Brett Lang, along with his son, Tucker, visited with Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns on Thursday, February 23, 2023 to vent their frustrations with the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) and its recent decision declining to allow two foster children to return to Lang’s home.
This video blog was formed with the intent of permitting anyone frustrated with Louisiana state governmental operations of any agency to “Sound Off” on issues of concern to them. On Thursday, February 23, 2023, Brett Lang, a law-enforcement official, visited with Sound Off Louisiana’s founder, Robert Burns, to express his concerns entailing DCFS and his interactions with the agency.
Specifically, Lang, along with his son, Tucker, vented frustration that DCFS recently made a decision that the agency would not return two foster children to Lang.
Because Lang and his son did such a great job, we are intentionally minimizing our written commentary on this matter and instead strongly encouraging everyone to watch the following video, which incorporates three (3) segments (audio only) of a recent Zoom meeting Lang had with three DCFS officials who communicated the agency’s decision to Lang:
February 23, 2023: Police Officer Brett Lang, along with his son, Tucker, vent frustration at DCFS’s decision not to return two foster children to Lang’s care.
We also want to provide one other audio clip beyond the video above. The audio clip was derived from the same Zoom meeting at which these DCFS officials explained their decision to Lang.
In the audio clip, Ms. Mona Michelli, the Deputy Assistant Secretary of Child Welfare Programs and Field Operations at DCFS, acknowledges the “numerous emails” that she had received, “writing on your (Lang’s) behalf.” Here’s the audio clip followed by links for those emails that Michelli acknowledges:
Initial outset of DCFS Zoom meeting with Lang at which Michelli indicates that the agency has opted not to return the children to Lang and acknowledges all the emails of support she received on his behalf.
Prior to collecting the above emails, on Monday, February 6, 2023, Lang sent this email of the same date (February 6, 2023) to 15th JDC to inform the court that DCFS had “deceived” the court when a DCFS official responded at a court hearing earlier that same day to a question of whether Lang was certified, and the response was, “No.”
The above email is complete with screen shots of text exchanges between Lang and Michelle Trahan, the Home Development Supervisor for DCFS, wherein Trahan indicates that, irrespective of whatever may have been told by any DCFS official to the judge, Lang’s certification was “current.”
Lang also supplied us with a screenshot of texts he sent, as requested by DCFS officials, of his bank records to demonstrate that he was current. As Lang states on the video above (and as backed up by the screen shot we’re about to present), DCFS officials knew as of Thursday, February 2, 2023 that Lang was current with his certification but nevertheless appears to have in fact “deceived” the court four days later on February 6, 2023 in indicating to the court that he was not certified. Here’s the screenshot Lang sent us:
Lang also pointed out to us that, at the court hearing of February 6, 2023, the adult biological daughter of the birthmother of the two children testified that the best home for those children was with Lang, but that’s not what ultimately turned out to be the case.
We’re going to refrain from providing our on commentary on this entire incident and, instead, encourage those who would like to comment to do so in the comments section of this feature to express your sentiments, ask Lang questions, etc.
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16th JDC Judge Vincent Borne, for whom Billy Broussard filed a formal Motion for recusal based upon “extreme bias” against Broussard and “a whole class of pro se litigants.”
Just as a brief refresher, let us provide this abbreviated video derived from the above linked feature which highlights mainly actions of Defendant Mendy “Mob Boss” Girouard and the daughter of Melissa Dubroc, Joelle Dubroc, as well as her husband, Blake. Here’s that 6 1/2-minute video:
2/13/23: Video of highlights of actions of Mendy “Mob Boss” Girouard and Melissa Dubroc’s daughter, Joelle Dubroc, and her husband, Blake.
In his filing, Broussard provided a complete courtroom transcript of the hearing (see Exhibit R-A on the preceding link for the Motion/Order) to evidence his contentions of bias. We believe Broussard’s filing speaks for itself, so let’s provide a few highlights at this time:
During that hearing, Judge Borne, as reflected by an official transcript of the hearing, which is attached hereto and made a part hereof as Exhibit “R-A,” showed repeated and extreme bias against Plaintiff which demonstrates a complete lack of objectivity to adjudicate any aspect of this case, including the Exception Hearing conducted on February 15, 2023.
