By Scottie Hunter
Published: Apr. 23, 2024 at 7:03 PM CDT|Updated: Apr. 23, 2024 at 7:41 PM CDT
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - Internal Baton Rouge Police Department documents detail corruption linked to four BRPD officers—Deputy Chief Troy Lawrence, Sr., Doug Chustz, Todd Thomas and Jesse Barcelona. The first-hand accounts came from one of their own brothers in blue who blew the whistle on the alleged misconduct and coverup.
The documents, which were leaked to the WAFB I-TEAM, provide a better idea of what went on inside a bathroom at the department’s First District precinct in 2020 that led the arrests of the four officers. The leak of the documents comes as the WAFB I-TEAM has learned a special grand jury has been seated to hear evidence and possibly bring formal charges against the officers.
RELATED: Special grand jury seated in BRPD street crimes corruption case
While it is unclear if the officer will face formal charges, Attorney Ryan Thompson calls the documents damning.
“It’s encouraging and I think it reinforces the position that no one is above the law and that we’re all seen as equal in the eyes of the law,” said Thompson. “This was a coverup. At minimum this is obstruction of justice but what we have here in my view is a full scale coverup of felonious activity.”
According to the documents, last December, former chief Murphy Paul brought in an officer for questioning who blew the whistle on the alleged misconduct. Keep in mind, this is just months after the WAFB I-TEAM blew the lid off alleged abuse inside the Brave Cave, the secretive warehouse where some members of the street crimes unit took certain people in their custody and allegedly carried out illegal strip searches among other things. It also comes after a man and his attorney came forward with allegations of abuse at the hands of the four officers.
The documents provide a play-by-play account from the whistleblower about what went on inside the bathroom. When the man in their custody refused to be strip searched, that’s when the whistleblower says Deputy Chief Troy Lawrence, Sr. came into the bathroom, telling the man they needed to look in his a**. The whistleblower then told investigators the deputy chief got frustrated, pulled out his stun gun and threatened the man-- saying “You see this guy right here. He’s about to knock the f*ck out of you.”
Seconds later, the whistleblower claims officer Todd Thomas punched the man in the face several times, causing a bag of drugs to fall off the suspect’s body. At some point during the ordeal, the whistleblower says Deputy Chief Lawrence fired up his stun gun, which caused the whistleblower’s body camera to start recording. The recording captured the strip search and the alleged use of force inside the bathroom.
When announcing the arrests last fall, former Chief Murphy Paul detailed the elaborate scheme that was then allegedly cooked up to get rid of the evidence. The documents leaked to the WAFB I-TEAM show exactly what role each officer allegedly played. As the officers left the bathroom, the whistleblower’s body camera beeped. That’s when he claims officer Thomas took the whistleblower to a separate room and told him not to put his body camera on the docking station to keep it from downloading into BRPD’s system. Instead, the whistleblower claims officer Thomas put the body camera next to his cell phone to download and watch the video. At some point, the whistleblower claims officer Thomas viewed the video and told Deputy Chief Lawrence they needed to “get rid of it” and that the Deputy Chief agreed.
WAFB’s Scottie Hunter asked attorney Thompson how significant is it for an officer to turn on his fellow officers and seemingly blow the whistle and come clean about alleged corruption.
“Well, for me it says that this officer when he took this oath of office that there was something there that he understood when he took the oath of office that it was to the public,” said Thompson. “I would have liked it to have happened earlier. Obviously this happened in 2020 but it does require some courage by that officer to come forward.”
According to the documents, the whistleblower told investigators he started to get nervous about the situation but that officer Thomas put the body camera in his pocket and that’s when Deputy Chief Lawrence told him to write up a letter saying the equipment was lost and that if the department made him pay for it that “the team would take care of it.” The whistleblower says he signed the letter that he claims was written up by officer Barcelona and it was sent up the chain of command. Nothing was ever reported until a complaint was made three years later.
Thompson says the allegations in the documents-- if true-- are a disgusting display of corruption and coverup at the highest levels of BRPD.
”That is a very detailed account of what it is that transpired,” said Thompson. “You have a conspiracy. You have malfeasance of office. You have felonious activity from everyone who was there and everyone who was involved in this and I think that justice should be served swiftly.”
All of the officers who were questioned about these allegations either denied or said they did not recall specifics from the accusations made by that whistleblower.
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