BATON ROUGE — The City of Baton Rouge is on the hunt for a new Chief of Police after Chief Murphy Paul announced his retirement. Deputy Chief Myron Daniels submitted his application for the position along with 19 others, but at least one of his answers on the application may be inaccurate according to records obtained by Unfiltered with Kiran.
Committee Meeting
The application was turned over to the Chief Selection Committee. Deputy Chief Daniels submitted additional information to the Mayor’s Advisory Committee in his application for Chief of Police. The additional information asked if Deputy Chief Daniels had been party to any civil or criminal action.
On Oct. 20th, he answered “no” to the question. However, records uncovered by UWK show that Deputy Chief may have inaccurately answered this question. There are several lawsuits where he is named as a plaintiff or a defendant, some as recently as August and September 2023 in connection to the Brave Cave.
At the Nov. 1st committee meeting, John Dauthier, a retired BRPD officer, handed over his findings to the committee.
He tells UWK “I think it calls everything into question. Think of the press conferences, the allegations he has made against countless officers, if he can’t be trusted with something this minor, how can we trust anything he has done or said?”
“It’s a sad day for the BRPD. For someone who was considered a frontrunner for the Chief’s position to be compromised like this, what does this foreshadow for the agency’s future,” added Dauthier.
Deputy Daniels is named in several lawsuits
Contrary to the answers given on the form, Deputy Daniels is featured prominently in several recent lawsuits related to the “Brave Cave.” In these actions, Deputy Daniels is accused of manipulating the disciplinary process inside of BRPD to protect members of the street crime division. These lawsuits were filed in Aug. & Sept. 2023.
Additionally, Deputy Daniels is named as plaintiff in two cases (F-142160 (filed 12/12/2001) and F-219928 (filed 11/25/2019)) as well as a defendant in two cases (C-565946 (filed 4/11/2008) and F-217024 (filed 3/26/2019)) in the 19th Judicial District Court. He is also named a defendant in several other cases in the Middle District of Louisiana. He was named a plaintiff in 3:95-cv-01073-FJ (filed 8/22/95) and 3:96-cv-01371-BMGL-SCR (filed 5/29/96). He was also named a defendant in four cases: 3:11-cv-00664-BAJ-SCR (filed 9/28/11); 3:14-cv-00449-SDD-RLB (filed 7/21/14); 3:17-cv-00438-EWD (filed 7/9/17); and 3:17-cv-00439-JWD-EWD (filed 7/9/17).
Dauthier continued, “As a taxpayer, I’m concerned about the City’s ability to defend against the litany of lawsuits that have recently been filed. The credibility of the Department’s second-in-command is now likely to become a major liability in the outcome of these cases.”
If Daniels intentionally answered the question wrong knowing that answer was not true, there could be legal implications under La. R.S. 14:132 (Injuring Public Records), La. R.S. 14:133 (Filing or maintaining false public records), La. R.S. 14:134 (Malfeasance in office), and/or La. R.S. 14:123 (Perjury).
Process to select new police chief
The current police chief, Murphy Paul, has now prolonged his departure as the top cop until a new police chief is named. Part of the reasoning behind that decision may be how flawed the process has been searching for Paul’s replacement.
A total of 23 people applied to become the next chief, but only 20 qualified after taking the chief’s test. A candidate must score at least 75 on the test. Below are the names and their final test scores.
- Thomas Morse (91)
- Clifton Ivey (90)
- Chris Polito (90)
- Myron Daniels (88)
- Timothy Ballard (87)
- Kevin Heinz (87)
- Thomas Glover (85)
- William Clarida (84)
- Ljean McKneely (84)
- David Wallace (84)
- Sharon Douglas (82)
- Timothy Henderson (80)
- Congalona Kersh (79)
- Varden Guillory (78)
- Conrad Joachim (78)
- Brian Strong (78)
- Michael McCarley (77)
- Darren Ahmed (76)
- Andrew Malveaux (76)
- Alvin Davis (75)
- Michael Manning (75)
EBR Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome appointed a team of seven people and three alternates to serve as the committee to review the candidates for police chief. But, Mayor Broome learned putting alternates on the committee was not legal. It’s why there are now ten people on the committee and no alternates. Despite the committee, multiple sources have confirmed, all along, two candidates have been the front runner for the position: current Deputy Chief Myron Daniels and current BRPD sergeant Sharon Douglas. Both candidates went before the committee on Oct. 23, 2023, the first police chief search meeting.
In fact, all twenty candidates are now slated to go before the committee, but at first, 75% of the candidates were told they would not go through the review process. Instead, only five of the 20 were told they would go before the committee. That did not sit well with many candidates raising questions of whether the entire process was flawed and if the committee was nothing more than a show when the decision of who would become chief, had already been made behind closed doors. Soon afterwards, all 20 candidates were told they would go through the review committee.
So far, the committee has reviewed 15 candidates.
The committee will turn over its findings to Mayor Broome by Dec. 5th to make her decision for chief. If she finds no one to be qualified to be the next chief, the entire process starts over.
BRPD does not work with UWK and does not respond to any emails or questions regarding cases. It’s why BRPD does not have a response in this report.
As per BRPD General Order 139, Public Information Officers may communicate with authorized news media representatives which is defined as “those individuals who are directly employed by agencies of the electronic or print media such as radio, television and newspapers.”
The policy specifically states that “free-lance workers in this field are to be regarded as other members of the general public unless otherwise designated by the Chief of Police.”~BRPD
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