Baton Rouge government watchdog Leslie Davis states to WAFB (Channel 9 in Baton Rouge)’s Liam Combs on September 30, 2025 her opposition to EBRP Mayor President’s THRIVE initiative scheduled for a vote on November 15, 2025 because it includes a tax increase. Photo courtesy of WAFB (Channel 9) in Baton Rouge.
Voters began receiving a mailer in yesterday’s (Wednesday, October 29, 2025) mail which touts EBRP Mayor-President’s THRIVE vote scheduled for November 15, 2025, with early voting beginning this Saturday, November 1, 2015.
Sound Off Louisiana’s Robert Burns attended the September 29, 2025 meeting of the Baton Rouge Press Club at which EBRP Mayor-President Sid Edwards’ representatives, Councilwoman Jen Racca and the Mayor’s Office Director, Mason Batts, outlined the plan and fielded questions on it.
Regrettably, Burns inadvertently formatted the memory card on his camera believing he had transferred all of its files onto his hard drive, only to discover that the files for that meeting had not been transferred prior to formatting.
Baton Rouge government watchdogs Ernie Lewis, Pennie Landry, and Leslie Davis all grilled Batts about whether THRIVE represents a tax increase. Again, improvising, let’s present the “quick and dirty one word answer of ‘yes’” by taking an excerpt from WAFB’s Liam Combs’ coverage of the meeting. Here is the excerpt:
9/30/25: After Leslie Davis, Ernie Lewis, and Pennie Landry succeed at the meeting in obtaining an admission that the THRIVE vote does include a tax increase, Davis expresses her opposition to the plan “for that reason.”
At a subsequent meeting, October 13, 2025, the proposed new LSU arena was the topic of discussion, and we’ll be presenting that meeting with more in-depth coverage in coming weeks because we triple-checked our computer this time, and the video files pertaining to it are in fact there.
We apologize to our site visitors because we strongly prefer to present video coverage of the meetings wherein the individual posing the question at the meeting is on video as well as the guest’s answer being on video.
Unfortunately, due to a first-in-ten-year botched file transfer on our parts, we weren’t able to do that for this particular meeting. We also thank the folk at WAFB for being able to bail us out!
Early voting begins Saturday, November 1, 2025, so go let your sentiments be known whatever they may be.
Kendra Bazile, along with family friend “Junior,” engage in the second of a four-part series entailing the single-car crash that claimed the life of her son, Jordan Whitley, on January 26, 2024 and the potential for shortcomings on the parts of first responders who responded to and/or investigated the response since the time of the crash.
In Segment One of our feature on the death of Jordan Whitley after two automated 911 calls, we introduced our site visitors to a stellar investigative report by Bess Casserleigh (WBRZ, Channel 2 in Baton Rouge) which focused on potential shortcomings of the EBRP EMS system entailing two automated calls placed from Whitley’s vehicle immediately after he crashed into a tree.
In Segment Two of this fascinating feature, we delve much deeper into Whitley’s mother’s relentless efforts to try and ascertain just what all transpired that fateful morning of January 26, 2024:
Bazile and Junior begin a deep dive regarding Bazile’s efforts to obtain answers regarding the crash that claimed her son’s life on January 26, 2024.
This blog is video in nature, so the only thing we want to add to the above video is support documents which Bazile supplied to us for publication.
First, let’s provide details of the Ford 911-Assist features which were present in Whitley’s vehicle:
At 00:33.733 a ghostly voice says, “Help” followed immediately with a distinct “Me”.
At 00:22.478 a different male voice says, “Help”.
I reviewed the news piece listed above and two parts caught my attention relative to this case. The first was: 1:41 a.m.: Dispatch sent a deputy to investigate the 911 hang-up on Nicholson. I could possibly understand the first 911 operator not realizing the gravity of the situation and recording it as a hang-up. But this call did not generate the dispatch of the deputy. That could only have occurred from the second call when location data was made available. That call with the Sync 911 Assist recording clearly audible to the operator should have generated an immediate response including EMS services being dispatched.
The second part that concerned me was this: The Sheriff’s Office said they were responding to this incident as a 911 hang-up, which according to their policies, “is not classified as an emergency call due to the frequency of unfounded cases.” They say in the past year, they received nearly 15,000 hang-ups and only 26 of those calls were actual emergencies.
While that may be their policy, the second call should never have been classified as a hang-up. It was an automatic response to an accident serious enough to deploy airbags. The operator obviously was aware of that and heard a male voice respond to him yet did not send an ambulance. The Sync 911 Assist device has been around since 2009. Many other auto manufacturers offer similar emergency response systems when the driver cannot initiate the emergency request themselves. This is not new to the market and understanding how they work should be an essential element of 911 training.
Conclusion
In conclusion, the dispatching of a deputy for a hang-up when the urgency was very clear was the wrong response and inadequate given the knowledge conveyed in the second 911 call. There is no way to know if a proper response would have saved Mr. Whitley but it would have increased that possibility. I am also left with the question in my mind as to how many other similar mistakes have occurred and whether those mistakes cost lives.
As we stated at the outset of this series, Bazile is providing us with a very deep dive into just what all she’s uncovered since the crash which claimed her son’s life.
We’re far from done folks as we have two (2) more segments of this series. We know you will not want to miss Segment Three of this fascinating series!
