Louisiana's Criminal Justice Reform: Sheriff Prator Expresses Concern

Last week Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator visited with Erin McCarty and Robert J. Wright on 710 KEEL radio about Governor John Bel Edwards touted Criminal Justice Reform.

The bipartisan legislation revamping the way Louisiana deals with criminals and crime was passed in 2017 in an attempt to lower Louisiana’s notoriously high incarceration rate. The reform bill was authored by six Republicans, two Democrats, and one Independent. Those designations mean little though; in Louisiana all you have to do to get re-elected to the other side of the legislative chamber is change your political affiliation, if not your beliefs.

In a meeting with President Donald Trump in early August, Governor John Bel Edwards said, "In Louisiana, we're proud of the work we've done. It's been sentencing reform, prison reform, and a real focus on reentry and for the first time in 20 years, I can tell you Louisiana does not have the highest incarceration rate in the nation today."

In 2017, U.S. News and World Report listed the top ten states with the highest incarceration rate in the nation and Louisiana was number one, and designated the prison capital of the world.

Everyone agrees there is a problem here but consensus begins to diverge when we begin to nail down what those problems are and how to solve them. Senator John Kennedy, (R-LA) is one of those voices against the new reforms: “Well, the governor and I just disagree,” said Kennedy. “He thinks our problem in Louisiana is we have too many prisoners. I think our problem is we have too many people committing crimes.”

Sheriff Prator is more specific. In his visit on KEEL radio last week he enumerated several changes he believes are problematic. One of his concerns is that the re-entry programs that are supposed to help the newly released acclimate into society are not yet in place. “We’re designing the bus while we’re driving the bus,” he said, “and somebody is gonna get killed, and people are getting killed…”.

Sheriff Prator is referring to two prisoners who were arrested on drug charges that were released in November, who have now committed murder, and have been rearrested. One of these was in Ouachita Parish and the other in Bossier Parish.

These re-entry programs are supposed to be funded in part by the savings gained from lowering the incarceration rate. Sheriff Prator directs citizens to page 38 of the Practitioners Guide for the new reforms which explains that in the first year, 35% of the savings will go to the Office of Juvenile Justice for Strategic Investments and to the Department of corrections for the same purpose. Nobody has said what those strategic investments are; Sheriff Prator did not know.

Still in the first year, 14% of the savings will go to Victims’ services (this number drops to 10% after the first year.) Twenty-one percent goes to “Grants: community-based programs” (drops to 15% after year 1) and 30% of the savings from early release goes to the General Fund to be spent at legislators’ discretion.

What concerns Sheriff Prator a great deal can be found on pages 6 and 7 of the Practitioner’s Guide which outlines new thresholds and penalties for non-violent crimes. Apparently, we are not all in agreement on what “non-violent” means. For example, under the new law, a person could barge into my home with a firearm and could be free the very next day. This is now a probationary offense.

Specifically, the former penalty for this was mandatory five to thirty years. Now it is 1-30 years and the one year is not mandatory, according to Sheriff Prator.

 Another example: no longer considered a violent crime is “mingling harmful substances”; in other words, if someone drops a date rape drug in your drink, this is a non-violent offense. So is extortion and a drive-by shooting if you happen to miss hitting a person. See page 7 of the Practitioners Guide for these.

Here is the chart found on page 7 of the Guide:

Reducing Minimum and Maximum Sentences, p. 7

 Penalties for crimes have been drastically altered as well, such as debt forgiveness. One scenario described by Sheriff Prator would be that of a repeat offender for theft, for example. If the judge orders that person to reimburse the victim, the most they have to pay back is the equivalent of one day’s wage per month, and if they do that for one year the balance of the debt is forgiven.

 Additionally, third and fourth DWI offenses are now backed down to probation and may qualify for diversion, which means that it is not recidivism if it never happened. At least on record.

Nobody, not even Sheriff Prator, thinks our prison system was without fault before these reforms. Everyone agrees that change was needed. But perhaps we have once again passed a bill without really knowing what is in it. At the very least, we have passed a bill that releases prisoners without the safety net to keep them from reoffending. Those programs simply do not exist yet and that is not a good situation for the citizens of Louisiana or the newly released.

Read the Practitioner’s Guide; it’s not a complicated document. You can find it here.

