Break down these walls, Mr. Hebert

Mr. Hebert, tear down this wall!

The moment was breathtaking and tear-inducing.

Law enforcement officers, firefighters, medics, the FBI, the Bureau of Indian Affairs and other agencies, federal, state and local, all gathered in the little town of Franklin, right there near the railroad tracks, to mourn the death of Sgt. Rick Riggenbach of the Chitimacha Tribal Police.

An article in this issue of the newspaper states what law enforcement officials had not disclosed directly, information shared by Riggenbach’s widow, Bonnie. Officers had told her that Wilbert Thibodeaux, the 48-year-old man accused of murdering her husband, not only that the suspect threatened Riggenbach’s life, but said he would kill people at the Cypress Bayou Casino, where he was arrested for disturbing the peace and resisting an officer.

Two St. Mary deputies were injured after responding to the place where Riggenbach was killed, and where a 78-year-old civilian was also killed, allegedly by Thibodeaux.

Their boss, Mark Hebert, has been quoted in some interviews and appeared at a press conference or two but since then has not returned my phone calls. His spokeswoman, Traci Landry, is courteous and tries to be helpful.

But she has had little to offer in the way of the most innocuous information.

The sheriff himself has not returned phone calls from this newspaper. This is unfortunate because since we’ve been looking at this case a lot of issues have arisen. There are questions about the confinement of Thibodeaux for two days, just a few days before the shootings occurred. There are questions about how Thibodeaux apparently fell through the cracks in Texas, where he was arrested on a felony assault charge within 6-8 weeks of the massacre on Flat Town Road.

In short, there are questions to be answered, ancillary questions that have little to do with the case now being brought against Thibodeaux but that have a lot to do with how law enforcement handled itself prior to the unfortunate events it relates to.

There is no voice from the St. Mary Sheriff’s Office to voice the outrage that facts uncovered by this newspaper demand, or to be accountable to the public for its procedures.

The inaccessibility of the Sheriff results in a silence which is deafening. It indicates, to someone who only recently has begun covering this agency, that there is in place a wall that cannot be penetrated. Does the Sheriff’s Office have a crisis intervention team to deal with mentally ill people in crisis? The question was important because of claims by neighbors that they sought help for Thibodeaux in the weeks prior to the shooting, but after he fell through the cracks in the Texas criminal justice system.

Landry wouldn’t answer that question. It was too closely related to the case, she said. The Sheriff who does not return phone calls was no help on that count. It was just more proof of the wall Hebert appears to have built

It needs to be torn down.

My phone number, Sheriff Hebert, is (985) 413-9889 and you can call it anytime. Even if you can’t answer all the questions, it would be nice to talk. Jerry Larpenter in Terrebonne and Craig Webre in Lafourche answer the phone. You should answer yours too.

Law enforcement agencies have every right under the law to keep details relating to an investigation, particularly one concerning a crime of this magnitude, under wraps when necessary.

But the sheriff of a Louisiana parish, the person at whose desk the buck is supposed to stop, also has a responsibility to answer reasonable questions that are in the public interest.

Mr. Hebert, with apologies to Ronald Reagan, I beg you to tear down this wall. And if you’re not capable of submitting to the tough questions, if you use a spokeswoman to hide from scrutiny rather than to facilitate the flow of information, maybe you should give the job to someone who can.

The send-off given to Sgt. Riggenbach was moving and heart-wrenching, deserved by a law enforcement officer who gave his dying breath for the public he served. He, his widow and children, and all the people of St. Mary Parish deserve more.