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State Ethics Board drops the ball in clearing state troopers in San Diego trip: clears way for appeal of disciplinary actions

April 11, 2018 by tomaswell

Where to start.

There are so many inconsistencies and short circuiting of the system by the State Ethics Board regarding those four state troopers who went sightseeing to the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas en route to San Diego in October 2016 that one has to wonder if the board exists in some sort of parallel universe.

The ethics board last month CLEARED the four troopers of any wrongdoing even though they knowingly went several hundred miles out of the way to make their side trip—for which they claimed to be on the clock and were paid overtime.

First of all, the board concluded that they four were instructed by their then-boss, State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson to take the “northern” route in their drive to San Diego, the route that took them on their taxpayer-paid sightseeing vacation.

But regardless of whether Edmonson so instructed or not, the Louisiana State Police (LSP) Policy and Procedure Manual addresses the very issue of carrying out orders that are contrary to state law.

It’s right there in black and white on page 360:

  • “A commissioned officer shall promptly obey and execute any and all lawful orders of a superior officer. A “lawful order” is any order or assignment issued either verbally or in writing by a superior or ranking officer.” (emphasis mine)
  • “A commissioned officer shall not obey any order which he knows, or should have known, would require him to commit an illegal act. If in doubt as to the legality of an order, officers shall request the issuing officer to clarify the order.” (emphasis mine)

Of course, the decision—or perhaps non-decision would be a better description—sets up the four for a strong appeal of their discipline imposed by Edmonson’s successor, Col. Kevin Reeves.

In demoting Rodney Hyatt and Derrell Williams and reducing their pay, Reeves admonished them for “indifference” to what he called the “common sense notion” that it is not proper to claim pay for time when they were sightseeing or sleeping. Hyatt was demoted from lieutenant to sergeant and Williams from major and head of LSP’s Internal Affairs, to lieutenant.

Their appeal claims that their discipline was improper on procedural grounds because LSP took too long to complete its internal affairs investigation. They say the agency violated its owns policies by failing to request an extension of the internal investigation within 60 days.

But wait.

Back on June 8, retired state trooper Leon “Bucky” Millet appeared before the State Police Commission and advised commissioners of his belief that LSP was not adhering to commission rules regarding timely conducting investigations.

That was during the time that the commission seemed to be deliberately dragging its feet in its investigation, presumably on the pretense that there were vacancies on the commission and it was desired that new members coming onto the commission should have an opportunity to participate in the investigation.

In response to Millet’s concerns, Lt. Col. Mike Noel specifically said it was permissible for an employee to agree to an extension of time in accordance with the police officer’s Bill of Rights—and that the employees in question (Hyatt and Williams) “have agreed to the extension,” (emphasis mine) according to OFFICIAL MINUTES of that June 8 meeting published on the commission website.

State police are in a unique position in that they do not fall under the jurisdiction of the State Civil Service Commission but instead come under the moribund State Police Commission which is more prone to rubber-stamping recommendations to not investigate political activity by the Louisiana State Troopers Association.

Millet was told by the Board of Ethics on April 24, 2017, that the board declined to investigate as activity by two commission members because the LSTA “is not a public entity subject to the ethics code which includes the whistleblower statute.”

Yet, the ethics commission fined LSTA and its executive director David Young $5,000 for the LSTA’s action of funneling political contributions to political candidates, including but not limited to Bobby Jindal and John Bel Edwards, through Young’s personal bank account.

Some observers might call the claim that it had no jurisdiction over LSTA because it “is not a public entity” and the $5,000 fine inconsistent.

But hey, to be fair, consistency has been the hallmark of both the State Police Commission and the Ethics Board. They both have been consistently weak. Consistently able to avoid doing their jobs. Consistently ineffective and irrelevant. Consistently useless.

Posted in Corruption, Ethics, Fraud, State Police | 12 Comments »

LouisianaVoice April fundraiser continues: please contribute

April 9, 2018 by tomaswell

Folks, if you believe in what LouisianaVoice is trying to do, please don’t forget our April fundraiser.

It’s imperative that an effective electorate be an informed electorate and that’s where we come in. LouisianaVoice does not track policy-making to a great extent because I’m a one-person operation and to try and monitor every committee meeting, every Senate and House debate and floor vote is simply impossible.

