if Net Neutrality is repealed Thursday, throttling will become the norm and there’s not a thing anyone will be able to do about it.

 

Posted in Congress, Finances, IT, Politicians | 9 Comments »

If you remember nothing else about the tax bill, please remember what the House version says about teachers

December 9, 2017 by tomaswell

Bobby Jindal said in a 2015 address to the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI) that teachers are still at their jobs only by virtue of their being able to breathe.

That was when he was touting his ambitious education reform package that was designed to promote and enrich the operators of charter and virtual schools by pulling the financial rug from under public education in Louisiana.

That, of course, only served to further demoralize teachers and to punish those students from low-income families who could not afford charter schools but all that mattered little to Jindal. And perhaps it’s no coincidence that his former chief of staff Steve Waguespack now heads LABI.

Lest one think that sorry attitude toward teachers and the teaching profession went away in January 2016 when Jindal exited the governor’s office, leaving a fiscal mess for his successor, John Bel Edwards, think again.

Here’s a little wakeup call for those of you who may have been lulled into a false sense of security now that the husband of a teacher occupies the governor’s office: That disdain for public education has carried over into the halls of Congress via this proposed new tax bill now being ironed out between the House and Senate.

Much has already been written about how the tax bill is supposed to benefit the middle class when in reality it does just the opposite—yet those blindly loyal zealots, those supporters of child molesters, those adherents of the Republican-can-do-no-wrong-because-they-wrap-themselves-in-a-flag-and-wave-a-bible-in-one-hand-and-a-gun-in-the-other mantra continue to drink the Kool-Aid and cling to the insane theory that Trump, Rand Paul, Mitch McConnell, Bill Cassidy and John Neely Kennedy have their best interests at heart.

These delusional people get all bent out of shape when a jock refuses to kneel at a football game because they consider it an affront to our military (it’s not) while this tax bill rips more than $40 billion from HUD, including programs that help provide housing for homeless VETERANS. How’s that for honoring our fighting men and women? Where the hell are your real priorities?

Any of you die-hard Republicans out there on Medicare? Are you ready to take a $25 billion HIT? You will under this tax “reform.”

All you Trump supporters who have been so critical of the federal deficit prepared to see that deficit increased by a whopping $1.4 trillion? Sens. Cassidy and Kennedy are. So are Reps. Steve Scalise, Clay Higgins, Mike Johnson, Ralph Abraham and Garrett Graves.

Those of you with college kids presently on tuition exemptions like TOPS might want to get ready; your son or daughter is going to have to declare those benefits as taxable income. Is that why you voted Republican?

And while all this is going down, you can take comfort in the knowledge that the proposed tax “reform” will eliminate the tax on inherited fortunes (you know, the kind that made Donald Trump Donald Trump) and will maintain the “carried interest” loophole which taxes the fees of private-equity fund managers (read: the mega-rich, Wall Street bankers, etc.) at low capital gains rates instead of the higher income tax rates.

But after all that’s said and done, the part of the tax bill that really turns my stomach, the part that sticks in my throat, is a provision that is of so small an amount as to be insignificant—if it weren’t for the principle of the whole thing.

Call it a carry over from Jindal, a snub of teachers, or whatever, it’s galling.

Here it is:

Teachers, particularly elementary teachers, traditionally spend hundreds of dollars per year of their own money on materials and supplies for their classrooms. And it’s not for them, it’s for the children. Keep that in mind, folks. While there are parents out there who would rather buy meth and booze and cigarettes than supplies for their kids, there are teachers who quietly enter the school supply stories and stock up so that kid will have a chance.

Call it personal, if you wish, and it might well be. When I was a student at Ruston High School, I was injured right after school one day. My English teacher, Miss Maggie Hinton, never hesitated. She led me to her powder blue 1953 Chevrolet Bel Air and took me to Green Clinic—and paid the doctor to patch me up. You never hear the Jindals of the world tell those kinds of stories. They don’t fit their agenda.

Under the present tax laws, these teachers, who on average spend $500 to $600 per year (school principals, by the way spend an average of $683 of their own money annually on snacks and other food items for students, decorations and supplies like binders and paper), can take a tax deduction of up to $250 for those expenditures. (And to interject a very personal story, once, while I was making a purchase for a school in Livingston Parish at Clegg’s Plant Nursery, the owner would not accept my money. He donated the items because he, too, supports public education.)

Now understand, that’s a tax deduction of up to $250, not a tax credit, which would be a dollar-for-dollar tax cut. A deduction benefits the teacher only $40 or so off her taxes. But at least it’s something.

The Senate version of the new tax bill would double that deduction to $500, thank you very much.

So, what’s my beef?

Nothing much…except the HOUSE version would eliminate the deduction in its entirety.

That’s right. While the Republicans want to take care of the fat cats (those in Trump’s income bracket would realize tax breaks of approximately $37,000), teachers, under the House version of this tax bill would no longer get even that paltry $40. Zero. Zip. Nada. Nothing. Thank you, Garrett Graves, et al.

That really angers me and it should anger every person in Louisiana with even a scintilla of a conscience.

Because teachers are my heroes. Nearly fifty-seven years after graduating from Ruston High School, my heroes are still named Hinton, Ryland, Perkins, Garner, Lewis, Peoples, Edmunds, Barnes,  Johnson, Garrett & Garrett (any I omitted is only because I took no classes under them). They took a personal interest in a kid with no real promise and made him a little better person. They and my grandparents alone have stood the test of what a true hero should be.

And I am proud to defend the honor of teachers everywhere in their memory.

And the fact that five Louisiana House members—who, by the way, are all up for reelection in 2018—voted for this tax “reform” bill that slaps my heroes in the face really pisses me off.

Did I mention those five are up for reelection next year? That’s 2018, less than a year from now.

A smart voter remembers who represents him.

Those not so smart should go fishing on election day.

Posted in Congress, Corruption, Education, Ethics, Governor's Office, House, Revenue, Senate, Taxes | 23 Comments »

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