Sound Off Louisiana

Louisiana State Police (LSP) Col. Robert Hodges formally denies former LSP Capt. Heath Guillotte’ s application to purchase his service weapon, which would be the only such denial transpiring during Hodges’ entire tenure as LSP Colonel.  Meanwhile, Hodges approved weapon purchases by troopers retiring under extremely unfavorable conditions (e.g., being drunk and crashing an LSP vehicle on I-10).  Further, LSP (perhaps upon Hodges’ order?) actually denied that Hodges’ denial even existed, stating the above document did not exist.

As we begin this feature, let us first emphasize our firm commitment to permitting anyone to respond to our features, and we will publish those responses.  Regarding our October 12, 2026 feature regarding former LSP Capt. Heath Guillotte’s claim that Hodges falsified an address in the LSP database to qualify for a Major position at LSP, Hodges did issue a formal response, and here is that response in its entirety:

10/14/26:  Hodges responds to the first installment of this series.

Now, on to today’s feature, which is installment two of a five-part series.

Hodges is running television ads touting the fact that he will be a Sheriff of St. Tammany Parish who will be transparent and be one serving with “trust and integrity.”:

Television ad wherein former LSP Col. Hodges touts making the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office “transparent” and him serving with “trust and integrity.”

Well, On November 2, 2025, we published this feature in which, on October 28, 2025, former LSP Capt. Heath Guillotte outlined numerous issues concerning Hodges.

In that feature, we explained the fact that, on April 19, 2025, Guillotte inadvertently sent this email to Sound Off Louisiana’s Robert Burns (along with all of the LSP Command Staff), when it should have gone to current LSP Chief of Staff Robert Burns.

The error happened when Guillotte typed the first few letters of the name.  Thereafter, his address book populated with the wrong Burns.  He then hit return, and we got the email rather than LSP’s Burns.

That simple erroneous act resulted in this intense grilling by LSP Internal Affairs lasting over two hours as evidenced here.

Guillotte stated to us during that October 28, 2025 interview first linked above that he felt Hodges was determined to fire him over having communications with Sound Off’s Burns and, based on our experiences with Hodges, we concur.  Accordingly, soon after that June 26, 2025 second IA interview, Guillotte, after consulting with his wife, opted to retire.

Soon thereafter, he made a routine request to purchase his service weapon.

Numerous retired and active LSP troopers have told us this is standard practice and that a denial is completely “unheard of.”

Nevertheless, here’s Guillotte briefly stating precisely how his request was handled by Col. Hodges:

10/28/25:  Guillotte explains what happened with him when he made what every trooper (retired and active) with whom we’ve spoken entailing such weapons purchase requests have characterized as a, “routine request for which a denial is unheard of.”

As evidenced by our lead photo for this feature, Hodges denied Guillotte’s request on September 9, 2025.  We at Sound Off Louisiana experienced the following under Hodges’ “transparent” leadership at LSP in trying to obtain the denied application:

== 11/4/25:  Formal public records request submitted for all denials of weapons purchase applications from 1/8/24 through 11/4/25.

==  11/4/25:  Standard automated response of “45 days.”

== 11/5/25:  We receive this asinine inquiry:  “Please clarify the term ‘application.’  Are you referring to the Civil Service application or the weapons application?  Please provide the dates for the applications you are requesting.”  [Apparently, the fine folks at LSP cannot read the dates of 1/8/24 – 11/4/25 supplied with the request!].

== 11/6/25:  We indicate weapons applications and provide a fully-redacted copy of Guillotte’s application to use as a “go-by.”

== 11/7/25:  We receive the following communication from LSP:  “The Louisiana Department of Public Safety, Public Safety Services has reviewed its files and has determined there are no responsive record(s) to your request. This request is now closed.”

Clearly, the record does exist, and LSP point-blank lied to us regarding its existence!  Was this at Hodges’ urging?  We can’t answer that; however, we strongly suspect that it was.

Only the voters of St. Tammany Parish can decide whether Hodges’ TV ads promoting his “transparency” and his “trust and integrity” are themselves truthful, but we’ll only state that it’s a darn good thing that we don’t get to be the judge of that claim!

Furthermore, the voters of St. Tammany Parish may wish to consider the penalty for arbitrarily withholding a public record is $100/day and, in the above cited example, the record was clearly and unequivocally withheld from us! 

If Hodges is elected and a similar withholding transpires by someone making a public records request of the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office, the requester may not be as accommodating as Sound Off Louisiana’s Burns and may file a lawsuit that would almost certainly succeed.