But what I do is to peel back the veneer and look beyond what elected and appointed officials say to see what they actually do. After all, it’s one thing to sit back and pay lip service to equal pay for women, equal justice for all, clean, honest government, and all the wonderful things we were taught about democracy in civics class. It’s quite another to see how those theories are put into practice.

 

My job is to see how equal treatment for all is disregarded in favor of personal enrichment of our so-called public servants. An individual should never go into public service as a means of increasing his or her own wealth, position and power. After all, the very term public service implies–or should imply–just that: service.

Unfortunately, we have legislators who, instead of listening to their constituents, turn instead to lobbyists for special interests who pour money into their campaigns for advice and direction on important issues. And their interests far too often run counter to ours and taxpayers—women, minorities, teachers, and environmentalists, to name but a few—end up holding the short end of the stick.

Regulators favor big oil, big banks, big pharma, and big everything else with big tax breaks that have to be made up by the middle class. College students end up with back-breaking tuition costs because the legislature has failed to adequately fund higher education. TOPS, intended to ease the burden for families with college-bound kids has instead become a financial windfall for speculators throwing up student housing around college campuses.

LouisianaVoice revealed the abuses of state regulatory boards like the Board of Dentistry and the Louisiana State Medical Licensing Board. It was here that you read about a dentist who tried to reveal the problems with dental implants that ended up costing the state millions of dollars. But the dentist who tried to warn his bosses had his career ruined by those trying to protect their investment. There is no real protection for whistleblowers.

As evidence by the two stories beneath this plea for contributions—and by earlier stories about the Louisiana State Police (LSP)—law enforcement has been allowed to go unchecked. Abuses have abounded in local sheriffs’ departments across the state and the previous administration at LSP was reappointed by the governor despite ample evidence of mismanagement at the top—just because the sheriffs’ association wanted him reappointed. In hindsight, it’s clear that was a major blunder by our governor—but you know what? We at LouisianaVoice told him so before he ever took office.

When my book Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption is published, you will be disgusted at the manner in which many of our local sheriffs abuse basic civil rights, misuse departmental funds and personnel, and roll roughshod over anyone who gets in their way.

LouisianaVoice took on Bobby Jindal. We showed how he favored contributors with huge contracts. Now it appears that he may be attempting a comeback of sorts. I don’t know whether he plans to return to the governor’s office or some other public office like U.S. Senator, but he keeps churning out those Wall Street Journal op-eds and he’s not doing that for his health.

Please help us to keep telling these stories. They are important and the mainstream media simply is not doing it. Because of budgetary cutbacks by newspapers, real investigative reporting is all but dead and buried.

Please contribute to our efforts by clicking on the yellow DONATE button above the advertisement for my Bobby Jindal book to the right of this post. Or you can mail a check or money order to:

Capital News Service/LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727

 

 

Posted in Politics | Leave a Comment »

Iberia’s Louis Ackal and Terrebonne’s Jerry Larpenter have much in common: titles of sheriff, methods of intimidation

April 8, 2018 by tomaswell

What do Louis Ackal and Jerry Larpenter have in common?

Well, among other things:

They’re both sheriffs of parishes they run with dictatorial methods—Ackal in Iberia Parish and Larpenter in Terrebonne;

Neither will hesitate to take whatever actions they deem necessary to silence any voice of dissent—from pulling off a RAID of a critic’s home in Terrebonne to turning DOGS loose on defenseless inmates of the Iberia Parish jail;

And both reportedly have the same legal counsel.

But the similarities go even further.

An Ackal critic who had the audacity to initiate a recall effort against the sheriff found himself ARRESTED for manslaughter after a single-vehicle accident in which he was not even involved. (Those bogus charges, brought by a cooperative district attorney, were very quietly dropped after LouisianaVoice’s story of the heavy-handed techniques.)

Larpenter, meanwhile, has taken a step to make it very costly for his critic (the one whose home he raided) to obtain what anywhere else would be routine public records—records that he or anyone else is legally entitled to see.

Wayne Anderson’s home was raided and his computers seized by Larpenter after Anderson posted internet blogs critical of Larpenter. That raid was quickly ruled unconstitutional by the federal courts and the Andersons sued and won a substantial monetary settlement from Larpenter believed to be in the neighborhood of $250,000.

