There are two good reasons to get rid of elected police chiefs in Louisiana, one of these being just the confusion in city administration that occurs which can allow interpersonal conflicts to flourish that, in at least once instance, prompted the law to be disregarded in multiple ways.
The drama unfolding in Minden stands as prime example. Through a quirk in statute that allows a marshal to serve as a municipality’s police chief and be elected, it’s one of the largest cities in the state with an elected police chief, a selection method which separates from an otherwise unified administrative structure perhaps the most important function of a city. Likely that’s why the interrelations between no party Police Chief Jared McIver, two officers, no party Mayor Nick Cox, and the City Council produced a bizarre sequence of events that still are far from resolved.
Early this year, veteran Minden Police Department officer Chris Hammontree made an arrest connected to what is described as a “well-known” Minden resident. In February, he also made a stop of a couple passing through town that eventually involved his opening a stuffed animal that carried a container which he opened, holding the ashes of the woman’s child. A dispute has arisen as to whether he had sufficient probable cause to do so.
A complaint came to the MPD which led to Hammontree’s placement on administrative leave in May for the stop, and then next month he was put under arrest for it and McIver and City Attorney Jimbo Yocom part of a panel that recommended terminating his employment, which only the City Council can do. This outcome perturbed another officer, Jason Smith, who also serves as the chairman of the city’s Municipal Fire and Police Civil Board and head of the local union, to the point he engaged in a shouting match with McIver, although they eventually calmed down. However, soon after he also was placed on leave by McIver.
The handling of the affair also drew complaints from Cox and the statewide law enforcement union the Louisiana Law Enforcement Association, maintaining that internal discipline would have been sufficient. Some see the escalation to issuing a summons as related to the earlier arrest as a form of payback inflicted on Hammontree
As badly as things had been handled to that point, then the city and City Council made it worse. It turns out that by the middle of June Council staff, McIver, and Yocom collaborated to cut two checks worth nearly $27,000 to the couple. The problem was, this violated the city charter on appropriations that defaulted to state law regarding appropriations which says an appropriation must accompany any settlement, whether a legal case, and in fact those greater than $10,000 had to have official notice published at least ten days prior.
That fact seemed to escape Yocom and the others until a month later, when suddenly a special meeting was called out of the blue with the item on the agenda, as well as one appointing special counsel to look into Smith’s suspension. Which then created a second problem, with the messenger of doom being SOBO.live website operator Wes Merriott.
Merriott is an experienced hand in public meetings law, having battled Bossier City’s attempts to play fast and loose with its agenda and in the process deny Merriott’s public commentary rights. Crossing the parish line, Merriott turned up at the special meeting and during the public comment phase informed an apparently – and again – caught flatfooted Yocom and the Council that it had violated public notice law by not publishing the deal and its disbursement that had gone out the door contrary to the law over a month earlier.
This seemed to flummox Yocom and the Council which brought on their huddling in executive session, from which after about a half hour it emerged to take no action on that item. Of course it couldn’t legally: no public notice had been given. Apparently, one still hasn’t been issued.
And worst of all, convening at the drop of a hat into executive session was illegal as well. Statute also says that if there is a possibility of a public body like the Council going into executive session on such a matter that public notice had to be given, identifying the parties involved and reasonably identifying the subject matter of any prospective litigation for which formal written demand has been made that is to be considered at the meeting. Obviously, that didn’t happen either.
So far, the episode has generated an appropriation not (yet) made legally and an illegal Council meeting on two different counts. But there’s plenty of time for the comedy of errors to expand with the Council termination hearings supposedly in the offing sometime and the criminal charge against Hammontree filed by Republican District Attorney Schuyler Marvin, who allowed himself to get dragged into a politically no-win situation by taking McIver’s word about it all.
Had the police chief been appointive, this might not have escalated as Cox would have had to buy into McIver’s approach that has attracted criticism even within his own profession. As well, there’s probably a greater certainty that a mayor-appointed (and perhaps council-confirmed, depending upon the jurisdiction) chief would have a high degree of administrative competence, regardless of intentions, given that a faulty one would backfire on the elected official(s) in charge of putting that person into office, as opposed to having the electorate decide directly on a chief.
This is just an example of what can go wrong and is likelier to go wrong with an elected police chief. Yet there is an even more egregious case that can be made against elected chiefs ….
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