Defense Counsel, Eric Haik, could have asserted LA CCP 971 (Special Motion to Strike) and thereby formally sought for the Court to award reasonable attorney fees from Plaintiff Under LA CCP 971(B), which states, in pertinent part: “In any action subject to Paragraph A of this Article, a prevailing party on a special motion to strike shall be awarded reasonable attorney fees and costs.” Defense attorney Haik failed to file such a Motion; furthermore, the 90-day window for him to do so has now lapsed.
Defense Counsel Haik could also have filed for Sanctions against Plaintiff Under LA CCP 863, which is intended to protect against the filing of “frivolous” lawsuits. Defense Counsel Haik, knowing that the bar for any award of attorney’s fees pursuant to LA CCP 863 is so incredibly high (such that Defendants would have to demonstrate that they never even had any interactions with or involvement with Plaintiff or any activities in which he has engaged and that Plaintiff’s action was filed in complete bad faith), opted not to make such a filing. In short, he knew such a filing would be futile.
Plaintiff, in his Opposition Memorandum to Defendants’ Peremptory Exception of No Cause of Action (see bottom of Page 4 of Plaintiff’s Opposition Memorandum) stated that the Court, “should not dignify Defendants’ request that the Court ‘consider’ sanctioning Petitioner” because Defendants failed miserably to property place such a matter before the Court in the proper posture. For such “consideration” to be applicable, Defense Counsel Haik should have pursued one of the aforementioned filings. Instead, he reverted to the “consider” request and placed the onus totally upon the Court to initiate an action which Haik knew would be totally contradictory to Louisiana Law regarding which parties bear which costs in litigation.
Plaintiff found himself, as reflected in Exhibit R-A (the official court transcript of the hearing) in front of a judge bound and determined to demonstrate his extreme disdain, prejudice, and bias not only toward Plaintiff but what appears to be disdain to an entire class of pro se litigants.
Judge Borne, who began by admonishing Plaintiff in a harsh tone at the outset of the Hearing (see top of page two of Exhibit R-A) that, “You’re held to the same standards as any attorney,” nevertheless, in concert with Defense Counsel Haik, essentially treated Plaintiff as if he was nonexistent regarding being able to review any proposed judgment and pose any objections to it because Judge Borne made it clear that he intended to sign the judgment electronically the next day (Thursday, February 16, 2023) notwithstanding Local Rule 9.5 permitting Plaintiff five (5) working days to review any such proposed judgment and pose any objections which he may have.
Defense Counsel LeBlanc presented Plaintiff with a Proposed Judgment within 90 minutes of the Hearing’s conclusions, and she informed Plaintiff that he had until 3:30 p. m. that same day to pose any objections, or else it would be sent to Judge Borne for his signature as per Judge Borne’s desire expressed in court earlier that day.
Plaintiff indicated to Defense Counsel Haik that he wished to, “avail myself of the five days to which I am entitled pursuant to that Local Rule (9.5) to mull over the wording.”
Defense Counsel Haik responded, “It is not exactly up for discussion. You were in court and heard what the Court ordered. Please review so we can file it today, as Judge Borne requested.”
Plaintiff did pose objections to the judgment, and his objections are contained in Exhibit R-C, the most notable of which is that he sought for a paragraph to be added entailing the strong wording of Judge Borne regarding his stated intent regarding attorney’s fees should Plaintiff opt to amend his petition, the exception be re-urged, and ultimately the amended petition fail to state a cause of action.
The fact that Judge Borne would so blatantly tag-team with Defense Counsel Haik in a concerted effort to cram a Proposed Judgment down a pro se litigant’s throat is merely one small element of the universe of reasons for which Plaintiff asserts that Judge Borne is clearly biased against Plaintiff in the subject matter. Judge Borne could have stated, “Present your proposed judgment to Mr. Broussard pursuant to Local Rule 9.5 and, Mr. Broussard, you’ll have five working days to pose any objections to that proposed judgment, after which time Defense Counsel may submit the proposed judgment to me for signature.” Instead, Borne directed Defense Counsel to have the proposed judgment in that very day so that he could “electronically sign it since I won’t be here tomorrow.”