Further Reading:
U.S.News and World Report:  10 States with Highest Incarceration Rates (7/26/17)
Two Louisiana Inmates released early under reform accused of murder: The Advocate (8/2/18)
Louisiana's Criminal Justice Reforms 2017: Pew Research Group (3/1/18)
Governor Edwards Meets with President Trump: WAFB (8/10/18)
Disputes over La. Criminal Justice Reform Continue: KTBS (8/16/18)
Sheriff Steve Prator Highly Critical Of Prison Reform Efforts KEEL Radio (8/22/18)
Louisiana's Justice Reinvestment Reforms Practitioner's Guide (8/1/17)
Equal Justice Initiative

We Need a Leader to Unite Us, Not Divide

We have come to a terrible impasse in our country. Some would say it's been simmering for 150 years and some might look at all this as a new evolution of the protests and violence of the 1960s which has just now reached a new boiling point.  I don't know about that.  I'm neither a sociologist nor an historian, but it's clear even to me that tensions in this country have reached a new level of ugly since 2008.

If you go back to 2009 when Barack Obama called out law enforcement in Cambridge, Massachusetts who "acted stupidly," he said, in arresting Henry Gates for disorderly conduct, you can find the beginning of the current President of the United States involving himself in state matters and commenting on issues about which he should have just been quiet.  That was a local matter and he had no cause to comment on it.  The charges against Gates were dropped and the whole thing would have sorted out without Obama's injection of race into the conversation. But he commented, thus lighting the fuse of racial tension.

Then we get  to Trayvon Martin in 2012 where Obama famously said "You know, if I had a son, he'd look like Trayvon."  That created controversy that went on for weeks.

In 2014, on the death of Michael Brown, who you may recall robbed a store, accosted the clerk, and tried to take a police officer's gun while leaning into his patrol car, Obama said, "Too many young men of color feel targeted by law enforcement -- guilty of walking while black or driving while black, judged by stereotypes that fuel fear and resentment and hopelessness." Nothing about the fact that Brown robbed a business and then hit a police officer who was trying to question him.

And then we have the Eric Garner case, where Obama again weighs in and says the mistrust between law enforcement and the black community "is an issue that we've been dealing with for too long and it's time for us to make more progress than we've made. And I'm not interested in talk; I'm interested in action."  What kind of action?  Obama said he wanted more "accountability" between communities and law enforcement because he's seen too many people that don't believe they are being treated fairly.

By now, you see, we are so accustomed to the president weighing in on local law enforcement issues that we almost expect it.  People are clamoring for him to comment on the rash of law enforcement murders that have erupted in recent weeks.  Here in Louisiana we have lost three law enforcement officers in as many weeks. Next door, in Texas, we lost one this weekend.  What does Obama have to say about all of this action?

Why hasn't he said anything to tamper down the #blacklivesmatter group who has called for the killing of white people and police officers?  Why is this not hate speech?

Some would say that the national rhetoric has contributed to the impetus of all this lawlessness.

It's true that if we can't blame the gun for killing someone but instead must blame the crazy person pulling the trigger, we also can't blame Obama for the epidemic of dead police officers. We can't blame Obama for the murder of two white reporters by a hate-filled black man who wanted  a race war. He didn't pull the trigger.

But did he light the fuse?

What we have unfolding in our country right now is terrifying. What we need is a sober, God-fearing, honest leader to come forward, instill calm, and call for an end to the hate speech -- to bring us together rather than to divide.  We need a leader who would suggest that we work together to solve our problems rather than point out perceived injustice.  We need someone who places value on human life.  All life.  White life, black life, unborn life, life regardless of your occupation, race, or income.  It all matters.

Obama had no business wading into the Gates controversy in 2009, but he did.  And now that he's all in, up to his neck, he needs to put the fires out. If we have to wait for a more competent leader to do it in 2016, how many more lives will be lost?

It's Time to Take Responsibility: #AllLivesMatter

Today marks the one year anniversary of the death of Michael Brown in Ferguson. Several hundred people, including activists and religious leaders, gathered on Canfield Drive and observed four and a half minutes of silence before marching to a local church.

Since the Michael Brown incident, there have been other incidents of what activists are calling a war on black lives by white police officers. From Eric Garner to Sandra Bland to Christian Taylor, it seems this is all we are talking about.  Social media is exploding with rants, hashtags, and protests that #blacklivesmatter.

And then Cecil the Lion gets killed, and #lionslivesmatter.

Don't #alllivesmatter?  That's what they taught me in Sunday school when I was a little kid. Every Sunday at the Episcopal church we sat at little tables and colored pictures of Jesus with lambs, his outstretched hand beckoning the flock. "Red and yellow, black and white, they are precious in his sight..." we sang in unison, happy smiles on our faces.

When in the world did we become so fractured, again?   Never in my life have I been so aware of racial tensions throughout the country, and I lived through the '60s.

In 2009, we had the President of the United States standing up on television asserting his personal view that "there's a long history in this country of African Americans and Latinos stopped by law enforcement disproportionately."

