LSP Master Trooper Dean Coates sues LSP one day after procuring LSPC commitment to investigate claims of haphazard implementation of 3 percent longevity pay increases.

 

LSP Master Trooper Dean Coates, who appeared before the Louisiana State Police Commission on Thursday, October 10, 2019 to request an investigation of LSP having failed to uniformly implement longevity pay increases, sued LSP the following day, October 11, 2019, seeking to be awarded his longetivity pay retroactively to October 12, 2016.

Louisiana State Police (LSP) Master Trooper Dean Coates sued LSP on Friday, October 11, 2019.  The preceding lawsuit is self-explanatory but, in a nutshell, it asserts haphazard implementation of a 3 percent “longevity pay increase” which was awarded only to “chosen commissioned troopers” when Coates asserts the pay raise is applicable to all troopers, the majority of whom Coates asserts in his litigation have not been awarded the pay increases.  The following table illustrates the timeline of events outlined in the petition:

DateEvent Transpiring
October 9, 2014New pay grid approved by LSPC.
February 5, 2015New pay grid signed into law.
November 12, 2015Jason Starnes proposes amendment stipulating 3% longevity raise not merit-based but instead is applicable for all commissioned troopers. LSPC approves pay grid with Starnes' amendment included.
October 12, 2016Pay grade with amendment signed into law by Gov. Edwards.
June 19, 2017LSPC Executive Director Jason Hannaman confirms 10/12/16 as applicable date and indicates Coates entitled to longevity 3% increase prospectively from 10/12/16 forward.
September 9, 2017Coates, for the first time, receives 3% longevity pay increase.
March, 2018Coates transferred from Troop A road detail to Internal Affairs. Salary increase thus allegedly due Coates but he has not received that salary increase.
July 8, 2019; July 11, 2019; July 15, 2019; August 28, 2019; September 20, 2019; October 3, 2019Coates makes repeated demands for payment (see highlighted paragraph below).
September 20, 2019Coates asks LSPC to investigate implementation of longevity pay increases across the system.
October 10, 2019LSPC votes to have Executive Director Hannaman investigate the longevity pay matter (see video below).

Paragraph 10 is the critical allegation contained within the litigation, so we put it front and center at this time with some highlighted critical words within the paragraph:

One day prior to suing LSP, on Thursday, October 10, 2019, Coates succeeded in obtaining an “investigation” of the alleged selectivity of the pay increases by the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC).  We now present Coates’ appeal for just such an investigation before the LSPC in its entirety:


Coates and his attorney, W. Brett Conrad, Jr. (an associate of the Craft law firm) state the case for an investigation into the longevity pay increases matter to be conducted.

We’re not even going to bother with linking all of the features in the last week regarding negative LSP publicity.  Instead, we’ll just point out that the stench of nepotism and cronyism, when combined with an apparent increasing likelihood that criminal acts transpired entailing the ouster of LSPC Commissioner Calvin Braxton, are now manifesting the core nature of LSP which should leave any objective LSP observer with one unmistakable impression.

That impression is that the entity is infested with an insidious cancer that has inflicted severe damage to both its actual health and its perceived health.  As a result, nothing short of a new statute permitting an outsider willing to serve as Colonel and overhaul the entire agency’s upper brass, combined with the total loss of classified job protection, are going to have a shot at curing this badly-sickened state agency!

We have heard specifics entailing paragraph 10 highlighted above; however, in fairness to LSPC Executive Director Jason Hannaman, we are going to refrain from publishing those specifics at this time and will instead anxiously await his investigative report, which we commit to provide to our subscribers.  It should make for a very interesting read!

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Has EBRP Coroner Beau Clark committed “malfeasance in office” by approving the cremating of 134 homicide victims since he took office in direct contradiction to Louisiana Revised Statute 13:5716?

EBRP Coroner Dr. Beau Clark, who was grilled on his office having approved the cremation of 134 homicide victims in East Baton Rouge Parish since he was sworn into office in apparent violation of a Louisiana statute prohibiting such cremations.

