Marksville infighting made a bad situation worse

Marksville — Infighting in Marksville leadership allowed time bombs to tick.

Jeremy Mardis, an autistic boy shot dead by marshals, is the victim of renegade law enforcement and a local government unable to rein them in.

"We have a corrupt police department, a divided police department. Some officers are loyal to the police chief and some are not. They take advantage of the badge," said Mayor John Lemoine. "The people are fed up with it."

Mardis died when two law enforcement officers – Derrick Stafford and Norris Greenhouse Jr. – opened fire at his father, Chris Few, who they hit in the head but did not kill in an incident that has drawn international ire and grief.

Stafford is a Marksville police officer and a part-time marshal for Ward 2. Greenhouse is a full-time deputy marshal in Alexandria.

They were pursing Few in his SUV through Marksville on Nov. 3. State police said Few wasn't armed and video evidence reportedly shows him with hands above his head before the bullets flew.

Few was shot in the head and hospitalized. Mardis was in the passenger seat and was hit six times. He was buried in Hattiesburg, Mississippi.

The city is seeking clarification from the Louisiana Attorney General on marshal's jurisdiction, but the killing isn't the reason.

Loose cannons

Some Marksville residents are all-too-eager to talk about abuses of power behind local badges. Others are just as eager as long as their names aren't published for fear of reprisals. Some say it's always been this way and others blame young police.

"These people make their own laws," said lifelong resident Wayne Dauzat. "We need to expose what's going on in this town. It's all a clique. You think the mafia is something? Marksville is its own little world, and people around here are scared. Good people don't stand a chance."

Dauzat is ready to use the word corrupt when he talks about his hometown, from some of its officials to its law enforcement agents. He's had his fair share of run-ins with local police, and those stories share a common thread with other residents' experiences — entitlement, overreach of power and a feeling of invulnerability because of connections with the right people.

Dauzat didn't want to name police officers, but Patrick Jeansonne did — Derrick Stafford.

At his camp on July 4, 2012, Jeansonne's dog suffered a heat stroke and his family rushed him to the nearest veterinarian, located in Marksville. But Stafford was blocking a road with his cruiser in a crowded area when he reached town.

So Jeansonne got out of the jeep, hefted his dog into his arms and ran to the vet. His dog in professional hands, he stepped outside and made a phone call to the Avoylles Parish Sheriff's office to complain about Stafford's conduct.

Stafford heard about the call over the police radio, Jeansonne said, and within 30 minutes he'd gotten a call from Marksville authorities advising him to stay put because they were going to place him under arrest. Jeansonne said he was already in handcuffs when Stafford showed up and told another officer to take the cuffs off — Stafford told the officer he wanted to arrest Jeansonne personally, and he bit his shackles down hard enough to cut skin.

Jeansonne was arrested for the same incident — charges of disturbing the peace — twice more. In 2014, a civil court jury found Stafford lied to a criminal court about his encounter with Jeansonne and filed a false police report about the arrest.

Stafford was indicted on two counts of aggravated rape in 2011.

Stafford and Greenhouse, along with other law officers, are involved in an ongoing lawsuit concerning a July 4, 2013, incident in Marksville in which officer Kenneth Jeansonne Jr. is accused of deploying a chemical agent in a wanton fashion, officer Chad Mayeaux allegedly tackled a man not involved in the original conflict, Officer Laken Rico did nothing to stop the fracas and Stafford and Greenhose "actually assisted Mayeaux in his battery."

Kenneth Jeansonne Jr. is a relative of Patrick Jeansonne.

"That these officers are still on the force speaks volumes. It wasn't just these two bad actors," said Edmond Jordan, the attorney representing two alleged victims, Tameka Greenhouse and Steven McIntosh, in the lawsuit. "There is clearly a lack of training in the department. There is clearly a culture of excessive force and abuse of authority."

But the problem starts at the top. Jeansonne wants federal and state investigators to look into how the town is being run.

"This started a long time ago. The people in charge take care of each other," Jeansonne said. "Marksville is corrupt."

Marksville City Court v Town of Marksville

There's a feud in Marksville government.

Marksville City Court is suing the city to restore funding the council cut from the court. The lawsuit alleges the city council broke Louisiana law when it cut funding to the city court by 80 percent in June.

Attorney Brad Calvit, who's representing the court in the case, said he wouldn't comment on pending litigation. City Attorney Derrick Whittington said the same.

After the lawsuit was filed, city marshals began enforcing the law within their legal bounds but beyond the typical and traditional scope of marshals in Louisiana. Instead of enacting warrants, they were tasked to write traffic tickets, make arrests and keep the peace.

That’s why he wrote AG Caldwell in September to clarify marshals’ authority.

"I've lived here all my life and that has never been done before," Lemoine said.

The mayor says the Avoyelles Police Jury isn’t paying its fair share of the cost to fund city court.

Marksville City Councilman Mike Gremillion said city police only wrote 32 traffic tickets in this town of about 5,600 last month, limiting the money from fines going to the court.

State law mandates the money the Avoyelles Police Jury and the city must allocate to Marksville's court.

Gremillion believes the marshal’s office must have been trying to pick up the slack. Lemoine believes the move was meant to give the court more control over funding.

That's why he wrote AG Caldwell in September to clarify marshals' authority.

Gremillion said the expanded role of the marshals was a direct result of the battle between the city court and the mayor's office, and law enforcement offices are being used as pawns in small-town politics. The battle has let a bad situation deteriorate.

"It's money, but it's also the mayor's personal hate of the city judge," Gremillion said. "Everyone is trying to work together, but the top man wants it his way or no way."

Caldwell spokesman Aaron Sadler said the opinion is in draft form. The Attorney General's office receives hundreds of requests for opinions a year and has no specifics on when they'll answer Lemoine's request.

Ward 2 Marshal Floyd Voinche would not take media phone calls. He cited a gag order from 12th Judicial District Judge William Bennett, which silences witnesses, potential witnesses and parties to the fatal shooting from discussing evidence or players in the incident.

Bennett said discussion of issues outside the specific case – such as general problems with the police department or the practices of the city marshals – is not prohibited. Voinche still refused to comment.

In an emailed statement following the shooting, Voinche called the death "tragic," but insisted Louisiana law allowed his deputy marshals "to write traffic tickets, make arrests and preserve the peace."

Without comment from Voinche, understanding who's vetting new marshals is unclear. Stafford is a party to a handful of civil rights violation suits.

Marksville police answer to their chief, Elster Smith, and to the mayor. Smith said the city employs 15 officers – Stafford was the 16th – and three detectives. He said all of them, including Stafford, are Peace Officer Standards and Training certified through the Alexandria Police Department.

Smith refused to talk about anything beyond those details.

Lemoine said he doesn't know if expanding the marshal's authority was a political move, but said the police officers who joined the marshals did so without asking for approval from the city.

Many of the officers on the force are good people, Lemoine said, but others have loyalties beyond the department. He knows some of the bad ones by name, he said, and said his attempts to remove them were thwarted by the civil service board.

"The mayor is dead wrong on that," said Marksville Civil Service Board director John Ed Laborde. "If the mayor wants to interpret what we do as holding him back, I say no."

It's the mayor and the city who have the authority to hire and fire police officers, Laborde said.

The Civil Service Board, he said, is tasked with protecting civil servants and is staffed by quality people, including a school teacher, a city council member and himself, the town's mayor from 1994-98. In his time on the board, he said they've never recommended removing an officer from the force.

Smith did not provide the information about individual cases of his officers being sent before the Civil Service Board requested by The Times.