VP officer charged after Eunice stop

A Eunice Police officer on patrol at about 11 p.m. Saturday spotted a vehicle with dark-tinted windows at 6th and Maple and started following.
Eunice Police Chief Randy Fontenot said, “As he started to follow the vehicle he noticed the driver put both windows down as the officer was following and when he made a turn he realized the driver was not wearing a seat belt.”
Fontenot added, “As he approached the vehicle and asked the driver for his registration and driver’s license the driver handed him a commission card from the Ville Platte Police Department.”
Eunice Police confirmed the driver, Connor Lee Atchison, 22, of the 1100 block of Necessity Loop, Basile, was employed by the Ville Platte Police Department.
“The officer could smell marijuana emitting from the vehicle,” Fontenot said.
Atchinson was asked about the smell and told the Eunice officer that he had just finished smoking marijuana and added “the marijuana helps him to rest,” Fontenot said.
A search of the vehicle stopped at 12th Street and Laurel Avenue found a small digital scale, a grinder, other paraphernalia, a package labeled Peanut Butter Breath, a prescription bottle with 133 round pills believed to be promethazine hydrochloride and a handgun, he said.
The handgun was of a type many officers use as a service weapon, but Fontenot did not know if Atchinson used it as a duty sidearm. He also did not know if the weapon was owned by Atchinson or the Ville Platte Police Department, but said most local officers buy their own guns.
The Peanut Butter Breath is a packaged marijuana product legal in some states, but not in Louisiana, he said.
Promethazine hydrochloride pills are a sedative.
“Smoking marijuana and taking sleeping pills and he is going to drive on our streets. That’s dangerous,” Fontenot said.
The drugs have been sent to the state crime lab for testing, he said.
Atchinson was not charged with marijuana possession because only crumbles of the drug were found in the vehicle, he said.
Atchinson was charged with windshield view inward and outward must be unobstructed tint; safety belt use; possession of drug paraphernalia; alter, omit, remove or obliterate label/script; and possession, sale and distribute of legend drug without prescription.
Atchinson also had a West Maple Avenue, Eunice, address in the offense report, he said.
Ville Platte Chief Neal Lartigue says Atchinson will be on administrative leave while the incident is investigated and disciplinary action is determined.