WEST BATON ROUGE — The money collected from nearly 1,500 improperly issued tickets by a constable to drivers in West Baton Rouge Parish is in the process of being returned.
Despite being told to return those funds, the Ward 2 Constable and Justice of the Peace say they’re now looking to restart the ticket writing initiative but are committed to making sure they do it properly this time.
Those tickets were issued between Oct. 8 and Oct. 25, 2024 near Lukeville Elementary in Brusly.
The Ward 2 constable’s office tracked around 4,000 speeding vehicles, and roughly 1,500 speeding citations were officially mailed out at $150 per ticket.
Ward 2 Justice of the Peace Thomas Southon and Ward 2 Constable Ron Tetzel met with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill on Monday, who told them to begin returning funds collected through the enforcement campaign.
Southon said that Murrill told them that the ticket writing campaign was improper but they claim she said it was not illegal.
Southon said they hope to begin releasing funds as early as Tuesday, Jan. 28th.
Tetzel said his office has roughly $50,000 in frozen assets in a bank account that will begin going out to anyone who paid those tickets.
“I’m going to get on a phone call with Express Bill Pay tomorrow (Jan. 28th) so we can walk through the refund and the reconciliation so that I can see all the refunds that have had the charges reversed and that all the refunds have gone out,” Tetzel told UWK.
Following an investigation, Murrill said the tickets were written improperly 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.
Southon said he and Tetzel are still committed to enforcing the speed zone near schools in Brusly and even continuing to write tickets, but said they want to do it correctly with the guidance they’ve received from the attorney general’s office.
“I believe in the program. I believe it’s necessary and it does make things safer for the children. We’ve been advised the right way to do it and we have every intent of continuing the program in its proper form, with proper paperwork,” Southon said.
Southon said if they can get the proper paperwork and get all the required resolutions signed from the different governing bodies, then they will reinstate the ticket writing initiatives.
At this time, Southon said neither he nor Tetzel have spoken with the West Baton Rouge Parish Council to attempt to get any future resolutions signed, however.
“I believe the school board sees the value in the program. The parish council, we’ve never crossed that bridge with them so I’m unsure. I know Senator Kleinpeter assured us that it will never happen — that he will not allow it to happen, so we will see,” Southon said.
District 17 State Senator Caleb Kleinpeter first started telling people not to pay tickets issued by the Ward 2 Constable’s Office in West Baton Rouge Parish in November.
Kleinpeter told UWK he spoke with State Senator Stewart Cathey Jr. who wrote the bill about potentially revising it to now include it to require an official resolution signed by the local school district, local government, and the district attorney
Kleinpeter said if Southon and Tetzel attempt to restart the initiative, he will continue to speak out against it.
“We have law enforcement agencies that are doing a great job already. We have our state police that can issue tickets for speeding or any other violation on state highways. You have your local sheriff’s departments that do a great job as well. And then if it’s outside or inside the municipalities we have our police chiefs or our marshals than can enforce speeding. There’s no reason to open another agency up ( to this),” Kleinpeter said.
Moving forward, Southon said if they continue with the initiative, then they would like to permanently replace the handheld speeding cameras they were originally using with speed enforcement cameras hooked up to poles.
“I think the poles are the best way to move forward. Anytime you can limit the possibility of human error is a positive in my mind. I would move forward with the polls. The polls are great in the fact that people don’t like slowing down, they don’t like school zones but an officer will miss people, whether it be in a car or with a radar gun, so the cameras are pretty efficient. You almost get that forced compliance where we know we’re impacting the safety of the schools,” Southon said.
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