Name: Under Congress police reform package, Clay Higgins' own policing career might've drawn closer scrutiny
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Under Congress police reform package, Clay Higgins' own policing career might've drawn closer scrutiny

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You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.Clay Higgins pictured at a press conference announcing his initial campaign for Congress in 2016.Advocate staff photo by LESLIE WESTBROOK -- Capt. Clay Higgins, spokesperson for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office, speaks into the camera as he and law enforcement personnel from various agencies and black community leaders create a video asking for the public's help in bringing members of the Gremlins street gang to justice Wednesday, February 17, 2016, at the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office Public Safety Complex in Opelousas, La.Amid a spirited and sometimes wrenching congressional debate over what should be done about cops who brutalize minorities, one Louisiana representative stayed largely quiet, though he may have more personal experience with the subject than any of the House’s other 434 members.U.S. Rep. Clay Higgins, a Lafayette Republican who parlayed his image as a tough-talking cop nicknamed the “Cajun John Wayne” into a seat in Congress, nearly saw his nascent law enforcement career derailed ignominiously 13 years ago when he repeatedly assaulted a Black bystander and then lied about it to investigators.Higgins, 58, who previously sold cars for a living, began working as a police officer in Opelousas in 2004. But his career with the Opelousas Police Department ended less than three years later after he used excessive force on Andre “Red” Richard, who had pulled up near a residence where police were serving a search warrant.Without justification, Higgins struck Richard, grabbed him by the neck and may have kicked him as he lay handcuffed, face-down. Higgins then lied about it to his superiors and falsely accused Richard of battery, records show.He quit the force soon after, as the department was about to impose hefty discipline on Higgins for his misconduct, says Perry Gallow, then chief of the Opelousas Police Department.Higgins mostly avoided the House debate over a Democrat-sponsored police bill last week, though four of his five Louisiana colleagues took the mic to weigh in. He did issue a news release after the passage of the bill, which he voted against, claiming it “would most certainly legislate many of America’s best, most experienced street cops out of law enforcement.”The bill might well have ended his police career, if it had become law while Higgins was still in uniform. Among other things, the bill would create a registry of law enforcement officers who have been found guilty of misconduct, as a way of preventing bad cops from jumping from agency to agency.That’s exactly what Higgins did after the Opelousas incident in 2007, moving on to the Port Barre Police Department and then to the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. Two of Higgins’ previous bosses in law enforcement, including the chief at the time of the incident and the sheriff who unknowingly hired him after it, now say the congressman’s misconduct should’ve cut short his decade-long career and drummed him out of the ranks.Higgins declined an interview request for this story and did not respond to requests for comment about the incident or his policing career. A spokesman for Higgins provided a statement that he insisted be attributed only to “Congressman Higgins’ office.”“Congressman Higgins answered these questions in depth in 2016 only to be misquoted, quoted out of context, and unrighteously attacked by unscrupulous journalists in league with establishment career politicians. His record as a street cop stands. We’re not going to participate in the liberal fake news Advocate’s attempt to tear down law enforcement and demonize police officers. ...The Congressman advises that if you want to know what it is to be a street cop, then put on a badge.”The 2007 incident, which was reported in detail during Higgins’ congressional campaign in 2016, occurred as Higgins and several other Opelousas SWAT officers were serving a search warrant on Planters Street, and Richard pulled up in his car. Richard told the first officer he spoke with that his cousin lived at the house and he decided to stop and see what was going on after spotting a number of police cars parked outside.An Opelousas Police Department internal affairs investigation — which included interviews and statements from Richard, Higgins, three other officers present and two civilian witnesses — closely described what happened next.As Richard spoke with another policeman, Higgins started peering in the windows of his parked car, and then opened one of the doors. When Richard quickly stepped in to close it — telling Higgins he didn’t have permission to search the car — Higgins and another policeman, John Chautin, grabbed Richard by the neck, threw him to the ground and handcuffed him.A number of witnesses, including two other police officers, later testified that Higgins grabbed Richard roughly by the hair as he lay face-down and handcuffed