Toward the middle of this past week we at Sound Off Louisiana were provided with some pretty alarming material pertaining to East Baton Rouge Parish (EBRP) Coroner Beau Clark.  Moreover, we are disturbed by what we have been informed has been the stand of Attorney General Jeff Landry entailing the matter.

Specifically, we were first provided with the link for a forum which transpired about five days before we were contacted.  We were told the exact point to go to in the meeting, so we did, and we captured the next 3:12 of the meeting, which featured an unspecified employee of the West Baton Rouge Parish (WBRP) Coroner’s Office directly confronting Clark about his practice of cremating homicide victims in apparent violation of LA R. S. 13:5716, which specifies that when the coroner’s investigation reveals “suspicious circumstances or the reasonable probability of the commission of a crime,” the coroner “shall deny the (cremation) permit.” (Emphasis is ours).  Let’s take a look at the confrontation:


Clark is confronted about his office’s cremations of homicide victims in apparent violation of the above-cited statute prohibiting such cremations when a crime has been committed.

The statute link is provided above, but let’s force it to stare everyone (including Clark) directly in the face, shall we?:

Now, clearly “homicide” is a crime, no?  So, a homicide victim surely must meet the test of “reasonable probability” of a crime, no?  We would submit that homicide victims are evidence far beyond “reasonable probability” and represent as close to certainty of being evidence a crime has been committed as one can ever obtain in our way of thinking.

With the preceding logic in mind, the WBRP Coroner official poses the question to Clark about his acts, and he states that Clark has engaged in this practice (of cremating homicide victims) in excess of 150 times since he took office.  We sought to confirm that number, and we found it to be only slightly off.  Clark was first elected in 2011 and was sworn into office in early 2012.  The following table illustrates the number of homicide victims who were cremated in EBRP from January 1, 2009 through August 14, 2019:

By our math, the actual total of homicide victims cremated since Clark was sworn into office is 134, which we derived by simply adding the numbers from the year 2012 forward on the above table.

Now, understandably, funeral homes are going to be reluctant to discuss any coroner’s practices; however, we did obtain one instance of correspondence entailing Clark having approved a cremation, and we were also permitted to examine (though not obtain a copy of) the death certificate of that same homicide victim.

While we wish we could provide a copy of the death certificate, we can’t; however, what we can do is attest to the fact we examined the death certificate, and it is the same individual for the cremation permit notice of approval we are about to provide.  Furthermore, the manner of death was declared to be “homicide” by Clark’s office, and the specific cause of death stated on the death certificate was “multiple gunshot wounds,” and specified that the disposition of the remains was cremation.  Let’s provide the EBRP Coroner’s office’s approval of the cremation of that homicide victim (with identity of that victim and the funeral home intentionally concealed) at this time:

Notice the wording “no legal or medical reason to act otherwise…..”  Apparently, LA R. S. 13:5716 fails to meet Dr. Clark’s definition of a “legal reason to act otherwise” (i.e. deny the permit application).  For a medical doctor, Clark seems to be sorely lacking in basic common sense to us in using that wording!

What’s troubling about the video above is that, as the WBRP official indicates, Attorney General Jeff Landry’s office told him he was “wrong” regarding the cremation of homicide victims being impermissible.  The preceding statute could not possibly be clearer, so how Landry’s office could claim the WBRP official was “wrong” certainly escapes us.

Bear in mind also that, as he clearly states on the video above, the WBRP official claims it is Clark who sent the link for the news segment to Landry’s office (Clark clearly denies any knowledge of having done so on the above video).

Upon being told he was “wrong” by Landry’s office, the WBRP official sought a meeting with Landry’s office, after which Landry’s office conceded that he was and is correct about cremations being forbidden entailing homicide victims.

We’ve also been informed that Landry’s office would prefer this matter to just “go away.”

As our subscribers will recall, we formally endorsed Landry for re-election; however, we expressed frustration that material we provided to his office was not acted upon in any manner whatsoever.

In just one such instance, our material resulted in KLFY getting Landry to publicly state that an investigation by his office would ensue when (even after Lafayette Parish District Attorney Keith Stutes agreed an investigation was in order and agreed to recuse himself), in reality, Landry’s office never performed any investigation whatsoever of the matter!