By now, we doubt that anyone would challenge the fact that, if he deems the situation to warrant it, Sound Off Louisiana founder Robert Burns has no qualms lambasting Louisiana State Police (LSP).
Numerous folk have asked Burns to provide his take on the Kyren Lacy matter. We’re not going to provide a link to any news feature on Lacy because anyone unfamiliar with it simply pays no attention whatsoever to the news or even social media because the matter was bantered about ad nauseum about three weeks ago.
Today, Wednesday, October 22, 2025, Burns opted to create a fairly brief video outlining his rationale for why he firmly believes that LSP deserves a grade of “A” in its handling of the Lacy matter. Here it is:
10/22/25: Burns provides his take on the Kyren Lacy matter.
In the above video, Burns said that he would place the computational numbers on the screen; however, we feel it’s better to present them in the text of this feature:
80 mph (Lacy rambling down wrong lane) + 49 mph (Vehicle 2 headed in correct lane directly at Lacy) = 129 mph.
129/mph x 5,280 feet/mile = 681,120 feet/hour.
681,120 feet/hour / 3 = 227,040 yards/hour.
227,040 yards/hour / 3,600 (number of seconds in an hour) = 63.07 yards/second!!!
92 yards / 63.07 yards/second = 1.46 seconds, which is the amount of time the driver of Vehicle 2 had to react to Lacy’s reckless operation.
As noted in the football analogy on the above video, Kyren Lacy (placed at offensive tackle) engaged in a “false start” by his reckless operation of his vehicle, and he absolutely and unquestionably caused “encroachment” by the defense (driver of Vehicle # 2 who reacted to Lacy “false start”). That penalty goes against the offense (Lacy) notwithstanding the fact that the defense (Vehicle # 2) came across the line of scrimmage. For us, Matt Ory’s obsession of Lacy being “back in his lane” is immaterial and irrelevant! It’s no different than if a tackle returned to his three-point stand in the football analogy. The flag (arrest warrant) was totally and completely justified!
The big difference between what Lacy did on that highway and what would happen on a football field is that, rather than a five-yard penalty, a man lost his life!
Now, having awarded LSP a grade of “A” on the Lacy matter, it changes not the fact that LSP still warrants a grade of “F” on trustworthiness and transparency. Further evidence of that fact has arisen this week on at least two fronts. First, pill shopping trooper Michael Reichardt, who got his suspension for said act reduced from 720 hours (the maximum) to 360 hours by the Louisiana State Police Commission (LSPC), has now been accused of stealing money from the Louisiana State Trooper’s Association (LSTA) and has been allowed the privilege of retiring.
A highly reliable source told us at the time of the LSPC’s generosity extended toward Reichardt (agreeing to drop the hours of suspension from 720 to 360) that, were the deal not cut, Reichardt was prepared to expose highly embarrassing material on other matters entailing LSP.
That same claim was previously said about Trooper Daniel Fontenot, for whom the LSPC declined to summarily dismiss his case for turning ON his body-worn camera to avoid future conflict with a colleague whom he felt a need to counsel due to alleged shortcomings. We made it clear in prior posts that we firmly believe that the charge against Fontenot was “absurd,” and we even went so far as to say that then-Col. Lamar Davis’ act of imposing that discipline may have demonstrated that he was, “the most incompetent LSP Col. in LSP’s history.”
At any rate, once the LSPC declined to summarily dismiss Fontenot’s charges, he actually subsequently presented a list of some 20-30 witnesses for an LSPC hearing during which we fully anticipate he would have exposed an absolute plethora of wrongdoings at Troop D. Perhaps not unexpectedly, LSP and Fontenot came to a mutually aggregable resolution in pretty short order!
It really is a sad state of affairs when almost no trooper who has been around any length of time need fear discipline because he or she can merely open up pandora’s box of other problematic acts at an LSPC hearing!
Clair received a 40-hour suspension for excessive use of force; however, LSP Col. Robert Hodges, in asserting that Clair had received “improper training,” recommended to the LSPC that his suspension be rescinded and that it be replaced with a Letter of Counseling (which is not discipline) and that the suspension be expunged from his record. Here is video in its entirety of the LSPC going along with Hodges’ recommendation:
3/14/24 LSPC meeting during which Col. Hodges’ deal entailing Mathew Clair was approved by the LSPC.
For reasons that we don’t know (but for which we trust are solid), WAFB’s (Channel 9 in Baton Rouge) Chris Nakamoto has been pursuing the video of the Clair incident, and he has been denied at every front.
According to Nakamoto (watch the video on the link above) LSP has stated that, “The trooper’s right to privacy is deemed to exceed the public’s right to know.”
At the end of the day, the buck stops at the top, and that would be LA-1, Gov. Jeff Landry.
Since this is the approach Landry’s folk have consistently taken regarding public records, which prompted us to reference him as a “used car lemon who needs to be returned to the lot,” we say that, when it comes time for Landry’s reelection efforts in 2027, voters simply need to say, “We deem our right to public information and transparency exceeds your right to serve another term as Governor.”
In analyzing this just-released JMC Analytics poll, it sure is looking like Gov. Landry’s favorability has taken a major nosedive, and he’s got very serious problems in his home base of the Acadiana area. We guess it’s tough when the home crowd turns on you, something Brian Kelly just may endure this Saturday in Tiger Stadium.
