Special grand jury seated in BRPD street crimes corruption case
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - A special grand jury has been convened to exclusively review criminal accusations against four Baton Rouge Police officers who were arrested last year.
BRPD officers Doug Chustz, Todd Thomas, Troy Lawrence Sr. and Jesse Barcelona were arrested and accused of wrongdoing dating back to 2020.
Court documents show that East Baton Rouge Parish District Attorney Hillar Moore requested the formation of the secretive special grand jury, which was selected last week and can remain in place up to one year.
In asking for a grand jury to be impaneled, Moore told the court that his office is “reviewing multiple matters in which local law enforcement officers have been arrested and/or accused of criminal conduct.”
The special grand jury will decide if enough evidence exists to indict those officers for any crimes. If indictments are handed down, that would clear the way for criminal cases against the officers to proceed.
“The Grand Jury was empaneled last Friday and will meet over the next few weeks/months to receive information and evidence related to these specific arrests from this date, as well as any other individuals/allegations that are related to this specific matter,” Moore said in an email statement to WAFB Tuesday afternoon.
According to police documents obtained by the WAFB I-Team, more than a dozen men were arrested at the scene of a music video shoot for rapper NBA Youngboy in September of 2020. The Baton Rouge Police Department received a tip that the men were waving guns, investigators said.
As they were transporting the men to East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, police suspected one man was hiding drugs and brought him to BRPD’s First District Precinct instead of to jail. Once there, police strip searched him.
According to police records, the man was resistant to the search so an officer activated his stun gun in an attempt to scare the man into complying with the search. By activating the stun gun, the officer unintentionally triggered another officer’s body camera, police officials said.
Officials said the body camera filmed one of the officers hitting the man.
Arrest records say that the four officers then conspired to hide the incriminating footage by getting rid of the body camera.
The incident was uncovered after a whistleblower approached top brass at BRPD in August of 2023.
Former BRPD Chief of Police Murphy Paul led a brief investigation and then announced the arrests of the four officers.
Lawrence Sr. is a former deputy chief under Chief of Police Murphy Paul and once served as a senior officer in BRPD’s Street Crimes Unit.
The BRPD Street Crimes Unit was disbanded after the WAFB I-Team first revealed the existence of the “Brave Cave,” a secretive warehouse where officers allegedly performed off-the-books interrogations. The cases against these four officers are not related to the “Brave Cave,” prosecutors said.
The four officers have been on leave since their arrests.
Click here to report a typo.
Copyright 2024 WAFB. All rights reserved.
