INDReporter

Crowley PD out of control?

by Patrick Flanagan

On May 25, officers with the Crowley Police Department busted through the front door as a family was sitting down for Sunday dinner.

Leaked footage from a Crowley Police officer's body camera showing
the May 25 altercation with attorney Clay LeJeune

On May 25, officers with the Crowley Police Department busted through the front door as a family was sitting down for Sunday dinner.

Footage from an officer’s body cam was eventually leaked to the press, showing the home’s owners, well-known attorneys J. Clay LeJeune and his wife Mitzi Mayeaux, engaged in a dispute with the officers. It quickly turned ugly, with LeJeune receiving the business end of one officer’s Tazer. Both were arrested, with LeJeune later indicted by an Acadia Parish grand jury on three counts of public intimidation and retaliation and two counts of resisting an officer with force of violence; Mayeaux was indicted on one count of public intimidation.

A Crowley Police officer drops Clay LeJeune to the ground with a Tazer on the front porch of his home during the May 25 altercation.

But that wasn’t the whole story.

Oddly, the leaked footage from the officer body cam seemed to show only a portion of the encounter — the side of the story police wanted us to see — when the situation was at its most heated moment on the couple’s front porch. The tape shows LeJeune becoming incensed over the apparent violation of the family's rights by officers who barged into their home without a warrant.

And that’s likely the reason the charges against the couple were dropped recently by Bradley Burget, district attorney for the Seventh Judicial District who stepped in to take over the case after a recusal by former 15th Judicial District Attorney Mike Harson’s office.

The family is now taking their case to the federal level and asking for an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice.

The family also released this statement Monday through their attorney, Barry Sallinger, giving their side of the story, filling in the gaps left out in the leaked officer body cam video:

Go here and here for more on this story and the troubled Crowley PD.