Judge Borne also went far beyond merely “considering” sanctioning Plaintiff regarding the imposition of attorney fees. In fact, he flat-out repeatedly used the imposition of such a sanction as a point-blank threat to Plaintiff not to amend his Petition (as Plaintiff pointed out by supplement to his original Opposition Memorandum that he had the statutory right to do if the Motion was granted).
What a clearly-biased Judge Vincent Borne attempted to do was to exploit his perception that Plaintiff would not be knowledgeable of the Court’s inability to impose such a sanction against Plaintiff but would nevertheless strategically exploit that perceived lack of knowledge to threaten and intimidate Plaintiff, thus showing his extreme bias against Plaintiff and toward Defense Counsel Haik in the process.
The following excerpts from the official court transcript, Exhibit R-A, demonstrate Judge Borne’s threats and attempts at intimidation as referenced in Paragraph 28 above:
Page 3, beginning at line 30 (after first stating on line 12 that, “You need to pay attention to what I’m about to tell you.”):
“If you seek to amend and re-file to attempt to state a cause of action after I’ve admonished you that on its face it doesn’t appear to state a cause of action I will consider awarding attorney’s fees to this date and to anything incurred based on coming back to hear this motion. Do you understand that?”
Page 4, beginning at line 29: (after having first warned of how “costly” it could become – see line 20):
“I’m electing to allow you to do that (amend the petition). And if you choose to do that and come back and it still doesn’t state a cause of action, I’m going to tell you now I’m going to award them attorney’s fees for what they ask for up to today and then. So you need to understand. I know you’re not an attorney. You obviously had an attorney involved in this circumstance. That’s – it may be significant cost.”
A. A judge shall respect and comply with the law and shall act at all times in a manner that promotes public confidence in the integrity and impartiality of the judiciary. As used in this Code, “impartiality” or “impartial” denotes absence of bias or prejudice in favor of, or against, particular parties or classes of parties, as well as maintaining an open mind in considering issues that may come before the judge. [Louisiana State Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 2].
As is evidenced by the contents of this Motion to Recuse, together with the accompanying Exhibits (R-A, R-B, and R-C), Trial Judge Vincent Borne has not only failed, but failed miserably, to uphold Louisiana State Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 2 as itemized in Paragraph 31.
C. Recusation. A judge should disqualify himself or herself in a proceeding in which the judge’s impartiality might reasonably be questioned….. [Louisiana State Code of Judicial Conduct, Canon 3].
LA CCP 151(A)(4) states, in pertinent part:
Art. 151. Grounds
A judge of any trial or appellate court shall be recused upon any of the following grounds:
(4) The judge is biased, prejudiced, or interested in the cause or its outcome or biased or prejudiced toward or against the parties or the parties’ attorneys or any witness to such an extent that the judge would be unable to conduct fair and impartial proceedings.
Plaintiff asserts that Trial Judge Vincent Borne, through his actions and statements of Wednesday, February 15, 2023, as reflected in Exhibit R-A, has demonstrated bias against Plaintiff that clearly meets the criterion outlined in LA CCP 151(A)(4), thus prompting Plaintiff to file this Motion and Order for such recusal.
WHEREFORE, Plaintiff/Mover, BILLY BROUSSARD, prays that JUDGE BORNE recuse and disqualify himself from this matter; or, alternatively, that a hearing be set to another judge or to a judge ad hoc, as provided in LA CCP 154(B).
As we indicated, the Motion (with accompanying Order) speaks for itself.
