St. Mary sheriff hopefuls talk technology, leadership

The four-man race for St. Mary Parish sheriff consists of a former state representative, a former deputy of the department, Patterson’s five-term chief of police and the current sheriff, who was appointed to the position in July.

Jack Smith spent nearly two decades as a state representative for District 50. He said his top priority for the sheriff’s office is to update the jurisdiction’s technology in order to “reinforce” the deputies who serve the parish.

“They currently have less equipment than the city police departments within the parish and they need to bring brought up to speed,” Smith said. “Right now there is no computers in their cars, no cameras in their cars. That equipment needs to be placed and give the deputies the tools to do their job.”

Smith, 55, of Patterson, also said he would work to install a performance-based budgeting system that more satisfactorily allocates funding. He called attention to the fact that he is the only candidate with a four-year degree in criminal justice as the reason voters should elect him.

“I’m the only one in this race with a college degree in criminal justice,” he said. “I’m the only one who’s had studies towards budgeting, finance, insurance, risk management. I’m the only one that has a lot of business experience.”

Mark Hebert was appointed in July by retired Sheriff David Naquin to fill the final four and a half months of Naquin’s term. He called attention to a continuous string of narcotics busts due to an increased patrol visibility.

“You don’t see a lot of people hanging out on the street corners like you used to,” Hebert said. “The visibility of it has been knocked down quite a bit. You get out there, you keep the streets clean, you keep them off the streets and what you do is your forcing them into houses, and if you look at the bulk of our narcotics arrests, you’ll see that we do a lot of search warrants.”

Hebert, 50, of Franklin, said he’s the right man for the post because he has served as a supervisor of almost every department in the office, including patrol, detectives and narcotics. He’s also worked as the jail’s warden and has been the chief of deputies.

“I’ve actually had to work my way through the ranks,” he said. “I can see the issues that concern the different divisions that are trying to serve the citizens of St. Mary, and I can be sympathetic to both realms, the victims’ side as well as the law enforcement side.”

Patrick Lasalle has served five terms as Patterson’s chief of police. He said that leadership has “failed” the sheriff’s office and that its employees and the parish’s citizens deserve better.

“If you do what needs to be done and move to the future and train the future leaders of the parish when it comes to the law enforcement community,” Lasalle said. “I’m a firm believer in community policing, proactive involvement with people on an everyday basis. I don’t believe in responding, or police departments that sit back and wait. They are not useful as far as I’m concerned.”

Lasalle, 57, of Patterson, said that if he’s elected, he would work to unify the parish’s police departments by appointing police chiefs to his “major staff.” He said he’s the right man for the job because of his continuing law enforcement education and used the success of the Patterson Police Department to prop up his claims.

“These guys are talking about things that happened in the past,” Lasalle said. “I continuously train, and I stay abreast in technology. Patterson Police Department leads in that field. We are way past the cutting edge.”

George Rodriguez, who spent about seven and a half years as a deputy under sheriffs Chester Baudoin and Huey Bourgeois, did not respond to phone messages left last week and was not interviewed for this story.