October 2019 – Sound Off Louisiana

BrainScratch produces extensive investigative series on the unsolved New Orleans murder of Bruce Cucchiara.

Bruce Cucchiara, who was murdered in a New Orleans East subdivision on Tuesday, April 24, 2012 and whose murder remains unsolved.

On Tuesday, April 24, 2012, Bruce Cucchiara was murdered. Recently, John Lordan, who founded BrainScratch, as part of the New Orleans Crime Con convention from June 7 – 9, 2019 obtained a packet of material entailing the murder.

Lordan, who admits he allowed the packet to lie around for a few weeks, then researched the material, and the final result was an incredibly deep and very professionally designed, three-part investigative video series on the murder.

We’re about to supply all three videos which we readily admit that, upon us seeing the first few minutes of the first one, we immediately binge watched! We found them that fascinating.

In addition to the embedded videos, we’re also going to provide the links for the YouTube videos themselves beneath the videos. We’re doing so to provide our subscribers and/or casual visitors to this feature the opportunity to read and/or contribute to the abundance of YouTube comments associated with these videos. Lordan readily admits they have been “very helpful” in his subsequent segments, and he readily admits there may be another episode soon.

The videos provide incredible details of the murder and examine the possibilities of what may have happened, to include everything from a random robbery to other potential possibilities. We think you’ll find this in-depth series very fascinating:

Part 1 (direct YouTube link)

Part 2 (direct YouTube link)

Part 3 (direct YouTube link)

If you have information on the murder of Bruce Cucchiara, please contact the New Orleans Police Department at 504-658-5300 or 504-821-2222. To remain anonymous and be eligible for a $40,000 reward, please visit: Justice for Bruce.

To remain anonymous and be eligible for a $2,500 reward, please contact CrimeStoppers at 504-822-1111 or toll-free at 877-903-7867. Website: CrimeStoppers – Bruce Cucchiara

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JBE: “I’m looking for 3 percent. Mr. Rispone is looking for 23 percent;” Lays bare strategy to tie Rispone and “corrupt puppet master” Lane Grigsby at the hips as chief runoff strategy.

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite), who was the lone partipant at the Baton Rouge Press Club’s forum for Louisiana Governor on Monday, October 28, 2019 as his opponent, businessman Eddie Rispone (R-Baton Rouge) opted to pass on attending.

Controversial Louisiana political power broker and businessman Lane Grigsby, whom Gov. Edwards laid bare his campaign’s intent to tie to the hip of his challenger Eddie Rispone as being Rispone’s “corrupt puppet master.”

Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards (D-Amite) served as the lone participant at the Baton Rogue Press Club (BRPC)’s meeting of Monday, October 28, 2019. He was the lone participant because his challenger, businessman Eddie Rispone (R-Baton Rouge), took a pass on attending. Let’s take a look at a few highlights of Gov. Edwards’ presentation:

Edwards responds to a question of his “chances of winning over Ralph Abraham’s supporters.”

Edwards takes a few jabs at his absentee rival Rispone and emphasizes that he (Edwards) should not bear the responsibility for outlining Rispone’s position on redistricting.

Edwards teletypes his campaign’s very obvious strategy of tying controversial political power broker Lane Grigsby and Rispone at the hips in referencing Grigsby as a “corrupt puppet master.”

Former Republican (he withdrew from the GOP last week) and U. S. Senate candidate (2014) Col. Rob Maness has been the most outspoken critic of the Rispone-Grigsby connection; however, he’s far from alone as this article by The Advocate’s Tyler Bridges (a/k/a “The Twit” per conservative talk-show host Moon Griffon) makes clear.

The reality is that the Grigsby-Rispone connection has for a protracted period been known to be a weapon readily available at Edwards’ disposal should Rispone make the runoff, which he obviously now has.

What’s not known is whether, in deploying a scorched-earth approach (which is the only approach Grigsby knows and was likely the motivating factor behind Rispone’s own scorched-earth approach entailing Abraham) will have so alienated enough folk like former BESE member Lottie Beebe and former East Baton Rouge Parish Councilman and LSU Economics professor Dr. Pat Culbertson to sway enough voters off Rispone to give Edwards the win:

“I’m a Christian,” Beebe said recently. “It’s wrong what he’s doing.” (Grigsby, who calls himself a life-long Christian, was raised Methodist but worships at the multidenominational Grace Life Fellowship.)
Beebe added that she won’t support Rispone in next month’s runoff because of his connection to Grigsby. “He will more or less rubber-stamp Lane Grigsby’s education policies.”
In 2007, Grigsby created Our Louisiana PAC, which targeted at least six legislative candidates. One mailer tarred Pat Culbertson, a Republican member of the East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council, as “a tax-and-spend liberal.”
“I’m all about freedom of speech, but it amazes me that people could just lie and distort my record,” Culbertson told The Advocate then, adding that he didn’t know why Grigsby attacked him.

At any rate, Grigsby’s close association with Rispone most assuredly won’t be an asset for Rispone, and our advice would be get ready to be peppered with both attack ads and debate questions Wednesday night regarding Grigsby and have some good explanations. Obviously, “The Twit,” as Griffon is fond of reference Bridges, clearly saw the benefit of strategically exploiting former Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal by making sure he appeared on prominent display on the photo of the feature linked above!

Edwards is asked if he’s “concerned at all” by the support of President Trump and Vice President Pence for his opponent Mr. Rispone.

Edwards responds to a question by BRPC Secretary-Treasurer John Hightower entailing Louisiana’s high automobile insurance rates.

Edwards is asked to respond to Rispone’s support of a Louisiana School Voucher Program implemented under the administration of former Gov. Bobby Jindal.

For the record, Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns, who never refrains from posing a question at a BRPC meeting, intentionally refrained from even raising his hand for today’s meeting. He is choosing to keep his reasons for doing so to himself, but he’s making it crystal clear there was no avoidance whatsoever on the part of Gov. Edwards in not calling on Burns for a question as Burns never even made that a possibility.

CLICK HERE for the “forum” in its entirety.

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:

Date	Event Transpiring
October 9, 2014	New pay grid approved by LSPC.
February 5, 2015	New pay grid signed into law.
November 12, 2015	Jason 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, 2016	Pay grade with amendment signed into law by Gov. Edwards.
June 19, 2017	LSPC 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, 2017	Coates, for the first time, receives 3% longevity pay increase.
March, 2018	Coates 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, 2019	Coates makes repeated demands for payment (see highlighted paragraph below).
September 20, 2019	Coates asks LSPC to investigate implementation of longevity pay increases across the system.
October 10, 2019	LSPC 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!