![]() ![]() Louisiana’s racialized criminal justice system urges us to consider whether electing more diverse law enforcement leadership would translate to a change in the criminal justice experiences of Black residents in Louisiana. Gautreaux was named as a defendant in a subsequent suit brought by Stevenson’s family and was reelected three years after Stevenson’s death. His most recent win is even more sobering given that it follows the shooting death of Travis Stevenson, a Black man who was experiencing a mental health crisis when he was fatally shot 21 times by East Baton Rouge sheriff’s deputies. Gautreaux III, a white man, has won every reelection since 2007 in a parish that is nearly half-Black (47%), including wins against Black candidates who have challenged his cooperation with ICE and the poor conditions of the jail. Sheriffs, in particular, benefit greatly from incumbency – research shows that sheriffs have an incumbency advantage that “far exceeds that of other local offices.” For example, controversial East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid J. Without term limits, sheriffs and prosecutors can remain in office without significant opposition once their terms expire, regardless of their office’s misconduct throughout their tenure. Also, Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator, a white man in a majority-Black parish, still maintains his 20-year incumbency despite controversial slavery-evoking remarks claiming that instead of decarceration reform, he’d rather extend jail time for the “good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change oil in the cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that where we save money.” For example, Craig Webre has remained as the Lafourche Parish sheriff since his election in 1991, presiding over a parish where three on-duty officers repeatedly abused a Black man with cerebral palsy during a 2020 arrest. Sheriffs and prosecutors serve four-year and six-year terms, respectively – both without limits on the consecutive terms they can serve. To further complicate matters, the largely white male sheriffs and DAs across the state are elected officials virtually unburdened by the presence of term limits. Given this background, and as the state has endured a rise in shootings, murders, and other violence, is there potential for reform that allows law enforcement to ally with Black residents like Rashad and fairly pursue their obligation to administer the laws of Louisiana? The answer, in part, may lie in examining the diversity of the criminal justice system itself. ![]() ![]() Only four months after Bonnette’s passing, Mandi Caliz, a 37-year-old mother of five, died in the same jail of drug complications after her arrest for marijuana possession – bringing into question the jail’s ability to provide adequate medical care.įor Khadijah Rashad’s family, after years of frustration and disappointment trying to get answers from Iberia Parish Sheriff Tommy Romero, a white man, she says, “No one has been brought to justice,” and she “still can’t believe how much hate those people have in their hearts.” In Rashad’s own words, “Child support should not be a death sentence.”īonnette’s death was the latest in a decade-plus pattern of lives lost in the Iberia Parish jail, which established a troubling track record of physical abuse from officers and an inability to care for people with mental illnesses. To this day, the family continues to question whether his death was truly a suicide, or a cover-up by a predominantly white sheriff’s department. Only a few days before Bonnette’s scheduled release, Rashad and her family got the shocking phone call informing them that Bonnette had inexplicably taken his life in his jail cell. in the Iberia Parish jail.īonnette, a father of four, was arrested for the low-level, nonviolent offense of owing back child support. ![]() However, her most notable advocacy has come in reforming local law enforcement, especially after the 2020 death of her grandson Raymond Bonnette Sr. Through her organizing work and local radio show, she has spoken out on various issues concerning the Black communities of Lafayette and New Iberia – from improving educational opportunities to Black girls having pride in wearing their natural hair. Concerns with the prevailing law enforcement culture are embodied in the story of Khadijah Rashad, a Black woman and 63-year-old native of Lafayette Parish who has spent decades as an activist in Louisiana. ![]()
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