About the only other concluding commentary we’ll add is that Judge Borne seemed heavily preoccupied with the fact that Broussard was previously represented by legal counsel regarding “the circumstances” (see trial transcript, page 7, beginning on line 1). We’re unsure of the relevance of that fact (and it is a fact), but here’s video of that very attorney, Michael Adley of the law firm Gibson Law Partners LLP making a brief statement on Broussard’s behalf at the January 6, 2022 St. Martin Parish Planning and Zoning meeting:
January 6, 2022: Broussard’s Attorney, Michael Adley, states to the St. Martin Parish Planning and Zoning Commission that Broussard is, “not opening a dump!” He further indicates that he, “hopes the Commission will confine its discussions to what Mr. Broussard is asking for (Rezoning to Ag-2) and not these other rumors that I’ve heard.”
Broussard has pointed out that, contrary to the “rumors” Adley references above, he was never “opening” anything! He was merely seeking to continue doing what he’d been doing for the prior 16 months. He emphasized that, had anyone bothered with looking at the required public notice which was advertised in the local newspaper (vs. relying upon a false and defamatory flyer prominently imploring citizens to “stop the dump”), they would have known exactly what he was requesting. Furthermore, Ms. Morgan Allemond, Planning and Zoning Coordinator, stated to Broussard that she informed numerous callers complaining about a “dump” to please read the public notice and, just as Adley indicates in the video above, she informed all of those callers that, “Mr. Broussard is not opening a dump!”
Regrettably, the Commission most certainly did not confine its deliberations of Broussard’s request to what he sought and instead permitted those who perpetrated wild, blatantly-defamatory rumors over Defendant Mendy “Mob Boss” Girouard’s Neighborhood Facebook page to run absolutely rampant!
What follows is just one particular example of those wild rumors Adley referenced, which was posted by Facebook Group Member Keith Landry on December 5, 2021, a mere 32 days prior to Adley’s admonition to the Commission:
As always, we’ll keep our subscribers and casual site visitors apprised of further developments on this Broussard litigation as well as the others in which he’s involved entailing his 33-acre property in Broussard, Louisiana.
If you would like to be added to our Sound Off Louisiana email list to be notified of future posts, simply go to our home page and scroll to the bottom (mobile devices) or to the top of the right-hand column (desktops). Supply your email address within the subscribe box. You’ll then receive an automated email from Word Press, and all you have to do is click on the blue “confirm follow” bar contained within that email, and you’ll begin receiving great posts such as the preceding one above.
Fired LSP Trooper Carl Cavalier, who revealed on the January 24, 2023 edition of Carl Nelson’s Baltimore, Maryland-based radio broadcast that one of Ronald Greene’s arresting troopers sent out a message on one of LSP’s Mobile Data Terminals (MDTs) openly inquiring, “Is tonight nigger night? Is tonight the night we go hunting for someone?”
On January 30, 2023, when we introduced “Sister Khadijah Rashad” and published her concerns about law-enforcement in Iberia Parish, we openly encouraged our subscribers and site visitors to listen to the Carl Nelson radio broadcast of January 24, 2023.
We knew that few people would do as we guided and listen to the second hour of the broadcast which featured fired LSP Trooper Carl Cavalier. We kind of doubt that even LSP top brass bothered with tuning in to what Cavalier had to say.
That’s unfortunate because we readily revealed that Cavalier had some valuable nuggets of information that we’d not heretofore been made aware.
One such nugget is the fact that Cavalier indicated that, in the timeframe of the Ronald Greene in-custody death on May 10, 2019, one of the troopers left a damning message on the internal LSP MDT (mobile data terminal) system. What was that alleged damning message? According to Cavalier, it went along the lines of, “Is tonight nigger night? Is tonight the night that we go hunting for someone?”
On Nelson’s show, Cavalier responded to a tweet sent in to Nelson from a listener with the first name of Don in which he asked if the North Louisiana LSP troopers, “viewed themselves as a gang?” Let’s listen in on Cavalier providing his response to the inquiry by one of Nelson’s listeners (Don):
Though we certainly knew it would be a wasted exercise in futility, beginning on January 31, 2023, we initiated a series of email exchanges entailing a public records request for the alleged entry by the trooper.
