An audit from the Louisiana Legislative Auditor was released Monday outlining irregularities within the police department of the Village of Pine Prairie. The audit also outlined recommendations that the village should be reclassified as a town.
According to the audit, investigations into the alleged incidents began after “the Louisiana Legislative Auditor received complaints concerning the Village of Pine Prairie’s handling of traffic citations.”
The allegations arose when police clerk Mona Norton failed to deposit at least $950.00 in traffic fines from March 3, 2017, to May 10, 2017. The audit stated, “Village Police Clerk Mona Norton was responsible for receiving, recording, processing, and depositing traffic fines during this time. Our comparison of Village records obtained from individuals who paid traffic fines in person at the Village Hall indicate that Ms. Norton failed to record and deposit all cash received and altered public records to conceal cash amounts collected but not deposited.”
Investigators from the legislative auditor’s office spoke with 10 individuals who received traffic citations during that time period and found that six of them paid cash to Norton. The six individuals provided investigators with documentation from Norton that conflicted with amounts that she recorded and deposited totaling at least $950.00.
Norton in the audit is also accused of improperly reducing or altering traffic tickets without the proper authorization from the mayor between January 1, 2016, and June 26, 2017. The audit stated, “During this period, Ms. Norton regularly reduced moving violations to nonmoving violations and improperly adjusted the amounts owed by persons receiving citations in possible violation of state law.”
The audit cited Louisiana Attorney General Opinion 11-0129 which “states in part, ‘the authority to reduce a moving violation to a nonmoving violation rests with the town attorney ... who serves as prosecutor in mayor’s court. The prosecuting attorney is the only person who may amend a criminal charge.’”
According to Village mayor Quint West, this is the case unless an ordinance is put in place, which was done by the Village of Pine Prairie in 2007 under the previous administration. Therefore, Mayor West has the authority to reduce violations to a lesser traffic offense.
Investigators found that 76-percent of the violations between the time period in question were reduced, dismissed, voided, or altered. The audit states, “Ms. Norton said she typically called Mayor Quint West before making the adjustments and then documented the Mayor’s authorization on the citation.”
“As far as I know, nobody ever paid more than their original fine was,” said Mayor West. “(Ms. Norton) was knocking them down, but it was without proper authorization.”
According to the audit’s findings, “Ms. Norton also said that when people paid their citations online, she frequently reduced the charges to nonmoving violations,” continued the audit. “However, it appears that when a person’s citation was reduced to a nonmoving violation, the fine was not reduced to the amount of the nonmoving violation.”
Mayor West further discussed more effective checks and balances that were put in place. “Now when we collect for a traffic fine, we will fill out a receipt book, and the person paying the fine looks at the receipt and the person signs right below the amount they’re paying,” he said. “Not only do the workers keep a copy in the office, but I come in and make a copy of everything in the receipt book. I have my own binder that I keep here. We’re also using multiple signatures. Before it was just one person signing the receipts.”
“Ms. Norton was the only one who knew anything really about the computer system, so now we’re going to train probably three or four people,” Mayor West continued. “If anything else happens, somebody can step on in and keep the job going.”
The audit also found, “The Village issued 58 citations for driving under suspension but failed to follow state law in handling these individuals.”
State law mandates that an offender’s driving privileges must be revoked immediately when cited for driving under suspension and the license plate must be removed if the vehicle is registered to the offender.
Village personnel told the auditor investigators, “When an individual is stopped and found to be driving under a suspended license, that person is allowed to drive his/her vehicle to the Village Hall for processing. Upon arriving at the Village Hall, the person cited for the infraction is required to pay the Village an appearance bond fee of $100.00 per offense.”
Additionally, the audit found that the Village of Pine Prairie may be in violation of the Lawrason Act which sets forth the classification of municipalities. As cited by the audit, the act states “those (municipalities) having 5,000 inhabitants or more are cities; those having less than 5,000 but more than 1,000 inhabitants are towns; and those having 1,000 or fewer inhabitants are villages.”
The audit went on to state, “Although Pine Prairie currently operates as a village with three elected aldermen, the 2010 U.S. census indicates that Pine Prairie has 1,060 inhabitants. As such, Pine Prairie should be classified as a town and have five elected aldermen.”
According to Mayor West, “we’re doing some research on that because there’s kind of a disagreement with the numbers. I feel back in 2010 when we had the LCS prison that those people who were incarcerated were counted into our numbers.” He added, “I will petition the governor. If we are supposed to be a town, then we have to do that. I will check with him to see the procedures we need to do to get that done.”
Mayor West concluded, “I want to give assurance to the residents of Pine Prairie that we are working very hard as a team to put some policies in place that are going to prevent this from happening again in the near future.”
Image
TONY MARKS