HPD, Terrebonne on hook for $250K

Terrebonne Parish must pay a Houma Police sergeant $250,000 in damages following a retrial of his allegations that he was punished for speaking out about a change in how the city’s police chief is chosen.

The chief’s spot had been a civil service position currently the choice is exclusively that of the Parish President. Faulk balked publicly and, he said, punishments followed.

Initially, Faulk was awarded $350,000 after a 2013 trial on the initial suit. But an appeals court lowered the award. A new suit was brought and Faulk has prevailed, winning the $250,000.

The parish has not announced whether it will appeal.

Faulk’s attorney, Jerri Smitko, said if they due more attorney fees will accrue.

“And all this time the clock is ticking,” Smitko said. “They’re still liable for our attorney’s fees even throughout this appeals process.”

Faulk originally sued the Houma Police Department and Terrebonne Parish Consolidated Government in 2012 after he was removed from his daytime position as a recruiter and public information officer and placed on uniformed car patrol during the night shift.

Faulk was reassigned two days after his attorney sent an email throughout Terrebonne Parish which said a House bill proposed by Rep. Gordon Dove, R-Houma, in the 2012 Legislative Session was unconstitutional.

The bill, which has since then been signed into law and only affects the HPD, extended another law which exempts the chief’s position from civil service classification. That allows the parish president to hire or fire the police chief at will.

If the position were classified under civil service, then the parish president would have to hire the police chief from a qualified pool of applicants who have passed the civil service police chief’s test.

The current chief, Todd Duplantis, was hand-picked by Parish President Michel Claudet.

Smitko’s 2012 letter said that two HPD captains were more qualified and had more seniority than Duplantis for the chief’s position and that the proposed law “disadvantaged” the two captains, according to court documents.

“But that is sun-setted six months into the next parish president’s term,” Dove said.

The original law was set to expire in 2012. The extension ends on July 1, 2016 and Claudet’s presidential term ends on Jan. 7, 2016 at noon.

Dove said he proposed the bill at Claudet’s request.

“That was my request in order to make the chief of police the same as all my department heads,” Claudet said. “All my department heads are able to be removed at any time by me and they’re at-will employees. And they don’t have normal protections of the parish employees and they certainly don’t even come close to having the protection of civil service employees.”

Not yet settled is who actually must pay the award, since the suit named Duplantis as an individual defendant.

Parish ordinance Sec. 2-117 reads that the parish shall indemnify any public servant sued over actions taken in their official capacity.

David Allen, Duplantis’ attorney, refused to comment because of ongoing litigation.

Duplantis declined to comment for the same reasons.