Obviously, anyone with functioning brain cells would know that hell would literally freeze over three times before LSP would hand over any such document to us. Nevertheless, we welcome anyone to view our email exchanges by clicking here. As is obvious from our final email to LSP, we openly invited LSP Col. Lamar Davis to either provide comment to us or to appear on camera entailing the subject matter of this feature. He declined.
Just as we did before we first broke the Ronald Greene matter on September 10, 2020 based on compelling evidence that we had that then-Master Trooper Chris Hollingsworth had turned off his body camera leading up to Greene’s arrest (which was the nature of our public records request way back then and which turned out to be spot-on with Hollingworth turning that camera off for a whopping approximate 52 minutes), we have been able to reach that same level of confidence through our sources to publish this feature now notwithstanding our exercise in futility to obtain the infamous MDT entry from LSP.
According to our sources, Sergeant Gustave (“Gus”) Bethea discovered the message on Dakota DeMoss’ computer, and it was a message he sent to another trooper openly asking, “Is this nigger night?”
Our sources further informed us that Bethea, who was a Trooper at the same time, gave the information to the FBI, and that the then-head of LSP Legal Affairs, Faye Morrison Dysart, was very upset with Bethea for providing that information to the FBI.
We were also informed that the software in 2019 being utilized on MDTs was “mobile cop,” which allows troopers to message one another. That would be the same technology upon which we published this February 10, 2022 feature, the contents of which were replicated in publications on an international basis. Here’s a refresher of some of the messages sent on the MDTs back then:
The troopers then escorted Harris to one of their marked police vehicles. As they placed Harris in the back seat, Tpr. Harper threatened him by saying, “stupid motherfucker, I hope you act up when we get to the fucking jail. I am going to punish you, dumb bitch. What the fuck is wrong with you, stupid motherfucker. ”
Jacob Brown “How was his attitude at the jail?”
George Harper “Complete silence”
Jacob Brown “Lmao”
Dakota DeMoss “lol he was still digesting that ass whoop in”
Jacob Brown “its gonna take him a couple days … ”
Jacob Brown “he gonna be sore tomorrow for sure”
Jacob Brown “BET he wont run from a full grown bear again”
Dakota DeMoss “Bet he don’t even cross into LA anymore”
George Harper “GRIZZLY Nah he gonna spread the word that’s for damn sure”
Jacob Brown “lmao”
Dakota DeMoss “he’s gonna have nightmares for a long time”
Jacob Brown “lmao…..warms my heart knowing we could educate that young man”
Dakota DeMoss “lolol”
Larry Shappley “haha”
We can only assume that DeMoss was a big fan of these MDT systems and the ability to rapidly communicate and make inquiry, no?
So, is it any wonder why LSP wanted (wants?) to just cram $200,000 down Cavalier’s throat and tell him to fade off into the sunset?
Who knows? Perhaps if an insurance company is intertwined with the Office of Risk Management in having made the decision to agree to settle the matter and fork over a $200,000 payment, maybe that insurance company may have now balked and revoked their own commitment to stroke the check!
Given all of the revelations which have come out about this whole matter (to include an extremely rare peek into the opposition’s former attorney’s — i.e. Jill Craft’s — bleak prospects entailing the likelihood of getting a larger settlement at trial), who could blame any insurance company for any such balking at this stage of the game?
Of course, that would also beg the question of why Attorney General (and candidate for Louisiana Governor), Jeff Landry, convinced any such insurance company (or taxpayers directly if no insurance company was involved) that it was in its (their) best interest to settle. Heck, any such insurance company may be willing to deem Cavalier worthy of being the King of a Mardi Gras parade!
Let us make clear that any insurance company (assuming there even is one, but we’re willing to bet there is and we seem to have a very foggy recollection of a Tennessee-based one referenced at some point in all this, but that could just be Burns’ advancing age and/or the fact that there is just too much material on all this to readily keep it in one’s head) which has chosen to now balk at remitting the $200,000 is 100 percent, T-total speculation on our part.
Nevertheless, does anybody have a better idea why everything went so silent on the previously-hot-to-trot efforts to cram all this down Cavalier’s throat? If so, we’re all ears!
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