When our fabulous Inspector General (IE), Ed Quatrevaux comes calling, and you have something to hide, you better shiver in your boots, because he’s not stopping until he has you in his grasp. The New Orleans School Board, who for decades were champions of corruption, is thumbing their nose at his audit request.
Ed Quatrevaux
Quatrevaux’s office sent a letter to the School Board in November, 2012. That is a lot time for them to resist his inquiry. This week attorneys for the School Board answered his letter back, claiming the IE has no right to make his request. Let me get that straight- New Orleans School Board and New Orleans IG. Seems like a perfect fit. The attorneys say his request is totally without merit. These are the arguments guilty parties make before they eventually plead guilty. Quatrevaux doesn’t need permission to audit most city agencies.
What’s up next? The IG may have to sue the School Board for evading his audit request. He also says he’s looking at a series of audits, not just one. I just love when a city agency like the School Board resists a perfectly ordinary request like the IG is making.
Since Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans in August 2005, the School Board has lost control of most of New Orleans’ schools. They had a horrible record of mismanagement and corruption. Out of this dismal record came the Recovery School District with a $1.8 billion school building master plan, a joint plan of both school systems.
The IG has been a busy man of late, releasing thorough reports on New Orleans’ support of the Sheriff’s Office, the Louis Armstrong International Airport, and police over-billing for traffic tickets. Ed Quatrevaux is a good man who works hard protecting the people of New Orleans.
Last month, the city ethics board voted to reappoint the IG to a second four-year term. That is a nice vote of confidence by the ethics board. They know very good work when they see it.
It was a big week for the consent decree for the Orleans Parish Prison. U.S. District Court Judge Lance Africk this week said, the consent decree is the only way to overcome the years of stagnation that permitted OPP to remain an indelible stain on the community, and it will ensure that OPP inmates are treated in a manner that does not offend contemporary notions of human decency.
Judge Lance Africk
I like Africk, he’s handling a tough case with the U.S. Justice Department, the mayor, and the jailer on different pages and sides of the three sided coin that alone makes the case fascinating and very unusual.
Africk approved the federal consent decree ordering massive changes at the jail to bring it up to constitutional standards. Africk will now preside over a hearing to determine the cost of the reforms and who will pay the bill.
Meanwhile, New Orleans Inspector General Ed Quatrevaux issued a report that says the jail has been adequately funded, and the jail’s deep problems that exist cannot be blamed on lack of funds. Quatrevaux says, the ‘root cause’ of OPP’s problems is a dysfunctional structure that gives the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office (OPSO) a blank check (for per diem inmate payments) that the city must sign, and ensures that neither the city or OPSO can be held fully accountable for conditions at the jail. The jail will remain as it is until that structure is changed.
The way this situation has unfolded, whatever the Inspector General or the Mayor says, Gusman says the opposite. Gusman says Quatrevaux’ report is full of erroneous assumptions. Landrieu has balked at funding both the NOPD and the OPP decrees. He claims that the two decrees will cost the city around $55 million over the next five years, and that is beyond the scope of the city’s budget. Gusman says the mayor’s lack of leadership and underfunding is responsible for the deterioration of conditions at the jail.
NOLA Mayor Mitch Landrieu
In court this week, Gusman is supposed to tell the court about all of his funding sources and how he spends the money. This should be very interesting, as no one in the whole wide world has any idea how the Sheriff spends his money. As in any per diem situation, the more per diems you have, the more income you can spend. When the jail had 4,000 inmates or more, the Sheriff had a lot more funds. That’s the problem with the per inmate system, it encourages a fuller jail. Now, the jail holds no more than a couple of thousand prisoners, giving the Sheriff half the funds.
Where have all his prisoners gone? The federal government removed their inmates, claiming the jail is too unsafe. You can find them all around the region in other jails. That is ICE and Federal Marshall Service prisoners.
The OIG report says the city forked over $36 million to Gusman in 2011. That comes down to an astounding $46.26 per inmate per day, double what the commonly bandied about amount Gusman makes daily on an inmate. Whoa, that is a lot of money to pay a jailer who answers to no one but himself. That is a tried and true recipe for disaster and financial shenanigans, $36 million is a truly bizarre, wildly large number when New Orleans is so very broke. Gusman constantly complains that all his problems are related to lack of money. The truth is, his $46.26 per inmate per day kills that argument completely. It just doesn’t hold water when the real per diem is revealed.
