WEST BATON ROUGE — Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill has issued her final decision when it comes to nearly 1,500 “illegal tickets” issued by a constable to drivers in West Baton Rouge Parish. Those issuing the traffic citations had “no authority” to do so and Murrill tells UWK that her office is working to return the money to those who paid for the tickets issued by the Ward 2 Constable in Brusly.
Most of those tickets were issued between Oct. 8th and Oct. 25th near Lukeville Elementary. The constable’s office tracked around 4,000 speeding vehicles, and roughly 1,500 speeding citations were officially mailed out.
At $150 per ticket, that amounted to nearly a quarter of a million dollars in three weeks.
Following an investigation, Murrill said the writing of those tickets was illegal because the Ward 2 Constable, Ron Tetzel, did not have an official resolution with the governing body. In this case, that means the West Baton Rouge Parish Council. Instead, they had an official Memorandum of Understanding with the West Baton Rouge School Board to begin enforcing the speed zone within the school zone near any West Baton Rouge Parish Schools.
While Murrill confirmed that Tetzel signed a MOU with the school district’s safety and security coordinator, it wasn’t binding because the school board didn’t officially agree through a resolution.
“A school board employee signed an agreement with a constable and a justice of the peace and none of those people are authorized to do this,” Murrill told UWK. “So we said, ‘Stop,’ and they did, and now we have said, keep the money and hold the money in the account. Do not spend any of it, and we will continue to evaluate how we can get the money back to people that paid the tickets.”
Murrill also said her office will be looking into working with the state’s legislative auditor to figure out exactly how much money was collected and to ensure anyone who paid one of the illegal tickets gets a full refund.
A Sticky Situation
According to Tetzel and Thomas Southon, Ward 2 Justice of the Peace, the idea for the speed enforcement campaign was conceived in 2022 after the tragic deaths of 17-year-old Maggie Dunn and 16-year-old Caroline Gill, best friends and Brusly cheerleaders, who were killed in 2022 after an Addis police officer ran a red light in pursuit of a suspect.
Tetzel and Southon told UWK they wanted to enforce the speed zones near Lukeville Elementary to try to make LA 1 and access road near the school, safer.
“We’d been looking for solutions to make this parish, and especially this stretch of highway, safer since the Gills and the Dunns unfortunately lost their children. We looked into several solutions, one being Opticon, where the lights change when pursuits are coming through but I believe when I quoted it out, it was $750,000 upfront,” Southon explained. “None of the municipalities around here have the money to pay for that, but if you save one life, what is that one life worth?” said Southon.
Tetzel and Southon eventually signed an agreement with Emergent Vision Technologies, a company that finances the equipment and processes the tickets. The pair then reached out to West Baton Rouge Parish School Superintendent Chandler Smith and had a meeting at the Brusly Police Dept., where Tetzel asked permission to install two camera poles.
Smith said Tetzel told him that his office had talked to several other groups about the enforcement and had received their blessings.
Ultimately, Tetzel signed a memorandum of understanding with the school system’s coordinator of school safety and security, but not with Smith or the school board.
On October 8th, Tetzel’s office began issuing tickets near Lukeville Elementary with a handheld radar gun. Photos quickly began flooding social media showing a man with a tripod, hat, and safety vest tracking cars while standing behind a metal box off the highway.
Smith claims that when Tetzel first approached him about the MOU, he said Tetzel asked permission to install two camera poles in the school zone and explained he didn’t even know tickets were being issued in early October because those poles never went up.
Smith said he found out about the tickets the same way as most other people in the area did, by word of mouth.
“I had heard that he was hiding behind an electrical box. Somebody sent me that picture but I knew the polls hadn’t happened so I didn’t know if he was testing the things or sending out warning tickets. He never, never told us,” Smith said.
And as Smith’s confusion with the agreement grew, so did the number of tickets with Tetzel’s office, writing about 500 tickets per two hours within the school zone over a matter of three weeks.
Tetzel told UWK that he told Smith that the enforcement would begin with the radar gun, and not with the poles, because his office needed to generate enough money to finance the cameras from Emergent.
“We felt it would be easier to use a handheld camera with an officer on the side of the road clocking vehicles. Then as it progresses, we would be able to purchase the cameras for the pole cameras for the other schools,” Tetzel said.
Smith said he never felt Tetzel fully explained those plans to him, however.
“I told him that this is not at all what we agreed to and he knows that. I talked with my safety and security coordinator, who was in that same meeting. He and I both know that that’s not what we all agreed to,” Smith said.
Of the nearly 1,500 tickets mailed out at $150 per ticket, Tetzel’s office was set to receive half of those funds with 10% going to the West Baton Rouge School board and the rest going to Emergent. Tetzel told UWK he doesn’t feel the scheme was a money grab because his office planned to spend the vast majority of those funds on safety improvements around the school zones.
“It doesn’t matter who writes the speeding tickets. If the sheriff’s office writes a speeding ticket, guess what? They get the money for it. If a city writes speeding ticket, they get that money for it. You know what’s different is that they’re not mandated to provide public safety with with the funds they make from it, we are. They don’t have to go and use it to pay for crime cameras or pursuit packages or anything else. They don’t have to give any of their money to the school system,” Tetzel said.
By October 25th, Murrill’s office had told Tetzel to suspend operations while her office began investigating the legality of the scheme.
Murrill said without that official agreement between the constable and the School Board for tickets, the scheme was illegal from the very beginning.
“It was very clear they have no authority to do what they were doing,” Murrill said.
Murrill also said her office would be sending out guidance to other constables and justice of the peace offices to make sure they all understand the law, noting she also has concerns about companies like Emergent attempting to privatize speed enforcement, especially in small towns.
“These companies come in and say, ‘We can do this. You can do this. You just need to sign right here and you know, we’re going to all make a lot of money, and it’s good for you. It’s good. For the town, it’s good for public safety, and, you know, we want to help you.’ I think that if they follow the law, that’s okay, but, but that’s a big if,” Murrill said.
Murrill added she doesn’t believe anyone violated any laws and doesn’t expect her office to pursue any criminal charges.
“I have no reason to believe that it was anything other than a misapprehension of what their legal authority was and what the kind of rules and guidelines are for speed cameras in school zones,” the AG added.
For the constable and justice of the peace on the tickets, they remain adamant that they only wanted to make their community a safer place.
“I’ve been here 20 years. When the Gills and Dunns suffered their loss on LA-1 of their daughters, I have daughters the same age. I never want to stand beside a wrecked car again with a dead child in it and have to tell their parents that,” Southon said.
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One Response
I am on a fixed income and need my money. Can you do a follow up on this issue. It may speed up the process