on the ground, jerked his head to the side and — as the commanding officer at the scene, Lt. Graig “Twin” LeBlanc, later recalled — spewed insults at Richard and told him, “Now go call your backyard lawyer now, motherf---er.”Richard later said he felt someone kick him and LeBlanc, who was looking across the street, believed he saw Higgins deliver the blow.LeBlanc ordered the officers to help Richard to his feet. Richard implored LeBlanc to intervene and to “tell the truth” after he filed a complaint about his treatment. To Higgins, Richard said something to the effect that everybody needs to die eventually and face judgment for their actions.Higgins apparently took those words as a threat and became enraged. He took off Richard’s handcuffs, then shoved him against a car, grabbed him a second time by the neck and delivered a blow across Richard’s face before another cop, Sgt. Bill Ortego, stepped in to tell Higgins to leave him alone.Two civilian witnesses later told an Opelousas Police Department internal affairs investigator that Higgins backed off and started to walk away from Richard after noticing them staring in shocked disbelief from a porch across the street.But Higgins wasn’t quite done. Before leaving, Richard pulled out a cigarette and went to light it. Higgins wheeled around, ripped the cigarette from Richard’s mouth and yelled, according to Richard, “Who gave you permission to smoke?”As promised, Richard filed a complaint with the Police Department, and when the Opelousas Police Department’s internal affairs investigator, Capt. Craig Thomas, interviewed Higgins, he lied about the entire incident. He falsely accused Richard of grabbing him while closing his car door, and flatly denied ever grabbing or hitting Richard.The next day, Thomas interviewed Ortego, who’d seen Higgins hit Richard. According to Ortego, Richard never touched Higgins before Higgins and Chautin threw him to the ground. Ortego confirmed Richard’s account that Higgins had roughly grabbed him by the hair as he lay face-down in handcuffs.Ortego also recounted how Higgins shoved Richard onto the car, grabbed him by the neck and — after Ortego told Higgins to leave Richard alone — slapped Richard across the face.Higgins dialed up Thomas just after 11 p.m. that same night to come clean, admitting he’d lied about what happened and said he’d been convinced to tell the truth after discussing the incident with “a counselor from Las Vegas.”The next morning, Higgins acknowledged he’d falsely accused Richard of committing a battery, acknowledged grabbing him around the neck and jerking a cigarette from Richard’s mouth. He also admitted he’d struck Richard across the head, though Higgins contended he’d only “cuffed Mr. Richard on the side of the head only using 10 to 15% force, not an actual strike.”But Thomas, in his report on the incident, was convinced that the real reason Higgins confessed was because he’d spoken to Ortego, and learned that Ortego hadn’t gone along with the story Higgins and Chautin concocted.As punishment for the beatdown, Gallow recommended Higgins be suspended for 160 hours without pay, demoted a rank, removed from the SWAT team and reassigned to a patrol shift so he could be directly supervised. The Opelousas City Council signed off on that discipline.The biggest stories in business, delivered to you every day. Sign up today.Higgins quit days later before it ever took effect. At the time, he was also facing a separate internal probe for stopping on his way to a regional SWAT competition to buy two 12-packs of beer at a gas station while in uniform and driving a marked police car. That internal affairs probe also apparently looked at whether SWAT members — including Higgins — had .In a recent interview, Gallow called Higgins' conduct "completely unacceptable" and said Higgins quit to avoid discipline. Gallow, who served as chief until early 2015, said that once Higgins quit, he never would have rehired him."No sir, absolutely not," Gallow said. "The way in which it happened, the fact that he attempted to cover it up, that’s not a person I would want under my command. I hold the badge dearly to my heart, I appreciate and understand the integrity that is required, and anything of that magnitude — no, I would not attempt to rehire an individual like that."Current Opelousas Police Chief Martin McLendon referred questions about the incident to Gallow. But McLendon, who was an officer with the department at the time, said the department wouldn’t consider Higgins for another job.“Not under my administration,” said McLendon. “I’m not entertaining that. Anything that had disciplinary action, I don’t want to engage in it.”During his first congressional campaign in 2016, Higgins again misrepresented the incident, claiming to the Lafayette Independent that he’d been disciplined merely for pulling a cigarette from Richard’s mouth — and claiming Richard was belligerent after “breaching” an established perimeter around the search.