Now, we can get into statistics and studies and evaluate the bias, or lack of bias, of whomever conducted said studies, and we can argue about that all day long. But it seems to me that if you're breaking a law, any law, then you may have to answer to that at some point.  Bottom line.

Just stick to Michael Brown for a moment. If he hadn't walked into the store, assaulted the owner, and stolen some cigarillos, Darren Wilson would never have confronted him.

Did Brown deserve to die for stealing cigarillos?

No, of course not.

Did he deserve to die for leaning into Wilson's car and assaulting him?  Well, no, but you up the danger-stakes somewhat when you assault an officer.  Brown made some pretty bad choices there.

The New Yorker has a long profile of Darren Wilson and the incident in Ferguson that day. Both Wilson and his wife have left the police force and can no longer work in law enforcement because they are considered a liability -- too dangerous. They live in hiding behind sunglasses and security cameras. Wilson has been cleared of any wrongdoing but now is facing a civil suit by Brown's parents. All of these people feel all this "resentment" and anger toward Wilson who, to be honest, was just doing his job. When we look at the actual facts and put aside the emotion of the case, it's not hard to see that. Yes, it was tragic, of course.

But, my point isn't to retry Darren Wilson or what happened that day; let's look at the Sandra Bland case. Why are the police being blamed for her death? She refused to comply with a reasonable order, was confrontational and uncooperative every step of the way, and then took her own life.  But we're going to demonize the police for that all over social media.

My family was on the receiving end last fall of police error, as you may remember if you've been around a while. A neighbor heard kids screaming, thought some woman was being abused, called the cops, and they stormed through my front door with weapons drawn and demanded to know where the screaming was coming from. It was terrifying. And yes, it made us furious. But it was all a mistake. We still have some bitterness about it because the department covered their guy and admitted to no wrongdoing whatsoever, but it's all in the past and as a retired police officer himself, my husband realizes that things happen. It's a very stressful job and certainly a thankless one.

As I reflect back over the past year, and the explosion on social media demonizing police, I personally feel the need to step back from that.

Just this week, here in Shreveport, we lost a bright, young police officer who was shot in the head and killed by a cold-hearted criminal who was already wanted for attempted murder. Officer Thomas LeValley answered a domestic call and was killed for it. They are burying him today.

And yet the drum-beat of anti-police rhetoric continues. Even here in Shreveport, some don't even have the decency to hush until after this boy is buried.

As a nation, we have to stop this. We have to pull together and we have to, absolutely have to, stop letting the Louis Farrakans, the Jesse Jacksons, and the other race whores drive division between us. Do I blame Obama for all this?  No, not directly, but do I think he has set race relations back fifty years?  You bet I do.  Social media hasn't helped, but Obama has been far, far from a peacemaker on this.

It's time for us all to take responsibility for our own actions, put morals and integrity back on the table, teach our children respect for authority and laws, and quit giving a pass to criminals because they've had a hard life.

All. Lives. Matter.

Shreveport Police Storm the Wrong House and Draw Down on Innocent Citizen

UPDATE #2: 11/1/14:  I've received some emails asking about the status of this investigation; there is no update to share yet.  I can only say that we have filed a formal complaint with the Internal Affairs Department of the Shreveport PD and we are awaiting the outcome of that investigation.  Beyond that I don't want to say anything else; I want to let the investigation take place without putting the officer or the PD on trial here.  

The comments on this post have been vigorous and interesting.  Please remember to refrain from insulting each other!  Be nice!  And remember, not all officers are over-zealous like this one.  Most are doing good, honest work.  

I'll update more details when I can.  Thanks.

UPDATE:  The Shreveport police administration is actively responding to this investigation in a positive manner and have been in contact with us.  I'll update with what I can when I can, but please know that we do support the Shreveport police department and the officers on the job.  This was a bad situation and hopefully an isolated one.  Thank you for your support.

As the wife of a retired police officer, I appreciate more than most people the dangers that police officers face on a daily basis.  It's a dangerous job and most people wouldn't do it.

That being said, I had my first encounter with an over-zealous police officer last night and it scared the ever living hell out of me.

Scene:  Saturday night, about 8:30.  Steve and I are sitting in our living room with the World Series on television.  Kansas City was leading the Giants 4 - 1.  Steve can't stand listening to Joe Buck so the sound was turned way down.  He was working on his computer and I was reading a book on my iPad, and all three dogs were sleeping around us.

We have relatively new neighbors in the house directly behind us and these people have small children.  Lately the weather has been cool, turning to fall, and the evenings pleasant so the children are often playing out in the backyard, squealing and screaming as kids will do.  Yesterday their father was out there with them doing some home repair because I heard saws going and some hammering.   The kids don't bother me; I'm glad kids play outside and are not stuck in front of video games.

