Vox populi

Frustrated residents and council members clashed over the topic of crime plaguing the City of Ville Platte at a meeting held Thursday night at the Northside Civic Center. The meeting was held to help the city find solutions to the crime epidemic, but that was often lost among the shouting and finger-pointing between residents blaming the council, the council placing some blame on the chief of police, and the chief, in turn, blaming the council.
The meeting began with Mayor Jennifer Vidrine giving background information about the budget and the police department. This is the same information she shared at the previous city council meeting, reported in a previous Ville Platte Gazette issue. She said the city also applied for police grants, one of which is for $375,000 for police salaries which will help provide more officers. Another grant is for community policing which would have officers walking the streets in the community. She said there has been a rash of shootings with assault weapons shot in the air, “with at least 20 to 40 to 60 to 80 shots a night.” The majority of these shots are coming from juveniles. Vidrine stressed for parents to check their children’s rooms and residents to check around their homes and in their outdoor buildings because “they are hiding guns everywhere.”
Mayor Vidrine reminded everyone there is a state curfew for children 17 and under. They have to be off the streets at 10 p.m. on weeknights and 11 p.m. on weekends. She also reminded the public about the Tip Ville Platte app which can be used to anonymously report illegal activity, including juveniles breaking curfew. “Our number one priority for y’all is safety,” she said to the residents.
She reassured everyone there is money in the budget for more officers with five positions available and encouraged anyone who wants to be an officer to apply at the police department.
Councilman Mike Perron said, “We’re part of the community, too. It makes me sick to see what’s going on.”
He said they always approve the hire of new officers, but the officers leave, even after they would learn of the pay. Mayor Vidrine reminded everyone the council does not manage the police department and does not hire officers. They only approve the hire of officers. “We do not day-to-day manage the police department. We provide the police department with a budget.” Over the years, “the budget kept escalating,” she said.
Chief of Police Neal Lartigue adamantly opposed the council’s previous statement that there were eight full-time detectives when his budget was cut. He stood up and said his budget was cut last year in February and the only place he could cut was man power.
“I did the cuts, and I told them right then and there, crime’s on the rise,” he said. “We’re going to have an issue if you cut this budget. They still chose to cut the budget and put the monkey on my back! It’s time for it to stop. The room applauded his statement.
Additionally, Chief Lartigue said the problem with juveniles was that, since there is no juvenile facility in the parish, the juveniles would have to be sent to facilities outside the parish which would cost over $300 per day for each offender. The city simply cannot afford that, so the juveniles are released into their parents’ custody.
For the rest of the meeting, various suggestions were made, with the main point being parents need to take responsibility for their children and, as a community, more programs need to be available for the youth to keep them out of trouble.
Brian Ardoin, a previous candidate for Evangeline Parish Sheriff, suggested creating a boot camp for juveniles for when they commit crimes. He also said the drug and gang kingpins need to be taken down, because they are “organized” and recruiting. Ardoin suggested starting with children from 1st to 5th grade, to get to them while they are still young and offer them guidance.
Councilman Lionel Anderson said some of the problem is children are being suspended from school and the parents have them go home instead of being on in-school detention. He said when they are sent home, the parents do not keep them home, and the juveniles are out on the streets with nothing to do.
One impassioned resident said she had to close her business because she was afraid for her life every night when she would leave work. She said there were crowds of people, she found drugs and busted windows, and she was even threatened. She told the council that is why there is no tax money to help the budget because good business owners and residents are fleeing the city because they are afraid.
One business owner said he moved out of the city because he was afraid for his daughter’s safety, but he owns businesses in town. He took issue with the audit report which showed some $500,000 in uncollected utility bills. He said that is no way to run a business. Mayor Vidrine said those unpaid utilities have been on the books since at least the 1990s, long before she took office, and the statute of limitations on collecting them ran out a long time ago. Many of the people, she said, have passed away, and there was no way to collect those bills.
For most of the night, the talk went back and forth between finger-pointing on budget issues, grievances about crime, and trying to find solutions to the problem.
Councilman Bryant Riggs wants to give juveniles work as punishment, but child labor laws make it difficult to require those types of community service hours. Additionally, Riggs said Ville Platte began to die when someone decided I-49 would not pass through Ville Platte. He said it would be a city of over 30,000 people with a higher tax base if the city had decided to bring I-49. He said eventually they will have to raise taxes to pay for what is needed, like a better police force and better roads. “It’s time to face the facts and face the truth. We’re going to start having to pay for what we want.”
Former District Attorney Brent Coreil said of the crime, “We have a real problem. It’s like a disease.” He said 20 years ago there was a meeting just like this one where he asked the city council to raise the salaries of police officers because they could not keep good officers. They would leave to other jurisdictions or even other jobs completely. He said the problem is, “We have a dying town. When I was a kid, we had 10,000 people in this town. We’re down to 7,500 or 7,200 that are tax payers. Our base is hurting the income for you to pay for the policemen. It’s hurting all the things that we do. It takes a community.” He looked at the crowd and said, “This is beautiful. We have a good cross section of people, but we don’t have all of the right people.” He continued, “Times have changed.” He recalled the police returning a juvenile to their parent and the parent telling the child, “I told you not to get caught.”
“We need to get to the parents,” he said, and the room applauded. He called for legislators to be tough on crime and change the laws to reflect real consequences for felons.
Overall, the consensus from the community is there are no consequences for juveniles who commit the crimes. The majority of break-ins are committed by juveniles who are being paid by the gangs and dealers. Juveniles are arrested, and appear in court with their parents, but there is nowhere in the parish to house them, so they are remanded back to their parents. Everyone agreed parents must be accountable for their children, the children must face consequences, and the community must take action to reach them before they commit the crimes.