Landry certainly is a great cheerleader for obtaining a conservative majority within the Louisiana Legislature, but in our opinion, his diligence toward actaully doing the job he was elected to do, especially in terms of pursuing non-headline-grabbing corruption in Louisiana, certainly leaves more than just a little to be desired!

We would have aired this matter prior to yesterday’s election; however, we did not obtain the material until the middle of last week and were already busy with other features.

In wrapping up this feature, we want to emphasize that Dr. Clark’s opponent in yesterday’s election was not responsible for any of the material we obtained, nor did he or his campaign have any knowledge that Clark would be grilled by a WBRP Coroner official at the meeting as he was in the video above.

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Chambers sets himself apart from Barrow on being pro small business, including, “110 percent support for hair braiding license exemption.”

State Sen. Regina Ashford Barrow (District 15)

 

 

Gary Chambers, candidate for Senate District 15

Installment one of the Barrow / Chambers forum held at the Baton Rouge Press Club to sort out who will represent State Senate District 15 focused on the candidates’ take on the Johnny Anderson matter, their thoughts on Dr. Oscar “Omar”Dantzler’s claims of media racial bias having played a role in his assertion that his campaign for governor has been quashed, and what they plan to so should the City of St. George ballot initiative pass.  In fact, the St. George video has been viewed nearly 2,700 times since it was published on Monday.

Today, let’s focus on some other matters covered in the forum:


After Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns revealed the fact that, at the prior week’s forum, former Congressman Cleo Fields indicated a willingness to sponsor a measure to repeal the license requirement for hair braiding (Fields is running for State Sen. District 14), Burns asked both Barrow and Chambers whether they would support such a measure.  In the video above, Chambers provides his response.

Next up was Barrow to respond to the hair braiding license abolition.  Let’s take a look at what she had to say:


Incumbent District 15 Sen. Regina Barrow provides her thoughts on abolishing the requirement for a license to braid hair.

Barrow knows she’s highly vulnerable to defeat over this one issue alone!  She states in the video above that she believes the number of hours required (500) is excessive.  That is truly ironic given that it was Barrow who sponsored SB-370 of the 2018 Louisiana Legislative Session that would have actually increased the number of required hours from 500 to 1,000!!!  All any subscriber has to do is look at item (3) of the digest of the bill just linked to confirm that fact!  The following video highlights Barrow’s bill’s fate in the Senate Commerce Committee, and we strongly encourage any voter in Senate District 15 to watch it.  The video clearly demonstrates just how anti-small-business Barrow is as this hearing, which was an unmitigated disaster for her and the bill’s supporters:


Barrow’s bill to increase the required number of hours to braid hair from 500 to 1,000 suffers disastrous consequences as it is debated in the Senate Commerce Committee.

What Barrow apparently can’t get through her thick skull (and we know of no other way to phrase it) is that people being issued cosmetology licenses are implicitly deemed to be qualified to braid hair EVEN THOUGH THEY’VE NOT SPENT ONE SECOND IN CLASS LEARNING HOW TO BRAID HAIR!!!  Thus, Barrow wants to force people who ONLY want to braid hair to expend $10,000 in tuition and attend the only school to offer a program specifically for hair braiding, with that one school being located in Monroe, Louisiana!  Meanwhile, she is apparently perfectly fine with people graduating from a cosmetology school and being issued a cosmetology license being “ordained” as qualified to braid hair even though the school they attended devoted not even a nanosecond teaching hair braiding.

Gary Chambers, despite the baggage he carries entailing his relationship with the white community (just look at the comments beneath the St. George video) clearly “gets it” far better Barrow when it comes to the hair braiding issue!


Barrow and Chambers weigh in on legalizing pot for recreational use.

Barrow and Chambers weigh in on abolishing the Board of Elementary and Secondary Education (BESE).

Barrow and Chambers get an opportunity to question one another, and more than a little animus between the two becomes evident.

CLICK HERE for the forum in its entirety.

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