As Steve and I are watching the game, we can hear the kids playing and screaming; he asked me if I heard that because he wasn't sure what he was hearing; it could have been on the TV, which as I said, was turned way down.  I confirmed that I heard the kids screaming and we went on about our business.

About 15 minutes later, about 8:45, Steve looks up from his computer and says, "Hey, there are police outside, I mean RIGHT outside."  He could see the lights flashing through the blinds.  He got up and peeked out the blinds and saw patrol cars, and he saw officers with flashlights running down the driveway that cuts between my house and the neighbor's house: it's a wide double driveway that we share.

I stood up from the couch to look and as I crossed my living room I saw officers with flashlights running between my house and the neighbor's house on the other side.  One was shouting "It's back here, it's back here!"

I said, "Steve, they're over here now," and pointed to the window.  About that time there is a fierce pounding on my front door and lights pointed at my house.  "Open up!  Open up right now!"  Pounding, pounding on the door.

Steve tells me to grab the dog (the Lab who is very protective, but not barking) opened the front door and starts to ask what in the world is going on when this cop with his gun drawn and aimed at Steve's chest starts screaming "Get back!  Get back!  Who is screaming in this house?  Who is screaming!"  The cop props one foot on the threshold-step and continues screaming at us.

Steve raises his hands in an open gesture, the way you do when a cop is aiming a gun at you, and said, "What are you talking about?  Nobody is screaming in here!"

The cop, with the gun still aimed at Steve, looks at me and yells:  "Who else is in this house, who is doing that screaming?!"

I said, "Nobody is screaming in here!  It's those children behind us!  We have kids living behind us and they play in their backyard!"  And Steve is saying "We're just sitting here watching the baseball game!"  And the dog is standing there, who I've never managed to grab because this happened so fast, but he isn't barking or charging at the cop, thank goodness.

Steve tells him, "I'm a police officer, I'm a retired Bossier City police officer; we are just sitting here watching baseball!"

At that point the cop turns his gun so he's no longer aiming it at Steve but still has it in a firing grip, he turns to the officers standing behind him and in the driveway, and says "It's the house behind, on the other street!"  and takes off running.

Steve hollers after him, "What's your name!" and the officer gives it to him.

We closed the door in stunned silence.

We stared at each other, in silence, and then the fear and adrenaline hit me.  I started shaking and trembling and could not stop.  I sat back down on the couch, got back up, Steve is dumbfounded and then furious.  He gets on his cell phone and calls to speak to a supervisor and I walked outside on the back deck to see if I could hear anything.

I saw flashing police lights and the neighbor's back flood light was still on.  I heard a stereo playing, maybe from their house, maybe another house.

I went back inside and Steve was still on the phone demanding to speak to a supervisor.  He finally got a lieutenant to come to the house to talk to us; he came within about thirty minutes and he had Mr. Over-Zealous Cop with him.  We had the door open, watching through the storm door for the lieutenant to show up and we saw Mr. Over-Zealous walking the supervisor through the run down the driveway and down the other side of the house, explaining what they did.  Then Mr. Over-Zealous walks back to the street, crosses his arms, and leans against his patrol car watching us as we speak to the supervisor.

In the end, the whole thing was terrifying.  I know it could have been much worse; I kept thinking what if my dog had jumped at the cop?  He would have shot him.  What if the cop thought Steve was making a threatening move?  Would he have shot him?  He was definitely drawn down on him.  What if my 22-year old son had come out of his room, walked around the corner into this scene - would he have shot him?  What if Steve and I had gone out and my son was home alone to face this craziness?

The what-ifs kept me up all night long and haunt me.

Like I said, I know it could have been worse, because no shots were fired in this case, and you certainly read about incidents that have gone wrong all the time.

I blame all this on the over-militarization of the police force.  Officers dress like SWAT teams now in all black or in riot gear with cargo pockets all over them.  What happened to first assessing the scene before you draw down on a civilian?  What happened to knocking on the door and saying, "Hey, we've got a noise complaint and just need to be sure everything is OK in here."   And if he really thought someone was in mortal danger, why just take our word for it before running off to terrorize someone else?  When they were running between the houses, we had open windows (actually OPEN windows, as well as open blinds and curtains) and any officer could have looked inside or listened to see what was going on before drawing down on us.

I know police work is dangerous and I know that domestic calls are often the most dangerous.  I appreciate the difficulty of their job.  But with any job, your first responsibility is to do no harm, to avoid making any situation worse, and to act responsibly.

It is my own personal opinion that this officer is a menace and should not be on the street.  He very easily could have done something very, very bad last night.