“He was parked on the street; there was no perimeter set up for Richard to see,” Thomas, the internal affairs investigator, in 2016 when asked about Higgins’ claims.Higgins acknowledged to the Independent that he’d made some false statements in his initial interview but claimed he decided to come clean as a matter of conscience: “I couldn’t live with that,” he told the paper. “I couldn’t sleep.”He never responded when a reporter at the Independent followed up after obtaining the full internal affairs report.The incident could have derailed Higgins’ brief law enforcement career long before he rose to viral fame as the brash, bombastic star of local CrimeStoppers TV segments — which drew massive viewership once uploaded to YouTube — while working as a spokesman for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff’s Office. Instead, he wound up working 9 more years in law enforcement.Bobby Guidroz, the longtime sheriff in St. Landry Parish, said he never would’ve hired Higgins as a deputy if he’d known about his misconduct.“Absolutely it would have” disqualified Higgins from a job, Guidroz said Wednesday. “If I’d have known that before he came to work here, I would not have hired him.”Guidroz said he couldn’t recall any similar complaints against Higgins during his time as a sheriff’s deputy, which included a stint as a night-shift patrolman before Higgins was moved to public affairs.But the sheriff and Higgins over the insults Higgins hurled at suspects during the Crime Stoppers segments — including, according to Guidroz, calling one suspect “a disease, a parasite, a cancer”; another “an imbecile with limited brain cells”; and claiming another wasn’t “worth the bullet to kill” — and over the ways Higgins sought to profit off his growing fame.Higgins abruptly resigned from the Sheriff’s Office at a fiery press conference in February 2016, claiming that Guidroz was trying to muzzle and silence him in the segments, which drew throngs of viewers online.Higgins’ last and perhaps most controversial segment — in which he challenged members of the so-called Gremlins Gang in neighboring Vermilion Parish to meet “on solid ground, any time, anywhere, light or heavy, makes no difference to me, you won’t walk away” — has recently gone viral again, reframed by conservatives online as a message aimed at “antifa” demonstrators.Guidroz said he found Higgins’ inflammatory insults aimed at suspects unprofessional, and he had been cautioned by lawyers that they could create legal problems for the agency. Guidroz also said that — despite Higgins’ boast to Gremlins gang members in the video that, “I’m easy to find” — a fearful Higgins soon came to him to request extra body armor and permission to strip the markings off his sheriff’s office truck.Emails from that time obtained by news outlets including KATC-TV and the Independent showed that Higgins spent time during his paid shifts marketing merchandise and trying to pitch himself as the star of a reality show. Guidroz said Higgins also filmed commercials in his Sheriff’s Office uniform, a violation of agency policy and, potentially, state law.“He had a private little enterprise going where he was selling cups, mugs and other trinkets with his logo — ‘Captain Clay’ — on some stuff, which he had no permission to do,” Guidroz said. “When he left, he resigned. My idea was I was going to fire him, but he decided to just pack up and go.”Guidroz declined to discuss his opinion of Higgins as a congressman, saying his clashes with Higgins as a sheriff’s deputy had left him feeling “very negative” and with “a bitter pill in my mouth.”“I don’t monitor him, I don’t follow him in Congress,” said Guidroz. “He’s not my congressman, so he’s not my problem.”Soon after leaving the St. Landry Sheriff’s Office, Higgins landed a new badge and gun to wear as he campaigned for congress in 2016 from then-Lafayette City Marshal Brian Pope, who made Higgins a reserve deputy. Higgins after Pope was stripped of his post following his criminal conviction for malfeasance in office.Before turning in his gun and badge, Higgins had lined up another reserve commission, asking Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry to deputize him as a reserve officer with the Louisiana Department of Justice. A spokesman for Landry said the Attorney General’s Office “ensures Congressman Higgins remains current with his yearly training and requirements” but didn’t answer questions about whether Higgins has ever done law enforcement work for the agency.Staff writers Mark Ballard and John Simerman contributed to this story.In his first bid for public office, Clay Higgins —&nbsp;known as the Cajun John Wayne — defeated political veteran Scott Angelle on Saturday night …© Copyright 2022 , 840 St. Charles Avenue New Orleans, LA&nbsp;| &nbsp;|Powered by from .

You are the owner of this article.You have permission to edit this article.Clay Higgins pictured at a press conference announcing his initial campaign for Congress in 2016.Advocate staff photo by LESLIE WESTBROOK -- Capt. Clay Higgins, spokesperson for the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office, speaks into the camera as he and law enforcement personnel from various agencies and black community leaders create a video asking for the public's help in bringing members of the Gremlins street gang to justice Wednesday, February 17, 2016, at the St. Landry Parish Sheriff's Office Public Safety...

Under Congress police reform package, Clay Higgins' own policing career might've drawn closer scrutiny

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