The crowd surrounding Gusman is very vocal and the din around him must be deafening. He is in huge trouble and should resign, yet he solders on, without any shame for the horrible deeds that have occurred on his watch. The feds are about to indict him, that is a certainty. The next step for Gusman is the most difficult. The mayor is on target with wanting Gusman gone, but he’s going, so Landrieu should be a bit more patient.
I’m a music publisher by trade, and some of my musician clients need a little help now and then. When they apply for Food Stamps, or SNAP benefits as they are now called, it’s a very interesting process. The more I find out, the less I like the system.
For example, when the SNAP folks call for a phone interview, they call from a California area code, 616. That is very weird, why would California be involved in the Louisiana SNAP program? When you receive a letter from them, it says the phone call might not be a local call. When you call them, it is a local call. What goes on here? I really would like to know the California connection. It’s virtually impossible to reach anyone connected to the food stamp program. They obviously don’t want to hear from anyone via the telephone. It’s a broken system that is meant to annoy people, not help them.
Louisiana SNAP Card
When you are accepted for benefits, you receive a letter stating what your benefits will be. That letter is mailed from Baton Rouge or New Orleans, so it shows up fast. Your SNAP card is another story. It comes from out of state, from Texas, and takes weeks to arrive. If you need your SNAP card faster, you are out of luck. I know of an unfortunate musician who was accepted on a Wednesday, a week plus later, the following Wednesday (two weeks since applying) no card had arrived. If you are low on food when you apply, you will be mighty hungry by the time you can obtain some food. You might actually have to ask your friends and family for food help, as the state of Louisiana is very very very slow to get your card to you. BIG update!! My client went to Iberville and Claiborne to find out where his card was, and what he discovered shocked even me! No card was ever ordered! Ms. Brinkley of the SNAP program isn’t doing her job at all, if she is conducting phone interviews and approving applications, then doing nothing except hurt the person she is supposed to help!
SNAP image
When you attempt to call your counselor, it is almost impossible to reach them. Voice mail time and after time, and no call backs. They are very busy people, I don’t doubt that, but if you never can reach your person, it’s more than a little frustrating. When you receive a letter asking for a phone interview they ask you to call. You cannot reach them.
If you are unable to work, mentally ill, or something else of the same ilk, you get SSI money, which isn’t very much to live on, maybe $660 per month if you have no children. This decimates your SNAP benefits to around $60 per month. Try to eat for 30 days on $2 per day!
Suppose you are a college student in New Orleans and you need SNAP benefits. Forget it! You aren’t eligible! You are told don’t go to college and spend money on tuition, that’s money you should have spent on food! This is what a 20 year old friend of my son was told when he applied.
SNAP has a web site in Louisiana, and if your status is pending, you may receive your card in a week. If you are approved, expect to wait a couple of weeks for your card. Does this make sense? NO NO NO!! Pending cases don’t have food stamps yet, but they do in Louisiana and approved means wait, wait, and more waiting. You could starve before your benefits ever reach you.
It’s a serious state of affairs, and not all fair. I don’t blame the counselors, who number too few and are seriously underpaid no doubt. But all the out of state connections with this program must raise the cost substantially.
I already wrote an entry on Gusman’s legal problems, when two top lieutenants pleaded guilty earlier. No one got rich from their corruption, it wasn’t chump change, but we aren’t talking about a life shattering amount of moolah.
Another top lieutenant in Gusman’s fiefdom called Orleans Parish Prison made a deal with the federal prosecutors. Richard Molenaar III, a close friend to John Sens, the Sheriff’s director of purchasing, received $1 million in prison construction and renovation jobs at the jail. According to federal sources, Molenaar rigged bids, gave kickbacks and a swimming pool to John Sens. Molenaar and Gusman were close, according to involved sources. One million is a lot of money but he had to complete OPP construction projects with that money, which cost him much of it.
Molenaar is being charged with conspiracy to bribe. Apparently, he often bid against himself via three companies he controlled- Landmark Mechanical, Ricky’s A/C, and Custom Carpentry and Renovations. A bill of information was filed last week charging him with conspiracy. When the feds offer a bill of info, it means a deal was cut. He’s moved to Las Cruces, New Mexico since leaving New Orleans and the Criminal Sheriff’s employ.
