Citizen Crime Watch Blog

2 deputies fired after woman says she had to expose herself
by Allen Powell II, The Times-Picayune
Thursday April 24, 2008, 8:55 PM

Two Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputies have been fired and one faces criminal charges after authorities say one of them forced a female motorist to expose herself and the other deputy did not report it.

Clyde A. Clarke, 45, of 438 Holy Cross Place, Kenner, was booked with malfeasance in office after authorities claimed he forced an unidentified 26-year-old woman to expose herself to avoid arrest on two occasions. Demond T. Ferguson, 24, 1740 Hampton Drive, Harvey, was fired by the Sheriff’s Office but was not arrested.

Col. John Fortunato, a spokesman for the Sheriff’s Office, said that on Saturday, Clarke and Ferguson were traveling separately when they stopped the woman and her boyfriend on Ames Boulevard. During the traffic stop, the deputies determined that both were wanted on other traffic violations and arrested only the unidentified man.

The deputies allowed the woman to leave, but not before asking her to provide personal information, including a telephone number, Fortunato said. After Clarke took her boyfriend to jail, he telephoned the woman and told her to meet him outside her home.

When Clarke met the woman, he made her move into a dimly lit area and then demanded that she raise her skirt, Fortunato said. Clarke did not touch the woman, but when she returned to her home, he told her that the next time he called, she should not be wearing underwear.

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NOPD officer arrested for pandering, resigns job
by Daniel Monteverde and Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
Thursday April 24, 2008, 9:40 PM

A veteran New Orleans police officer resigned his position with the department after Kenner police arrested him during an undercover prostitution sting on Thursday afternoon.

Raynard Lyons, a 17-year veteran of the department, was booked with pandering after officers watched him drop off a prostitute at an undisclosed Kenner apartment building, Kenner Police Chief Steve Caraway said.

Caraway said Lyons had driven the woman to the spot after undercover detectives agreed to exchange sex for money. The connection was made through Craigslist.org, a popular advertising Web site.

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Murders down in Jefferson Parish in 2007
New investigative tactics get credit
The Times-Picayune
Saturday, December 15, 2007
By Allen Powell II
West Bank bureau
By Allen Powell II

A change in the way the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office investigates homicides and shootings has caused a significant decrease in homicides in 2007 compared with the same time period in a historically violent 2006, Sheriff’s Office officials said.

Homicides have decreased by a third in the unincorporated areas when comparing figures from Jan. 1 through Dec. 7 of this year with the same period in 2006, according to statistics from the Sheriff’s Office. Deputies have investigated 42 homicides thus far in 2007, compared with 63 at the same point in 2006. There has also been a small reduction in the number of nonfatal shootings in the parish this year, with 89 investigated in 2006 and 82 so far in 2007.

Most of the violence in the parish still takes place on the West Bank, with 85 percent of the homicides and the majority of the shootings occurring there. There was one homicide reported in Gretna and no homicides reported so far in Westwego or Jean Lafitte in 2007. In 2006, Gretna and Westwego both had one homicide and Jean Lafitte had none.

Cooperation paying off

Officials attribute the improvement in the murder numbers to increased collaboration within the Sheriff’s Office.

Deputy Chief John Thevenot, the JPSO’s commander of specialized investigations, who directs narcotics investigations, said the narcotics and homicide divisions have become much more intertwined since 2006 to handle the evolving criminal landscape in the parish since Hurricane Katrina.

“From the minute a murder takes place, it’s ‘our’ investigation. It’s the collective effort,” Thevenot said. “It’s not just one lonely guy and his investigation.”

He noted that Katrina caused mass migrations within the parish, rendering useless much of the information the Sheriff’s Office had about criminals in certain neighborhoods. That lack of information hindered homicide investigations in 2006, which was evident in the fact that the Sheriff’s Office solved only about 60 percent of its homicides by arrest in 2006, compared with about 74 percent this year.

However, through scores of investigatory traffic stops and increased use of the department’s Street Crimes Unit, a new database of criminals and their associates has been developed, Thevenot said. Whenever a homicide or shooting occurs, the victim is run through that database to determine that person’s friends and enemies within the parish. Before the storm that wasn’t necessary because most investigators knew the major players in every community and could target them.

In addition, narcotics deputies now give special attention immediately after the crime to areas where homicides have occurred in the hopes of developing information for investigators. Roundups and sweeps are conducted, and individuals detained are often questioned about the homicides. Any information gleaned is then passed along. He said this method is particularly effective because drug arrests typically serve as leverage to get individuals to cooperate with deputies.

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