This feature was the second of our installments regarding former LSP Col. Robert Hodges and his candidacy to become St. Tammany Parish’s next Sheriff.  We’ll have the third installment out in coming days.

We’re going to also provide a running list of all features as we progress through this series:

Installment One:  Hodges touts St. Tammany as “home for nearly 25 years,” but former LSP Capt. Guillotte states he falsified database with Lafayette address for Major promotion.

As we reminded everyone in installment one, early voting begins in three days on Tuesday, October 20 and runs through Tuesday, October 27 (except Sunday, October 25).

In the end, let’s hope the best man wins the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff race either on election day, November 3, 2026, or in a runoff on Saturday, December 12, 2026!

Screenshot from the Louisiana State Police (LSP) database of employees indicating that former LSP Col. Robert Hodges had his address changed from St. Tammany Parish to Lafayette Parish in order to ‘live’ within 75 miles of Region 2, thus ‘qualifying’ himself for the Major position for which he applied and was selected in 2022.

We published this recent feature where, near the end of the video, we indicated that we’d be supplying material on one candidate for St. Tammany Parish Sheriff for whom, “we view his name as not even being on the ballot if we could vote in the election.”

Sound Off Louisiana’s Robert Burns also indicated there is only one candidate in that race with whom he is familiar, and that would be former LSP Col. Robert Hodges.

Today is Installment One of a five-installment series of very brief features wherein we lay the foundation for why we would most definitely not vote for Hodges if we resided in St. Tammany Parish.

Let’s begin by taking 20 seconds to see Hodges, in his introductory video announcing his campaign, tout the fact that he has called St. Tammany “home for nearly 25 years:”

Hodges touts St. Tammany as “home for nearly 25 years.”

Now let’s provide a very brief video segment from our November 2, 2025 feature of our extensive October 28, 2025 interview with former LSP Captain Heath Guillotte about his final months under Hodges at LSP.

Guillotte cites numerous examples of Hodges’ “hypocritical leadership.”

Here’s the segment for today’s feature concerning Hodges’ alleged lack of truthfulness regarding where he lived, given that he needed an Acadiana-area address to qualify for Major over Region 2:

10/28/25:  Guillotte asserts Hodges falsified the LSP database with a false Lafayette address (supplied as lead photo of this feature but with the street address redacted by us) to qualify for the Major position he was awarded in 2022.

As referenced in the video above, Guillotte alleges that Hodges provided a “false address” for the purpose of obtaining the position of Major with LSP in 2022.  Guillotte did not wish to drag the owner of the home Hodges listed as his residence into the matter, and that is why we redacted the street address and provided only the city (Lafayette).  We will, however, reveal that the Zillow-estimated valuation of the home is $1.644 million.

That’s Installment One, folks.  We’ll have Installment Two out very soon, and all of the features will be short, succinct, and to-the-point just like this one.

Early voting begins on Tuesday, October 20 and runs through Tuesday, October 27 (except Sunday, October 25).  In the end, let’s hope the best man wins the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff race either on election day, November 3, 2026, or in a runoff on Saturday, December 12, 2026!

Louisiana State Board of Cosmetology (LSBC) Member Rene’ Bosworth glances at the comment card of Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr., as she demands he cease speaking (notwithstanding the fact that Board Chairman Jennifer Cobb Reed had informed him that he could continue) as colleague Nicole Gaudin looks on.

On June 8, 2026, the LSBC’s “official three-minute timer” for public comment went off as Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns was making public comment before the Board Members.  At a subsequent meeting, Burns told the Board Members that such an occurrence would never transpire at any Legislative hearing nor any other Board or Commission meeting.

Burns told the Board Members that the appropriate thing to do is to utilize the stopwatch, not the timer, on a cell phone and, as the time is nearing an end, gently inform the speaker that he or she needs to wrap it up.

Here is a perfect example that the LSBC could (and should) use as a go-by of only about 25 seconds wherein former Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC) Chairman Eulis Simien, Jr. very professionally and diplomatically informs Carl Brown that he has “about a minute-and-a-half left,” on his five-minute timeframe.:

25-second video clip of LSPC Chairman Eulis Simien, Jr., informing Carl Brown that he has, “about a minute-and-a-half left” on the five-minute period each attendee has for making public comment.

We want to go out of our way to emphasize one point:  Every Member of the LSBC, in our opinion, demonstrates professionalism and courtesy when it comes to interaction with the public except one:  That one would be Rene’ Bosworth of The Salon of Bocage (who is pictured as the fourth-from-the-left on this photo and upon scrolling down, is individually profiled).  For those who may be unfamiliar with Baton Rouge, one does not find a more upscale, high-end neighborhood than Bocage.