Gusman and New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu are pitched in a court battle that I wrote about here. The court case went loco when viral videos shot on a smuggled cell phone depicting Orleans Parish Prison House of Detention inmates guzzling a tall boy Budweiser, shooting up heroin, snacking on Popeye’s fried chicken, snorting coke, and brandishing a pistol, all without any Criminal Sheriff Deputies present. The videos were shot in 2009 and they are very unbelievable, sad, and insane. This put Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman on the hot seat again, to say the least. The videos were released as evidence of OPP mismanagement in a hearing held by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk to determine if the city should be part of a federal lawsuit against Gusman filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of abhorrent conditions at the jail.
Gusman’s excuses about the jail house videos that were lost for several years were extremely lame. When federal prosecutors asked for them, they instantly appeared. He has appeared so weak of late through his court dealings and the public outcry about the videos.
Woman Walks out of OPP!
This actually occurred in 2009, but it’s typical of the problems Gusman faces. The woman was picked up the following day. Gusman’s predecessor, Charles Foti, served for decades and never was indicted, even though he truly ran the OPP fiefdom exactly as he saw fit.
The above title isn’t 100% accurate, but it’s poetic license. Have you have seen the viral videos shot on a smuggled cell phone depicting Orleans Parish Prison House of Detention inmates guzzling a tall boy Budweiser, shooting up heroin, snacking on Popeye’s fried chicken, snorting coke, and brandishing a pistol, all without any Criminal Sheriff Deputies present. The videos were shot in 2009 and they are very unbelievable, sad, and insane. This put Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman on the hot seat again, to say the least. The videos were released as evidence of OPP mismanagement in a hearing held by U.S. District Judge Lance Africk to determine if the city should be part of a federal lawsuit against Gusman filed by the Southern Poverty Law Center because of abhorrent conditions at the jail.
Mayor Landrieu today, April 9, 2013, formally filed to place Orleans Parish Prison in federal receivership in control of all aspects of OPP.
Gusman called the move a blatant political attack and said Landrieu is picking fights rather than trying to fix the city’s financial woes. The city faces the possibility of incurring millions of dollars in costs to pay for federal consent decrees to both the Orleans Parish Prison and to the New Orleans Police Department.
This consent decree is about a lack offunding, Gusman said. Contrary to Mayor Landrieu’s blatant lie, his administration has not invested any money in the infrastructure of the jail or in retaining deputies.
Landrieu has said the city can’t afford to pay the price tag. The city’s position is that it should be exempt from the lawsuit, but Gusman had the city added since they finance his jail.
In a statement issued Tuesday, Gusman said he closed the House of Detention in 2012 because of its state of disrepair and abhorrent lack of proper security measures. The truth is, the chief reason he closed the House of Detention because federal officials stopped housing their prisoners there.
Gusman has made some really lame excuses about why he didn’t remember the videos. He claimed they were shown to him on a really little TV. OK, I remember lots of cool videos I’ve seen on my cell phone! He also said they were locked in a safe he didn’t have the key to. However, when the feds asked for them, he produced them almost immediately. Gusman also said he forgot about the videos.
Orleans Parish mayor Mitch Landrieu chimed in with his own statement, That’s a pretty good one, huh? I’ve never seen anything like that. It’s just quite amazing. It just lets you know the entire management system is in disarray.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu
The scenes were captured in 2009 on a cell phone smuggled into the House of Detention in New Orleans, a decrepit lockup pressed back into service after Hurricane Katrina. The video’s release during a federal court hearing this week sparked a new demand by the city’s mayor for the federal government to take over the Orleans Parish prison system and a round of I-told-you-sos by advocates for the inmates held there.
In addition to the displays of contraband, the inmates in the now-shuttered facility show themselves dishing out soup from bins in grungy, overcrowded cells and sleeping on mattresses laid on floors. One holds up huge glue traps he says are used to catch nutria, a rat-like pest that has infested much of southern Louisiana and notes that the jail was supposed to have been closed.
How did all this contraband find it’s way into the House of Detention? Turns out two inmates named Arthur and Lester found a way to get out of jail each evening unseen after night roll call and return each morning before the am roll call. They were able to jimmy a broken fire escape door, and left and returned as they pleased. The door had been ineffectually fixed with a pair of shackles through the cell bars and the door handle, but the inmates picked that lock, as well as their cell door lock. The fire door had no alarm!
Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman
The authorities are closing in on Gusman.
