Text messages exchanged the day after a Lafayette officer died in the line of duty reveal the police chief's frustration over the sheriff's offer to assist with patrol at a rate of $45 per hour.
Maj. Royce Starring with the Lafayette Police Department reached out via text message to Col. Carlos Stout with the Lafayette Parish Sheriff's Office just after 8:30 a.m. July 26. Starring said the Police Department would need help on patrol at least through the weekend. In addition to the death of Sr. Cpl. Segus Jolivette, three of his officers were injured in the July 25 hostage situation in Jeanerette. Five officers were also out on administrative leave.
Stout noted that the Sheriff's Office was also short-handed on patrol and had many out on administrative leave. Stout wrote that he would consult with his team, but he could probably get some sheriff's deputies to work off-duty for $45 per hour — the rate paid for officers to work security gigs.
With that message, interim Lafayette Police Chief Paul Trouard jumped into the conversation, using Starring's phone to text back to Stout.
"This is chief Trouard here," he wrote. "That is unbelievable. I'm not upset but angry at that comment. We will handle our own."
Stout asked via text to speak by phone about the matter and suggested that Stout's call to them went unanswered.
"Chief, I think your comment was made out of emotions but we are available to help you all," Stout wrote. "However we need specific details but would rather discuss by phone and not via text that can be misunderstood.
"We were actually sitting as a team discussing options if y'all needed. We were looking at our patrol rosters for the weekend as well as availability of off duty personnel to come in as we did with the Middlebrook incident.
"We are here to help if someone wants to reach out to us for further discussions. Thanks."
There were no further text messages between the three. It is unclear if the Police Department and Sheriff's Office came to any kind of agreement after that text exchange.
The Police Department last week received an invoice from the Sheriff's Office for $36,414 for assistance in the aftermath of Jolivette's death.
About $25,000 of that was for sheriff's deputies taking over Police Department operations on Aug. 1 for Jolivette's funeral service. The 44 sheriff's deputies who took over LPD shifts that day were paid $45 per hour. The remaining $11,430 of the Sept. 9 invoice was for providing SWAT assistance July 26-28.
The Sheriff's Office provided the same kind of assistance after the October 2017 death of Cpl. Michael Middlebrook, a Lafayette police officer killed in the line of duty while responding to a convenience store shooting.
Although Lafayette Parish Sheriff Mark Garber held the same office at the time of Middlebrook's death, the Sheriff's Office didn't bill LPD for shift takeovers during for Middlebrook's funeral.
Capt. John Mowell, spokesperson for the Sheriff's Office, said the rates were discussed between agencies ahead of time.
"The agency itself isn't making any money off of this," Mowell said. "It's merely a reimbursement for the money that we spent reimbursing the deputies who weren't already on duty."
Trouard and a Police Department spokesperson on Thursday declined to comment on the Sheriff's Office invoice or any conversations about patrol in the aftermath of Jolivette's death.
Toby Aguillard, who was police chief at the time of Middlebrook's death, said he never would have never paid such a bill if he received one.
"I don't believe that the Police Department owes the sheriff anything for basically doing his job," Aguillard said. "To do it for one funeral for nothing and then all of a sudden now to charge for it is outrageous to me."
Law enforcement agencies typically have mutual agreements to help out one another during major incidents. Sometimes those services are billed. Often, they are not, especially when it comes to the funeral of an officer killed in the line of duty.
Lafayette City Marshal Reggie Thomas said his agency will not bill the Police Department for the $3,700 in overtime incurred by six deputy marshals who took over patrol during Jolivette's funeral.
"We just wanted to assist the Police Department," Thomas said. "There's really no policy or anything. I just decided that's something I wanted to do."
Charles Broussard, president of the Police Association of Lafayette, thanked the multiple agencies that volunteered to help city police while it paid respect to Jolivette.
"Immediately following his untimely death, we had agencies reaching out from across the state and country to help," Broussard said in a statement. "The overwhelming majority of these agencies asked for nothing in return. They just wanted to be a part of honoring the life and legacy of Sr. Cpl. Jolivette. They wanted to honor him by supporting their brothers and sisters as well as the community he served. We are truly grateful."