Now, rather than heed the admonition of Burns at a previous meeting, Bosworth, perhaps perturbed at Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr.’s stated steadfast resolve to, “solve this hostile work environment,” together with him  pointing out that cosmetology will be the most impacted program by the newly-enacted “gainful employment provision” by the U. S. Department of Education, chose to rudely inform Phillips that he would not be allowed to continue with his statements at the meeting of Monday, October 5, 2026.

Let us provide Rev. Phillips’ public comments in their entireties together with Bosworth’s blatant ignoring of our admonition that using the stopwatch and providing a polite notice that the public comment period (which we believe should match the LSPC’s period of five minutes) was ignored and, instead, she opted to continue using a timer.  The buzzer went off, after which Bosworth, ignoring the declaration by Board Chairman Jennifer Cobb Reed that Phillips could continue speaking, demanded that he cease his public comment immediately.

Here’s video of what we deem to be most deplorable display put on by a Cosmetology Board Member in quite some time:

10/5/26:  After first declaring that he intends to, “solve the hostile work environment in this office,” Rev. Freddie Lee Phillips, Jr. shows everyone a news feature wherein cosmetology is expected to be the #1 most impacted field of the impending implementation of the “gainful employment act.”

Regarding the “gainful employment act,” our site visitors will recall our June 6, 2026 feature in which Board Member Jean Pitre outlined his contentions of the impacts of the act on cosmetology schools in Louisiana.  Three (3) days later, on June 9, 2026, we followed that feature up with this feature regarding the potential impact for for-profit cosmetology schools.

When the final rule was adopted, Pitre and other cosmetology schools succeeded in obtaining a one-year delay on implementation of the rule.  They were able to do so by contending that tips constitute a significant portion of hair stylists’ income.  Accordingly, in conformity with the One Big Beautiful Bill, the Education Department will use 2026 as a delayed year and analyze the tips reported on stylists’ income tax returns since those tips are currently not subject to taxation.

Phillips was providing a very succinct statement and, in our opinion, he did so very professionally, of this September 25, 2026 Washington Times article entitled “The Federal Rule that cuts off aid to degrees that don’t pay off.”  From that article:

The programs that fail, and by how much

The failures cluster heavily. During the rulemaking, the department’s own analysis showed cosmetology and related grooming programs accounting for more than 40 percent of projected failures, by far the largest share of any field. Allied health and medical assisting came next at about 12 percent.

The gap is not close. A Century Foundation study found cosmetology graduates earning about $16,600 a year on average, roughly $9,000 less than workers with only a high school diploma, while carrying an average of $10,000 in student debt. In the department’s most recent analysis, roughly 92 percent of cosmetology programs were projected to fail the earnings test.

We want to also emphasize one point.  For those who may say, “Well, this is Trump and his administration, and if the Democrats take control, they can reverse all of this,” this entire initiative was first undertaken by then-President Barack Obama, and we salute both his and President Trump’s diligent efforts to put an end to this scam!

The private cosmetology school programs have been nothing short of a massive victimization of unsuspecting students to enrich private school owners!  In the process, they have left taxpayers having to foot the bill for these schools’ greed and insatiable appetite to suck off the public tit, which is precisely what they have been doing, our crudeness notwithstanding!  At $2 trillion a year annual Federal budget deficits together with a $40 trillion national debt, there’s no more milk left in the tit!

Now, Pitre was definitely energetic in his efforts as evidenced by him authoring this June 26, 2026 NOLA article as a last-ditch effort to keep the gainful employment provisions from being approved in the final version of the rule.  We are not going to highlight any provisions of Pitre’s commentary but rather merely point out the fact that the paper chose to place a photo as its lead of a cosmetology program at Donaldsonville High School.  In our humble opinion, that is precisely where these programs belong!  High schools provide a more efficient and certainly far less costly approach to training future cosmetologists.

As for Bosworth, we believe every Member of that Board, along with the Governor, should be taken aback at her performance in the above video.  If it were a one-time occurrence, we could give her a pass.  Her continued crass, rude, unprofessional, belligerent, and militaristic mannerisms are, in our opinion, an embarrassment to the other Members of the Board and to Gov. Landry!  We call upon Chairman Jennifer Cobb Reed to strip her of her timekeeping duties for failing to exhibit even a modicum of professionalism and decorum in the historical performance of those duties!

Furthermore, she unquestionably owes both Phillips and Cobb Reed an apology for taking over the meeting (in blatant disrespect to the sitting Chairman) in the manner in which she did on the above video!

If anyone may be interested, Click Here to see the October 5, 2026 Cosmetology Board Meeting in its entirety.