Anderson submitted his request that included, among other things, all invoices and copies of checks paid to the Dood Law Firm, Seth Dodd, William Dodd, Bill Dodd, “or any Dodd,” from Jan. 1, 2016 through the present date.

Dodd is the legal counsel for Larpenter and, according to unconfirmed reports, also represents Ackal.

Soon after submitted his request, Anderson received an electronic communication from Richard McCormack, an attorney with the New Orleans firm of Irwin Fritchie Urquhart & Moore. McCormack informed Anderson that his firm had been “retained by the sheriff to coordinate the sheriff’s response to your public records request.”

 

As one with considerable experience in requesting and obtaining public records on behalf of LouisianaVoice, I can say that I find it quite unusual that the good sheriff would find it necessary to retain a high-priced legal team not to ascertain what is and what is not public record, but simply to “coordinate the sheriff’s response” when a clerical employee would be fully capable of performing such duties.

I’m just guessing here, but I would estimate their rate to be in the neighborhood of $300 per hour—and don’t think for one scintilla of a nano-second that they will put just one attorney on this project when they could put two or three and really run up the tab. From what we hear, the firm has two of its attorneys working on a way to make a routine public records request punitive.

And just what is Bill Dodd’s function, anyway? (Every time I hear that name, I think of Earl Long’s reference to another Bill Dodd during his 1959 gubernatorial campaign, the current Bill Dodd’s father, as “Big, bad, bald Bill Dodd.”)

As near as I can make out, his job was harassment, if reports coming out of Terrebonne are true. Dodd says emphatically that they are not.

When the Andersons asked the sheriff’s insurance company who issued their settlement check, things went south in a hurry. The Andersons say no one from the insurance company ever appeared on the court record on the sheriff’s behalf, leading them to believe Larpenter may have misled the insurance company about their claim.

Soon after they made their inquiry, they said Dodd called one of the couple’s supervisor and threatened to sue for tortuous interference and damage to his reputation.

Dodd, contacted by LouisianaVoice adamantly denied that. “I haven’t threatened to sue anybody,” he said. “I’ve been practicing law long enough that I don’t have to threaten to sue anyone, I just sue ‘em.”

C’mon, Dodd, you ain’t talking to someone who just fell off a turnip truck. There’s not a lawyer alive who won’t “threaten” to sue if a threat can achieve his purpose. The “threat” to sue is one of the most dependable arrows in an attorney’s quiver. I only wish I knew the number of times I’ve been “threatened” with a lawsuit if I published a story. Only twice have they followed through with an actual lawsuit and on both occasions, I prevailed.

Another big factor in both sheriffs’ success in maintaining a death grip on their jobs is a local press that seems reluctant to take them on. The Daily Iberian has denied that is less than aggressive in covering the exploits of Ackal but readers have expressed a general lack of in-depth coverage by the paper.

Unfortunately, the threads linking Ackal and Larpenter are the rule, not the exception. Those threads are strong, they link more than just these two sheriffs and that link runs straight through the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association.

I have just completed the manuscript for what I feel is a revealing book about Louisiana’s sheriffs and the muscle they flex in Louisiana politics.

The working title of the book is Louisiana’s Rogue Sheriffs: A Culture of Corruption.

It will probably be about a year before the book is actually published. I will keep you abreast of the schedule as I know more.

 

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Media, Politicians, Public Records | 4 Comments »

Iberia Parish Sheriff Ackal settles two lawsuits in March but local paper, The Daily Iberian, apparently missed the stories

April 7, 2018 by tomaswell

This post is almost certain to earn me an invitation to never enter Iberia Parish as long as Louis Ackal is sheriff. That’s okay. I’ve received similar invitations from other sheriffs down through the years.

But the truth is, Ackal is a menace and is quite probably the last person in Iberia Parish who should be permitted to wear a badge and to carry a gun.

He not only presides over a department that abuses inmates, but when a local citizen, an African-American, initiated a recall effort against Ackal, he ended up arrested for manslaughter in connection with a one-car accident in which he was not even involved.

On July 8, 2016, Donald Broussard was rear-ended by a hit-and-run driver In Lafayette Parish who minutes later collided head-on with an 18-wheeler and was killed in adjacent Iberia Parish. Yet it was Broussard who was indicted on a charge of manslaughter by an Iberia Parish grand jury on March 19, 2017.

