IPSO has settled $3.5M worth of lawsuits since Jan. 2018

Published 6:00 am Tuesday, March 5, 2019

Even as Iberia Parish tries to move beyond the federal prosecution that led to the incarceration of 10 Iberia Parish Sheriff’s Office employees, the civil lawsuits filed against Sheriff Louis Ackal and his office continue to exact a toll.

According to the Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Law Enforcement Program has paid out more than $3.5 million in legal fees and damages in civil suits since Jan. 1, 2018. That does not include the settlement paid to the minor child of Victor White III, which is still sealed.

Many of those settlements were made at the end of 2018, as the IPSO sought to wrap up as much pending litigation as possible before premiums for another year of insurance coverage came due. During a three-day cattle call for litigants, they were told to either settle or risk not being able to get any money after funds ran out.

Nicole St. Julien is one of those litigants. 

“We were told we had to settle for the amount they offered, no negotiations, because Ackal and his office were broke and couldn’t get any more insurance;” St. Julian said. “So it was either that or nothing at all.”

She filed her lawsuit in November 2018, saying deputies responding to a domestic call from her home in late 2017 and threatened to arrest her if they received any more calls from her home. When St. Julian’s 13-year old son asked the officer why he was threatening his mother, the lawsuit claims IPSO deputy David Vincent “threw him against a wall, forcefully and violently threw him to the ground, then began to strangle him.”

The complaint said Vincent then handcuffed the teen and dragged him by his hair to his patrol unit, throwing him into the back seat.

St. Julian said Vincent threatened to arrest her and keep her teen son from receiving medical attention if she did not sign a citation for his arrest on a charge of assault and battery of an officer. She said she signed the citation under duress to get medical assistance for her teen.

“I didn’t sue seeking a monetary value,” she said. “What I wanted was an apology, his (Vincent’s) job, and the opportunity to press charges on him like he tried to do to my son, so he would know he couldn’t do things like that just because he had a badge.” 

The largest known payment went to Derrick Sellers, a man who claims deputies beat him in 2013. Records show he was paid more than $2.5 million in his settlement, $2.4 million of it from the excess insurance carrier.

One of the deputies who is alleged to have beaten Sellers is still employed at the jail. 

Other officers who have been involved in settlements, like Vincent, have moved on to other departments. Vincent, for example, left the IPSO and is now employed with the St. Martinville Police Department. 

According to the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, which tracks terminations of law enforcement officers for cause, agencies don’t have to report wrongdoing on the part of terminated officers. A request for a list from LCLE of any officers terminated for cause from Jan. 1, 2016 to Dec. 27, 2018 from a dozen Teche Area law enforcement agencies shows that there were only nine officers reported — the ones who pleaded guilty as part of  the federal civil rights prosecution against the IPSO. 

“We have no statutory means to enforce reporting requirements,” an LCLE spokesman said.

That issue arose last summer for the newly formed New Iberia Police Department when video of an officer hired there was seen in body cam video from his time with the IPSO slamming a suspect against a wall. 

No mention of the incident came up during the interview process or background checks, NIPD officials said. The officer, James Alexander, resigned after the video became public.

In all, more than $6 million is known to have been paid out since Ackal took office in 2008, almost two-thirds of that in the wake of his acquittal on federal charges.

His office also been dropped from the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Law Enforcement Program, an interlocal risk management agency authorized by Louisiana law, as of 2016, according to the agency’s legal counsel.

The agency capped individual payments in lawsuits to $100,000, or a maximum of $300,000 per year. The additional funds were paid through private insurers, which has raised the cost of the IPSO’s insurance. The records of payments from the fund in the last 14 months resulted from suits filed while the IPSO was still covered under the program.