Two former high-ranking members of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office have been charged in federal court with taking kickbacks and rigging bids for contractors who deal with the city’s jail. John Sens, who was the purchasing director at the sheriff’s office before being demoted amid the federal probe, and then resigning last week, and Col. Gerard Hoffman, the director of maintenance, were charged in bills of information. That is a clear signal that both are cooperating with authorities.
The men were charged with conspiring to commit bribery in a program that receives federal funds.
Sens, the brother of Municipal Court Judge Paul Sens — who is in turn a very close friend of Sheriff Marlin Gusman — is the point man for Gusman’s fund-raising operation. In that role, he frequently tapped contractors at the jail to make contributions to Gusman’s campaigns. Sens was reassigned to “security and administrative duties.”
Gusman has insisted that his hiring of John Sens had nothing to do with his relationship to the judge, who along with Gusman was a top aide to former Mayor Marc Morial. Hoffman, who began working for the sheriff’s office in the 1970s, recently retired.
Court documents accuse the men of being a part of a scheme to rig bids at the parish prison with two men identified only as “Businessman A” and “Businessman B.” The events outlined in the charges occurred between 2011 and early 2012.
Sens is accused of taking various gifts, receiving free work at properties he owned, getting $25,000 in work on a pool at his home in Waveland, Miss., and accepting payments, including $30,000 in cash.
A separate bill of information says Hoffman also received gifts and free maintenance work at properties he owned, including $2,500 in electrical work at his home. He also was given a trailer and a storage container worth a total of $5,000.
I should be dancing in the streets! How the heck did an old line former New Orleans state rep. get caught with his hand in the till at this point in his career? Sherman has been a mover and a shaker for decades in the black community.
Former Louisiana State Representative Sherman Copelin sits in the Jefferson Parish jail Wednesday afternoon after he turned himself in to the sheriff’s office after a warrant was issued for his arrest.
As FOX 8 first reported Tuesday night, Copelin was wanted on charges that he bilked sub-contractors out of hundreds of thousands of dollars for work they did on a west bank school that was never finished.
Copelin turned himself in just hours after he told FOX 8 that he knew nothing about the charges.
The former longtime state representative and former mayor’s candidate showed up at the Jefferson Parish detective bureau just after 10am this morning with his attorney Robert Jenkins.
Copelin was wanted on two charges related to the rebuilding of the West Bank Christian Center in Harvey.
West Bank Christian Center
His company was hired to do the work. Copelin was charged with contractor fraud, misapplication of payments, and theft due to the hundreds of thousands of dollars he allegedly owed subcontractors on the job.
In an unrelated matter, Copelin had just been cited for contempt of court on Monday for failing to make an earlier court appearance on a speeding violation.
As for the contractor fraud charges, he will now wait for a magistrate to set bond for him and schedule a court appearance.
It’s a sad fact that the HANO management for decades has been very corrupt. Well, this new felon policy is wonderful, progressive news, which indicates to me that HANO has turned itself around to some degree. That’s worthy of trumpeting from the streets!
The new policy on criminal background checks will make it easier for felons to gain meaningful employment. What makes this change even more important is it was done with the cooperation of Stand With Dignity (SWD), a public housing advocacy group HANO has clashed with repeatedly in the past. Can you guess why SWD and HANO didn’t get along? HANO was misbehaving during this era.
Eliminating blocks people face when returning into society after being locked up is the point of this change, according to the HANO website. Also from the site-
Their criminal history is likely a bar to admission to most affordable housing opportunities, making post-incarceration reunification of families a near impossible dream, HANO says in the preamble to its proposed policy statement. (HANO) recognizes that, whether explicit or implicit, its practices have served to perpetuate the problem… and accepts that it has a responsibility to give men and women with criminal histories the opportunity to rejoin their families and communities as productive members.
I really like this change a lot, it’s meaningful when any major corporation or government agency adopts an enlightened employment policy concerning felons’ job prospects. When you are released from OPP or Orleans Parish Prison or and state or federal facility, you face an uphill battle getting a good job
The new policy says HANO will not undergo a criminal background check until they are offered a job.
HANO will conduct criminal background checks before anyone is admitted to housing with the risk level of each conviction reviewed by a panel of senior HANO officials.
Suppose you are arrested and serve time for a marijuana distribution charge, but no weapon was found on you or in your house. Or you are caught and go to jail with a gun possession charge as a convicted felon. These different charges will affect your chances of getting hired by HANO.
