The Gun Counter

Not wanting to jack the Small Town politics thread, I held off commenting until I could sit down and do a decent writeup.

This rot has been festering for quite some time, going back at least 16 years. The local DEA narcotics task forces would partner with local Sheriff's Offices. Each SO would contribute a few people full time and a portion of the budget. They would then cover an area determined by how many SO's were participating. A lot of evidence would go missing, cases were poorly made, probable cause was stretched thin and covered with smart report writing. I can't speak for Washington or Livingston parishes, but the Tangipahoa guys were, as one friend described them, "prime retards."

Lately, there have been some grumblings of some real "cowboying" going on. Gearing up and serving warrants that could easily be handled by uniformed patrol, etc. Recently it cost them and one JPSO deputy is reported to be pretty much near to having the plug pulled.

It appears to have caused some sunlight to be cast on the unit. The Agent running the task force was recalled to his home district and assigned to his desk.

First to go was a Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff's Office deputy on the task force. Yes, that TPSO which is headed by Sheriff Daniel Edwards, brother of the newly elected Governor John Bel Edwards. About a month later, Number 2 fell. Soon after, a third accomplice made the local fishwrap. The rumor mill is circulating that large drug seizures on I-12 are having "larger than normal" samples taken for "testing." The left over portions were being delivered to rats for distribution.

After all of this, the DEA recalled the SAC back to DC and failed him upwards into another leadership position.

The Louisiana State Police has had enough of this shit and are out looking for heads to lop off.

I know some people who are even minimally connected with any of this mess and are lawyering up in anticipation of the LSP showing up on their doorstep with hot sauce and sand. Some rats are still out there laying low, and some in the list above need to be preparing their buttholes for maximum penetration.

You can say a lot about Tangi, but it's never boring. I'm waiting on pins and needles to see how this shakes out.

Here's hoping they clear the crooks out.

It's always been my steadfast contention that a narcotics officer is only effective in a given area for a limited time. Normally two years before he (or she) is "burned" and everyone in that area knows him by name and face. Narcotics investigation is tough, simply because of the nature of the work. Lots of night-time/weekend hours, it's tough on your family. To be truly effective you have to work the hours when the narcotics trade is active and that leads to divorce, loss of relationships, etc, etc.

However, narcotics investigation has a certain "panache" and folks who do it don't see the damage it's doing to their family and interpersonal relationships. Also, narcotics officers handle a great deal of money or valuable product. When the bills come due (both psychological and financial), some of those officers "turn the corner" and start doing shit that will get you prosecuted. Over my 34+ year career, I've been in on the arrest/prosecution of a half-dozen narcotics officers that stayed too long in the job, got burned into ineffectiveness and "turned the corner" to get out of a financial bind.

If a sheriff keeps a narcotics officer in the trade longer than two years, he's doing that officer a grave disservice. If I were the high sheriff, narcotics investigation would be just one of several assignments that would rotate regularly. (Don't even get me started on sex-offender investigation. That one personally cost me a marriage after six years.)

PawPaw wrote:Don't even get me started on sex-offender investigation.

In my very brief career as a reserve deputy many years ago, I assisted in exactly one child molestation case. A baby-mama's boyfriend had raped her 6 yr old daughter.
We took the mother to the hospital, paramedics didn't want her riding in the ambulance. After everything settled down, the ER nurse remarked to the full-time deputy(they were good friends) that the little girl's vagina had been torn and stretched to "the size of a sexually active 30yr old woman's".

It takes a special kind of sick for a 29yr old man to do that to a pre-pubesent child. I don't think such cretins are fixable, other than via hemp rope or a high-speed lead injection.

Shit continues to carry on.

DEA Agent under investigation applies for HPD Chief position

I don't think he has a chance in hell, but I'd be against him just for his stance of turning a few miles of I-12 into a seizure zone/revenue stream for the city.

PawPaw wrote:It's always been my steadfast contention that a narcotics officer is only effective in a given area for a limited time.

I get the impression that's true for a good deal of police work. And that regular rotation is good for the officers, it keeps them from burning out. Such rotations need to include a "cooling down" phase. Training, recruiting, telling bad jokes...anything to let people decompress and come back fresh.

The more I see, the more I think that any policing activity that results in a revenue stream for a department or local municipality needs to be rethought.

The batphone rang this morning. It seems that the local PD and the SO were subjects of a coordinated and armed response from the feds. Computers and phones are being seized along with patrol cars. The facilities are locked down and all entry/exits are being logged.

Suspicions are this has to do with the above.

Yep

More arrests

Looks like "The White Devil" is being hammered, and rightly so. I do know, if only professionally, the Sgt. from my old dept. that was arrested. The word I'm getting is he's being squeezed hard for evidence/testimony and this is part of that.

It'll be interesting to see how this all shakes out. Maybe something will change???