LSP Lt. Russell Graham, who was the subject of an absolute joke of a hearing conducted on August 8, 2023 under former LSP Col. Lamar Davis.
Site visitors may recall our October 2, 2024 feature on The Lens / NOLA‘s lawsuit against LSP for the withholding of an infamous $1,000/hour contract for Ed O’Callaghan’s legal services.
In today’s Sound Off Louisiana feature, founder Robert Burns provides the resolution of that litigation, which concluded with somebody (almost guaranteed us taxpayers) having to fork over $12,500 for LSP’s improper withholding of that $1,000/hour legal contract (The Lens / NOLA had gotten the records months ago).
Here’s the feature wherein Burns reveals, for the first time, just what made him so angry at LSP for declining his first public records request under the then-new Jeff Landry / Robert Hodges / Frank Besson regime:
12/9/24: Burns outlines the Lens / NOLA LSP litigation settlement.
As Burns makes clear in the above video, some active LSP Troopers contacted Burns early on in the Hodges regime and asked that Sound Off Louisiana publish a feature wherein they wanted Hodges to receive praise for transferring LSP Sgt. Georgiana Lynn Kibodeaux Sonnier to Gaming in Breaux Bridge.
We told them, just as Burns indicates on the above video, he would first seek a public records request to substantiate all transfers. Burns outlines the runaround that LSP gave him, which led to his anger and frustration at Hodges et. al. At one point, LSP declined to even provide the sheer number of transfers even with Burns making it clear names could be excluded.
Further, Burns’ correspondence with LSP’s Nick Manale attempting to at least substantiate the Kibodeaux transfer was fruitless.
As a result of LSP’s stonewalling of providing a public records request that was actually intended to benefit Hodges (or maybe he doesn’t want praise from any of his underlings), we simply abandoned any intent to publish the feature that troopers requested of us.
Much of the glee of troopers over Kibodeaux’s transfer came as a result of this August 8, 2023 hearing entailing LSP Lt. Russell Graham. As Burns candidly stated in the video above, the hearing was nothing short of a “joke,” and Burns emphasized that, as a young child (even seven or eight years old), he was raised on a 13-acre property which had a 3-acre figure-8 pond which was 32 feet deep, and he lived in that pond! As he said on the video, he, “may as well have been a duck.”
Burns also indicated that he and his cousins and friends engaged in horseplay on Styrofoam boats knocking one another off into the water that was far more serious than anything Graham engaged in regarding that utterly embarrassing episode of former LSP Col. Davis invoking discipline against Graham over the LSP swimming pool incident. It was nothing short of complete frustration to see all of the time, energy, and wasted resources of LSP’s internal investigation of Graham! It was absolutely unbelievable and, being blunt, appeared to us to be nothing short of an unjustifiable vendetta against Graham!
Burns also emphasized on the video that, even at that young age of eight or nine, he would swim from one end of that 3-acre pond to the other where there was nothing separating him but the 32-feet depth of water (at the deepest point of the swim). If anyone wonders, he was wearing no life preserver, and both Burns and his parents were that confident in his swimming skills (Sidenote: Burns’ father’s mother, who lived with the family, on the other hand, was a nervous wreck anytime her beloved grandson proclaimed to her that, “I’m going swimming!”).
Here’s a current aerial map of that very same pond (although it’s now all grown up with trees surrounding it and the water level is much, much lower due to a break in the roadway separating it and Hurricane Creek toward the very back of the property):
So, just like many troopers who contacted us, we too were stunned at Davis’ action, and we indicated to them that we would be more than happy to facilitate a feature indicating that Kibodeaux had in fact been transferred to Gaming in Breaux Bridge but, after we hit the stone wall we did with Hodges et. al., we just basically said, “to hell with it,” (and that’s being kind because Burns’ Irish temper is perfectly capable of flaring at times, and it flared to anyone who would listen to him about just how angry he was with Hodges over the handling of that public records request)!
As Burns indicated in the above video, however, we are now, for the first time, publishing the totality of Kibodeaux’s testimony at the August 8, 2023 hearing even though we uploaded the video over a year ago and just kept in in “drafts.” Here it is:
8/9/23: Full testimony of LSP Sgt. Georgiana Lynn Kibodeaux Sonnier at the LSP appeal hearing of Lt. Russell Graham.
Let us not only emphasize the $12,500 of (likely) taxpayer money flushed right down the toilet from LSP’s indefensible action entailing The Lens / NOLA‘s public records request, but also the billings from Breazeale Sachse in defending LSP against the piss poor decisions made by Hodges et. al. regarding that request transpiring right out of the gate as they assumed their positions!
As Burns states in the main video for this feature, hopefully that utterly asinine mentality entailing public records requests is going to soften.
If not, however, we believe that the fine folks at the First Amendment Law Clinic at Tulane’s Law School, for whom we express extreme gratitude as we do also to The Lens / NOLA, have plenty more stationery with which to crank out more lawsuits, and we hope they don’t hesitate to file such suits when and if these types of arbitrary denials of public records transpire in the future!