And more recently, Ackal has settled two lawsuits against his department—one involving the deliberate shooting of a dog, a family pet, and the other involving the death of a prisoner while handcuffed in a sheriff’s department squad car.

Four years ago, on March 3, 2014, 22-year-old Victor White III was stopped by Iberia Parish deputies. The deputies said marijuana and cocaine were found on White but who really knows? Evidence planted by unscrupulous law enforcement authorities is certainly not unprecedented. I’m not saying drugs were planted in this White’s case. He was placed in a sheriff’s department patrol car, his hands cuffed behind his back. While cuffed, deputies said, he somehow managed to get a gun and “committed suicide” by shooting himself in the back.

A coroner’s report released five months later, however, said White shot himself in the chest, a feat that would seem to defy all laws of physics. That White’s hands were never tested for gunpowder residue only served to cast further doubt on the official version of events. Still, the parish coroner, Dr. Carl Ditch, insisted White’s death was a suicide.

Lloyd Grafton, an expert retained by White family, weighed in on the evidence. Grafton, of Ruston, is a veteran of twenty-one years as a special agent for the Justice Department’s U.S. Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs and with the U.S. Treasury as a special agent for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms. He also served on the Louisiana State Police Commission. Today, he serves as an expert witness in cases involving alleged excessive force by law enforcement.

He said the entry wound was more to the right side than frontal area and that the bullet exited from White’s left side. “There is no way he could have shot himself the way they (officials) described it, with his hands cuffed behind his back,” Grafton said.

On May 19, 2015, U.S. Rep. Cedric Richmond of Louisiana’s Second Congressional District, wrote a gut-wrenching three-page letter to then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in which he requested an investigation into mistreatment to the deaths of eight people who were in the custody of the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office. In his letter, he cited several suspicious incidents that occurred at the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office during Ackal’s tenure:

  • In 2008, a man alleged that a deputy beat him so badly during an arrest that he coughed up blood and then a muzzle was put over his mouth. The man later settled a suit with the Sheriff’s Office for $50,000.
  • In 2009, Michael Jones, a 43-year-old man who suffered from bipolar disorder and schizophrenia, died in the jail after an altercation with then-Warden Frank Ellis and then-lieutenant Wesley Hayes. This year, a judge ruled that two Sheriff’s Office employees were responsible for Jones’ death. The judgment in the case totaled $61,000.
  • In 2009, former inmate Curtis Ozenne alleged that officers began a contraband sweep by forcing him to remain in the “Muslim praying position” for nearly three hours. Mr. Ozenne alleged he was kicked in the mouth multiple times, threatened with police dogs and then his head was shaved. In his complaint, Mr. Ozenne also alleged that Sheriff Ackal threatened him with a dog and watched as an officer struck him with a baton for smiling. Mr. Ozenne’s suit against the Sheriff’s Office was later settled for $15,000.
  • In 2009, Robert Sonnier, a 62-year-old mentally ill man, died as the result of a fatal blow delivered by an IPSO Deputy in the course of a physical altercation. After Mr. Sonnier was unable to receive a psychological evaluation authorized by his wife, he was left in a wheelchair to stew in his own waste for several hours. He eventually became agitated which led to altercations with Deputies that resulted in Sonnier being pepper sprayed twice and eventually leading to the fatal blow.
  • In 2012, Marcus Robicheaux, an inmate at Iberia Parish Jail, was pulled from a wall and thrown to the ground as IPSO correctional officers ran a contraband sweep. A deputy’s dog then attacked Mr. Robicheaux, biting his legs, arms and torso, as the deputy stomped and kicked the prone inmate. The whole three-minute incident was captured on video from the jail’s surveillance cameras.

Ackal and several deputies were eventually indicted but when the judge showed up in federal court in Lafayette impaired, the case was transferred to Shreveport where, with the help of high-priced legal counsel, he was a acquitted, though several of his deputies were either convicted or copped pleas.

Federal Judge Donald E. Walter, who said he never liked sentencing those who appeared before him in court, told the deputies that they were “the worst.”

“So many law enforcement officials are out there risking their lives for little pay. All I can say is you had lousy leadership,” he said. “How sad this is for all concerned.”

Interestingly enough, the local newspaper, The Daily Iberian, reports precious little of the sheriff’s travails. Whether that is because of fear of reprisals on Ackal’s part or for other, less noble reasons is unclear. Either way, it’s a sad commentary when the local press can be cowed into submission by any politician—even one with a gun.

