Thread by @ProPublica

1/ In Dec 2016, Det. Jessica LaBorde interrogated 12-y-o Bobby Lewis alone in the police station in Ville Platte, LA. Sheepish about repeating the words, Bobby said LaBorde called him a “B” & an “MF” while accusing him of throwing a rock through a window. bit.ly/2wg9deE

2/ Bobby said LaBorde threatened to confiscate his dog, Cinnamon, and throw his mom in jail if he didn’t own up to the crime—and a lot of other more serious crimes LaBorde accused him of committing. Bobby said he wasn’t involved in any of those crimes. bit.ly/2wg9deE

3/ What LaBorde did to Bobby is likely unconstitutional. The police can’t take somebody into custody without probable cause. (LaBorde did not respond to requests for comment.)

4/ Two weeks after Bobby was detained, the Justice Department issued a scathing report on policing in Ville Platte and surrounding Evangeline Parish. bit.ly/2wg9deE

5/ The Obama-era Justice Department tried to erase policing abuses affecting Ville Platte and other small towns across the US. Then came the Trump administration and Jeff Sessions. Here’s what happened...

6/ The report found that the police and the sheriff’s office in Ville Platte routinely jailed people without probable cause to get them to cooperate with police, a practice called an “investigative hold.” bit.ly/2wg9deE

7/ With the feds on their case about investigative holds, law enforcement in Ville Platte started using subtler unlawful tactics. The police chief, Neal Lartigue, denies this.

8/ For example: 3 former Ville Platte cops told us that to get people to talk, detectives would pass off official-looking papers as warrants & hold people for up to a day in the PD break room—at times, for a few hours, in a jail cell.

9/ The Justice Dept. planned to negotiate a long-term reform plan with local officials overseen by a federal judge. It’s called a “consent decree.”

10/ Then Trump took office and Jeff Sessions was picked as the new attorney general. Sessions considers consent decrees to be a gross federal overreach and he’s argued they undermine the work of police. bit.ly/2wg9deE

11/ This June, the Justice Department, now under Sessions, finally released its plan for reforms in Ville Platte. It’s dramatically different than what Obama-era reforms looked like.
bit.ly/2wg9deE

12/ Roy Austin, a former Justice Dept. official who oversaw police-reform efforts from 2010 to 2014, described the impact of the Ville Platte reforms like this: “This is a way to basically allow these departments to go forward just as they were before.”

13/ Community members in Ville Platte feel little hope that the DOJ reform plan will change local policing practices.
bit.ly/2wg9deE

14/ The Justice Department defended their reform plan and its ability to monitor law enforcement in Ville Platte from DC. The local community, it said, will have a role in monitoring reforms.

15/ Read our full investigation into policing in Ville Platte: bit.ly/2wg9deE

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