Oh no, Cousin Ken

So close to putting all this behind him and yet...

Court records show that Landrieu tried and failed to prove to the court that he completed his mandated 100 hours of community service through a non-profit run by his mother Phyllis, a former School Board member.

The judge ordered him to enter the court’s community service program, attend the Sheriff’s Office day reporting program and also complete 13 anger management classes.

That was before Landrieu himself took the stand and prompted Waldron to send him to jail for contempt.

Further details on what Landrieu said and did were not immediately available.

Wonder what he did.  I'm guessing he won't get his Cracker Jack prize badge back for a while. 

What about Cousin Ken?

How is that this story about Jeff Landry's fake badges (and by extension about the practice among law enforcement agencies of distributing fake badges) doesn't mention the most recent case in which such an item was abused by one of the maniacs empowered by it?

Confederacy of Dunces: Landrieu edition

Staring Cousin Ken and Phyllis as Ignatius and Irene.

A state judge sentenced the cousin of Mayor Mitch Landrieu and son of former Orleans Parish School Board member Phyllis Landrieu to one year of home arrest and two years of probation on Friday for pulling a gun on another driver in the Lower Garden District in 2015.

The beefy businessman will be allowed to leave the home he shares with his mother to run her errands and take her to doctor's appointments between 6 a.m. and 6 p.m., but he will be forced to wear an electronic monitoring bracelet when he does it.

Also congratulations to Cousin Ken on actually achieving house arrest status. It's something Mitch only came close to getting.

So many Landrieus

There is news from Sorta Deputy Cousin Ken's road rage trial. The victim of Cousin Ken's rage testifies:

Landrieu was wearing a six-pointed badge pinned to his shirt. He asked Harris whether he was drinking and smoking and threatened to call his “boys” to arrest him, Harris said.

“So I just went full submission. I said, 'Yes, sir, I’m not going to say another word' ... and he puffed up his chest and said 'Good,' and started driving,” Harris said.
Harris said he feared that Landrieu could have shot him.

“He was beet-red, angry. It looked like his blood pressure was through the roof. He was obviously extremely pissed off, angry,” Harris said.

The phrase, "Beet-red angry man pulling out gun" is in that headline, by the way. And it's so perfectly American a thing that I almost saluted when I read it.

Also Cousin Ken's defense is not very convincing.

Defense attorney Thomas Calogero sought to show that Harris decided to call police only because he believed that a member of the Landrieu family was involved. Harris testified that his wife was able to deduce that the license plate on Kenneth Landrieu's car belonged to Landrieu Public Relations, a firm controlled by Phyllis Landrieu.

There are so many Landrieus running around loose in the world, though. Like, pantloads of Landrieus.  Any incident that happens near you in this city involving more than two persons, and especially if any of those persons could be described as "beet-red angry,"  assume at least one might be a Landrieu. The odds are pretty good.

Respect the certificate

The Mayor's Cousin Ken will not face charges for impersonating an officer after all.

Landrieu, 54, said he felt vindicated by the decision, after contending for more than 18 months that his OPSO commission was authentic. One of his defense attorneys, Justin Zitler, said, "I am pleased that the district attorney properly exercised his prosecutorial discretion in dropping the false impersonation charge. I am saddened only that it took 18 months to do so."

Spokesmen for Orleans Parish District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro and for Orleans Parish Sheriff Marlin Gusman provided no explanation for the lengthy delay in verifying the legitimacy of Landrieu's reservist commission. Zitler said a letter from Gusman confirming that his client's credential was authentic had been given to prosecutors and the court in June 2016.

"Kenneth Landrieu had a valid reserve deputy credential from 2007 post-Katrina through the end of the year 2015," Gusman wrote in the letter.

The remaining charge is an aggravated assault which happened when Cousin Ken brandished a gun and threatened to arrest a fellow motorist one evening.  Of course none of this would have happened if the victim had respected the authority of Ken's badge in the first place. We still don't know exactly what that authority actually is but at least now we know it's real.

Movie pitch

Prologue: You think you know a story...

For eight years, Kenneth Landrieu wore the six-pointed brass star of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office and carried a laminated “reserve” deputy card signed by Sheriff Marlin Gusman.

Whether the honorary designation gave Landrieu the power to chase down a driver, whip out a gun and threaten a man with arrest will be for an Orleans Parish jury to decide in a trial slated to start Tuesday before Criminal District Court Judge Laurie White.

Landrieu’s attorney claims his client was well within the law when he pursued the driver and announced he was a law enforcement officer following a near-collision on Magazine Street last September.

According to police, Landrieu pulled in front of the other vehicle in the Lower Garden District, hopped out of his baby blue 2004 Cadillac DeVille and pointed his gun at the driver, cursing and threatening to arrest him.

Okay so here's the scene. Times are tough in the city of New Orleans. The camera pans over monuments cracked and crumbling under the shame of their own hypocrisy. Smoke from a nearby marsh fire wafts into view. A sinkhole of dread lurks beneath every street. Resilience is running thin.   

In a desperate attempt to restore hope... not to mention his own relevance.. Ceremonial Sheriff Marlin Gusman laminates some badges in order to commission a elite force of freedom fighters. The fake credentials issued by the fake sheriff combine to equal actual legitimacy due to the power of the double negative.  They are called the Faux-Po Five.

Recent Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office records list Landrieu among 49 people granted “honorary special reserves” status by Gusman, though it’s unclear just what, if any, special powers it confers.