Take that settlement with the family of Victor White last month, for instance. As has become a disturbing trend in recent years, the terms of the settlement were sealed so the taxpayers of Iberia Parish who paid the tab will never know how much that monumental screw-up has cost them in terms not only of the settlement itself but the legal defense of Ackal and his deputies, as well.

And The Daily Iberian certainly isn’t going out of its way to learn how much the settlement was. In fact, search though you might, you won’t even find a story in The Daily Iberian about the settlement at all. Nothing. Nada. Nil. Zip. Zilch. Nary a word. Way to uphold the integrity of the Fourth Estate, guys. But if you want to do something on this story, you can check out this Lafayette television station’s WEBSITE. At least they have some inkling of what a real news story looks like.

And then there is this April 4 STORY about Ackal settling yet another lawsuit last month, this one for $75,000 after one of Ackal’s deputies shot a two-year-old Presa Canario dog after deputy Lucas Plauche’s body cam recorded him saying to the animal, “Dog, you’re about to die, you understand me? You’re about to die.” Plauche could be heard chuckling but the video ended just before he shot the dog in its owner’s yard.

Oh, and that story, by the way, ran in The Shreveport Times, nearly 200 miles north of New Iberia. Nary a word in The Daily Iberian, however.

In most cases, public bodies are insured against such liability. Not the Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office, however. Its liability insurance premiums increased dramatically in recent years with the increasing number of complaints that were settled and its coverage was eventually dropped.

The citizens of Iberia Parish have a right to know the total cost of suits and settlements that Ackal is responsible for. The fact that The Daily Iberian, for whatever reason, makes no effort to perform even a scintilla of investigative reporting is irrelevant. Ackal owes Iberia Parish residents an explanation.

And then he owes it to them to resign.

Posted in Corruption, Courts, Crime, Ethics, Judges, Lawsuits, Media, Public Records, TV News | 12 Comments »

Please help LouisianaVoice: donate to our fundraiser

April 6, 2018 by tomaswell

I came across this cartoon the other day…

…and it occurred to me that the power of words is useless unless there is:

  • Someone to write the words, and
  • Someone to read them.

It’s a little like another slogan I saw recently:

 

After every election in this country, there is always that sad reminder that less than half the registered voters participated in one of the most sacred privileges available to a free people: the right to vote.

As someone once said, if you didn’t vote, you have no right to complain.

Likewise, if you don’t read, you have no right to say you didn’t know.

An uninformed public is a compliant public, willing to be bent and molded by those with the resources to shape public opinion.

And more and more, that is being done with sound bites rather than in-depth reporting. Sound bites that inundate you with half-truths, misrepresentations, and outright lies.

LouisianaVoice is neither Republican nor Democrat, neither conservative nor liberal.

LouisianaVoice has only one agenda: the truth.

LouisianaVoice has only one objective: to inform our readers of what takes place behind closed doors that impact your lives.

You won’t always agree with what appears here. Likewise, we will make mistakes. But the mistakes we do make are made with the intent of informing you with the facts available to us.

Getting those facts takes time, effort and money. We have to pay for public records. And sometimes public officials even sue in an effort to discourage our efforts.

One area sheriff, in response to a simple public records request, retained the services of an expensive New Orleans law firm to do the records search for no other reason than to escalate the costs and to discourage our efforts to get to the truth by passing the attorneys’ fees on to us. Yes, it’s dirty pool, but it’s an illustration of how far your public servants will go to keep the facts from you.

That’s why we hold two fundraising drives each year—in October and April.

We are in our April fund drive now and we humbly ask for your continued financial help.

You may have seen the comment by Ben who, in ridiculing our efforts (for whatever reason), predicted that because other liberals only like to spend other people’s money, our fundraiser would be a failure. I’m happy to report there was a spike in contributions after his comment was posted. Ben might also be interested in knowing that we have never failed to meet our fundraising objectives.

Please help us prove him wrong again by clicking on the yellow DONATE button above the image of my Jindal book to the right of this post or by mailing a check or money order to:

Capital News Service/LouisianaVoice

P.O. Box 922

Denham Springs, Louisiana 70727

But even more important, do it to keep our public officials accountable.

 

Posted in Politics | 5 Comments »

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