I-TEAM: Decision from grand jury on BRPD corruption case expected soon
BATON ROUGE, La. (WAFB) - The WAFB I-TEAM has learned a special grand jury could decide, any day now, whether five BRPD officers will face formal charges tied to an alleged beating and coverup from 2020. Four of them, deputy chief Troy Lawrence, Sr. and officers Doug Chustz, Todd Thomas and Jesse Barcelona have been arrested. There is a fifth officer who hasn’t been arrested. He too will face the grand jury.
Investigators say this all stems from a beating inside a bathroom at the police station, just steps away from the now infamous Brave Cave.
After the alleged beating, those officers are then accused of getting rid of the body camera video to hide the evidence. District Attorney Hillar Moore says it takes time, but they are taking the case seriously.
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“One finite event that took ten minutes takes us two years to deconstruct,” said Moore. “It just always seems to be that way.”
Moore says they are presenting a lot of evidence connected to the case, including in a rare move evidence from the defense. He says it is important they pull in everything they can to make sure they get this right.
“For the overwhelming majority of the cases, defense lawyers do not allow their client to speak or they don’t give you any evidence to present so we want to be as thorough and fair as we can to the defendants, the citizens of Baton Rouge and the victim in this case so we want everyone’s input,” said Moore. “We’re offering anyone that’s a defendant to come in and testify or if there’s someone that they want us to call to testify or evidence that they want us to present, we’re going to do that.”
They have also brought in an outside prosecutor to handle the case because many of the assistant DAs in Moore’s office have worked with these officers on cases in the past.
“Everyone’s familiar with the defendants that have been arrested in this case and I didn’t want to put them in a really awkward position to have to make a decision on someone that they knew, although maybe not very well,” said Moore. “So that’s when we asked the mayor to fund us money for an outside counsel for a special assistant DA and she did. He along with myself and the first assistant are the ones handling this case.”
The WAFB I-TEAM was first to report on the special grand jury, which was convened about a month ago and stems from our reporting into the Brave Cave. While this specific case is not tied to the ongoing federal probe into that secretive facility, the allegations of abuse and a cover up first surfaced last fall through our reporting into the infamous warehouse. Keep in mind, this is all said to have gone down in the police station, which is just steps away from the Brave Cave.
Internal BRPD documents allege the officers came up with an elaborate plan to get rid of body camera footage after the incident. The documents say one of the body cameras caught the beating. The report goes on to say that one of the officers looked at the footage on his cell phone through an app. From there, investigators say they hatched a plan to steal the body camera and make up a phony letter saying the body camera was lost.
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While the special grand jury has up to a year, the DA says their decision could come sooner rather than later.
“We want to make sure that this resolution is fair to everyone, particularly for the citizens of Baton Rouge so that they know this was done right and whatever the decision the grand jury comes back with, we’ll move forward,” said Moore.
The DA says the special grand jury decision could come within the next two months.
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