re: East Baton Rouge taxpayers doled out $350k for police-caused crashes over past 2 years

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The Parish Attorney’s office has a well documented history of throwing cash at the slightest litigation before even considering making an argument to defend the actions of the Baton Rouge Police.

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I have seen it first hand countless times.

One of the best ones I saw first hand involved the current commander of K9. He borrowed my marked unit one night since his was in the shop. To date how long ago this was, it was a fairly new marked crown Vic.

On the exit ramp to Evangeline Street, he tapped the rear of a good times van that was stopped waiting to make the turn into Evangeline.

Hardly any impact. Only damage was a cracked fiberglass spare tire cover on the rear of the van from the push bumper. No injury complaints. Report filed

A year later, I’m sitting on the 3rd floor outside the council chambers waiting for a meeting to start when I pull a paper copy of the upcoming council agenda from a tray next to the elevators. While scanning it, I noticed a $70k settlement involving the driver of that van.

Called the now k9 commander to ask if he had ever been disposed or contacted by the parish attorney and he said he had not.

Just so happened to be sitting next to the then police chief, (Englade), and asked if he was aware of that and he said he wasn’t. After explaining the details of the crash and that the officer involved hadn’t been contacted by anyone, he was livid. He said the parish attorney was suppose to contact him on any settlements over $10k to discuss with him.

Apparently the biggest claim by the driver was loss of consortium from this MINOR fender bender and the parish attorney went right along with it. The listed attorney was a well known billboard attorney at the time who ended up running for mayor

So that settlement game has been going on for decades.