Among others on the list are former New Orleans City Councilman Jay Batt, singer Irma Thomas, jazz trumpeter Irvin Mayfield and frequent political candidate Gary Landrieu, who is Kenneth Landrieu’s brother.

Irma, Batt, Mayfield and the lesser Landrieus set about the work bringing scofflaws throughout the city to justice. Sewerage and Water Board Director Cedric Grant builds and furnishes a secret headquarters for them atop the Broad Street Whole Foods where they use his magic white board to spot petty municipal violations wherever they may occur. (Jeff Landry shows up to help drive them around sometimes too.)

Dramatic scenes from the trailer show Ken brandishing his pistol at a motorist with an expired break tag. Drums sound in the background as Gary files to run for five different municipal offices simultaneously. Irvin bludgeons noise violators in the street with his golden trumpet. Jay drinks lots of martinis and tells people to start calling him "Battman."

Not sure how we're going to afford the effects in the scene where they all have to cross streams and fight the 200 foot tall Savory Simon, though.  That Hollywood South money ain't what it used to be.

"Curiosity and irritation"

Sounds like Cousin Ken needs to lay off of the Cool Brew.

He also denied pointing his gun in the other man's direction.

"I never pointed anything at anybody. That is made up," Landrieu said. "(Prosecutors) only have one side of the story right now. That's what they do."

Landrieu said he acted first out of curiosity and irritation when the other driver sped around him on Magazine Street.

"It endangered me," Landrieu said. "It pissed me off."

Landrieu admitted he caught up with the other car because he "wanted to get a look at this (expletive) to see what he looked like."

But Landrieu said he next had to act in self-defense. He said that after he pulled to a stop in front of the other man's car and got out, the other driver backed up, turned his car toward Landrieu and began accelerating and braking in his direction.

"He scared the s--- out of me," Landrieu said. "I didn't have time to jump out of the way. I reacted. I put my hand up and I said, 'Stop!' He stopped his car, threw it into park, and started to bang on his dashboard and steering wheel and everything. He was livid.

"I feared for my life. That's really what happened."

They figured out where Cousin Kenneth got that badge

Turns out the Orleans Parish Sheriff's department gave it to him.  They aren't very clear on why they would do that, though.

Police say the purported victim in that case identified Landrieu as the man who emerged from a Cadillac DeVille in the Lower Garden District with a six-pointed brass star pinned to his collar and a gun in his hands.

The man on the other end of the gun, who has not been named, told police that Landrieu ordered him to pull over and said that his “boys” were going to search the man’s car and possibly arrest him.

Landrieu claimed earlier this week that he “could” be a commissioned reserve officer or deputy, although he declined to state with which agency.

Marc Ehrhardt, a spokesman for Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s office, said Landrieu was named as a special reserve deputy by former Civil Sheriff Paul Valteau — one of a slew of honorary commissions that Valteau and other local law enforcement leaders have handed out over the years to friends and celebrities.

Ehrhardt said the title, which comes with a badge that reads “Honorary” on the back, continued for Landrieu and others after the civil and criminal sheriff’s offices were merged in 2008.

He said the honorary deputies volunteer for a program to help lost kids during Carnival and at some community service events, including the sheriff’s celebrated Easter egg hunt and Thanksgiving dinner.

As far as we know so far, the man Cousin Kenneth held at gunpoint was not carrying any Easter eggs.

Anyway, all of this is buried inside of a completely different story about a man who is not quite a police officer claiming authority to pee on things. 

Police arrested Kevin Migaud, a 26-year veteran of the force who retired more than a decade ago, in May after he was accused of urinating on the sidewalk in the Irish Channel and then flashing a badge and a weapon at a woman who complained about it.

Deputy cousins

If you follow local politics you've probably already met the Mayor's Cousin Gary.  He's become an occasional vanity candidate in recent election cycles. Most recently, Cousin Gary challenged (sort of) Congressman Cedric Richmond in what was less a political campaign that it was a series of dueling  lawsuits.  In 2012, he ran near the back of a crowded City Council  At-Large field distinguishing himself by his creative plan to rid the city of its hated traffic cameras.

"When I say we're going to get rid of those traffic cameras, those traffic cameras are going to be removed," he said. "I am going to personally remove them if I have to personally go get a garbage truck from the department of garbage and go run them over with a garbage truck."

The Landrieus are a publicly Catholic family so naturally there are a lot of them.  Gary isn't the only one prone to road rage.

Kenneth Landrieu, a cousin of Mayor Mitch Landrieu who was arrested Monday in an alleged road rage incident last week in the Lower Garden District, said Wednesday that he acted out of fear when, according to police, he whipped out a gun and drew a bead on another driver.

Landrieu, 52, faces counts of aggravated assault with a firearm and impersonating a peace officer, a lesser count that he said he expects to be dismissed.

Cousin Kenneth also brandished some sort of badge that he has for some reason that is unclear.

Landrieu, a first cousin to the mayor and the brother of former congressional hopeful Gary Landrieu, said that until the incident Thursday, he was, “as far as I know,” a commissioned reserve officer in good standing at a local law enforcement agency. The 6th District officers who arrested him “knew or should have known that,” he said.

He refused, however, to disclose the agency for which he volunteers but said he turned in his badge pending the outcome of the criminal case.

The Advocate hadn't pinned down which agency had given Cousin Kenneth his badge when that story ran.  I know we've got like 700 Deputy Mayors running around already. Do they have badges?