Miles Jay Oliver

The Shreveport Times

A Shreveport firefighter who was accused of cruelty and the abuse of two mentally challenged men at Fire Station No. 8 in 2011 has been reinstated by The Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board.

Board chairman Michael Carter confirmed that Billy Glass was reinstated in a Dec. 14 meeting. The split decision of the civil service board reinstates him with back pay.

Carter said Glass' reinstatement was "made whole," meaning it becomes retroactive to the day he was hired, as if he had never been fired.

Glass was one of four firefighters who accepted plea deals to avoid jail time and stiffer penalties in the years-long saga that began when allegations of prostitution and abuse emerged in June 2013.

Allegations included hiring a prostitute to have sex with one of the men as well as encouraging of one of the men to pull coins from feces, having him wear a hat covered with ants and tricking him into eating dog food by calling it "beef tips and rice."

Judge Ramona Emanuel sentenced Glass to 90 days of unsupervised probation on a charge of misdemeanor prostitution and one year of supervised probation on a felony cruelty charge.

As part of the plea deal, Glass also was made to pay a fine, attend AIDS counseling, sensitivity training and work with intellectually disabled people.

Glass' plea allowed him to maintain his innocence while conceding the evidence in the case would reasonably result in a guilty verdict against him.

Glass also had to give a sworn statement of his knowledge of the alleged misconduct at Fire Station No. 8.

The Dec. 14 civil service board meeting did not address former Shreveport Fire Chief Craig Mulford, who was formerly charged with five counts of malfeasance in office in June 2014.

Mulford's charges, which later were dismissed, followed allegations of his involvement in a cover-up in the First Station 8 scandal.