WBR sheriff must think if he refuses to talk to media, all his problems, including departmental theft, will just disappear
WBR sheriff must think if he refuses to talk to media, all his problems, including departmental theft, will just disappear
February 1, 2023 by tomaswell
To the surprise of absolutely no one, West Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Mike Cazes has reprised an old tactic in reaction to news not to his liking: blame the messenger.
Cazes has initiated a full-scale effort to ferret out the person or persons in his department who tipped off a Baton Rouge television station as to when one of his former employees would be surrendering following disclosure that she stole $158,000 from the sheriff’s office.
Cazes, who has been sheriff of the parish across the Mississippi River from Baton Rouge for more than four full terms, plus a couple of years into his fifth term, conveniently ignored the fact that he kept Mandy Miller on the payroll for some three months following her admission of the theft.
Nor has Cazes ever explained how Miller qualified for a salary of $72,000 for her file clerk job processing traffic ticket payments for the department. That’s a pretty hefty salary for such a position when one considers that most deputies, with the possible exceptions of Chief of Staff Kevin Devall and Caze’s son-in-law Dale Simoneaux, earn considerably less than that.
Simply stated, something doesn’t pass the smell test here. It’s entirely possible that there are underlying facts that have yet to come out.
Nevertheless, Cazes, Duval and Simoneaux subjected several detectives to hours of intense questioning in an effort to learn the source of the LEAK TO THE TV STATION. Cazes, who becomes more defensive every day, now refuses to be interviewed by reporters for the TV station.
Cazes even sent a department-wide EMAIL that said he would take no questions on any matters concerning his office. “There will be no direct contact with the Sheriff on any matters dealing with the West Baton Rouge Sheriff Department,” the email said. Baton Rouge TV station WBRZ, which has been following the story for some time, said the email “raises questions about what Cazes is doing.” The station might well have added that it also raises questions about why Cazes is refusing to take questions “on any matters,” especially why he continued paying her for some three months after her admission that she stole from the department.
An Internet blog called UNFILTERED WITH KIRAN (UWK), like WBRZ, has experienced a wall of silence when attempting to get information on the theft. UWK said the only people who were authorized to speak to the media are not doing so.
The two, Simoneaux and Zack Simmers, are each running for sheriff in next fall’s election now that Cazes has said he won’t seek a sixth term. Meanwhile, infighting in the sheriff’s office poses the problem of one getting more exposure than the other should either Simoneaux of Simmers talk to the media. That has resulted in Cazes’s decree of silence on the Miller case.
This isn’t the first time Cazes has attempted to thwart the media from reporting news adverse to his department. In July 2018, WBRZ reported that the sheriff RETAINED A LAW FIRM in an unsuccessful effort to prevent the station’s obtaining records pertaining to allegations that a deputy was being investigated for claims that he demanded oral sex from two women during separate traffic stops. The station began asking for public records in March 2018 but did not receive them until June of that year.
The deputy, Ben Arceneaux, was taken off road patrol for two weeks and was suspended without pay for two weeks, unusually light punishment for such serious transgressions.
Just as he would do in the Miller case four years later, Cazes cut off all communication with WBRZ
Rafael Goyeneche, president of the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission, was critical of the lax punishment handed down by Cazes. “He [Arceneaux] should have been fired, and the district attorney’s office should have been consulted about criminal charges on this,” Goyeneche said. “That is the essence of a battery and him doing this under the color of law, potentially makes it a malfeasant act, both criminal violations under Louisiana law.
“The second victim should have been identified,” Goyeneche said.” “A statement should have been taken from her. I think the sheriff should have considered if the allegations were verified of the first victim and the second victim. He [Arceneaux] shouldn’t be carrying a badge and be a deputy any longer.”
As for Cazes’s chief of staff, Kevin Devall was named to the position on January 30, three days after Miller surrendered and was escorted into the jail by Simoneaux and Devall, who had his own checkered past prior to his retirement as a Louisiana State Trooper. Kevin Devall and his brother, DEA agent Page Devall, the sons of then-Hammond Police Chief RODDY DEVALL (who was fired in 2015 after 34 years with the department and who later settled a lawsuit against the city of Hammond, with the city paying him $800,000 and changing his status to “retired”), got into a CONFRONTATION with a Metairie immigration attorney in 2012.
Two years later, Kevin Devall had another complaint filed against him by the estranged wife of St. Bernard Parish President and former police officer Dave Peralta. Sharon Peralta, who said her ex-husband had forced her to perform oral sex on him and that he had raped her six months earlier, said Devall, instead of arresting her former husband, laughed and joked with him and that Devall told her to leave and that he “would handle things from there.”
In each of those cases, Louisiana State Police Internal Affairs “investigated” the complaints and cleared Devall of any improper conduct in each case.