FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE

15th April 2011 · 0 Comments

FIGHTING FOR JUSTICE: The curious case of a civil servant
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By Michael Radcliff

Contributing Writer

(Part 1 of a three-part series)

It didn’t take long for a young Travis Perrilloux to begin to make his impact on society. In high school he joined the ROTC and as a teen he began to consider a career in law enforcement and became an Explorer with the Kenner Police Department. Explorers are voluntary or part-time young people, usually students who under the direction of full-time police officers work in “support of and on behalf of the Kenner police department.” In 1993 however, the movie Backdraft would forever change Travis’ life. After talking to several firefighters he now felt that fire-fighting was mentally more appealing, physically more challenging, and had a greater impact on saving people’s lives as opposed to simply putting them behind bars.

“I simply enjoyed it more than law enforcement,” Perrilloux explained, “my heart and soul I discovered was being a firefighter.”

After graduating high school he would begin on a path that would have him realizing his dream within a couple years. In 1997, he became a full-time licensed and certified firefighter and EMT. …and this is where the story should have ended.

The flexible schedule of a firefighter (i.e. being at the firehouse for 24-hour stretches at a time), left him with top in Greensboro North Carolina cash advance days and sometimes as much as a week off of free time; and being Travis Perrilloux, it wasn’t long before he began spending his off days working as a commissioned reserve officer in the New Orleans’ Civil Sheriff’s Office. As if that wasn’t enough, he also began to utilize his skills as a licensed EMT by also working as a certified Crisis Technician with the NOPD; both positions were voluntary and he was never paid for his community service. Travis Perrilloux was one of the few individuals who stayed during Hurricane Katrina to assist with evacuations.

Welcome to My Nightmare

On July 28, 2007, according to Mr. Perrilloux, on one of his few days off, he needed an accessory to his regulation-issued utility gun belt provided by the Civil Sheriff’s Office and there was a gun show at the Pontchartrain Center in Kenner on that day.

He says that when he arrived at the Pontchartrain Center, he was greeted by George Hoffman, a detective with the Kenner police department whom he had known from his days as an Explorer as well as from details they had both worked (on) together.”

This day Hoffman was working the gun show detail. Perrilloux, who was dressed in his uniform black utility BDU’s, and wearing a SWAT T-shirt (actually a gift from one of his co-worker – SWAT and bad credit loans idaho falls Crisis Intervention were under the same NOPD command) says Hoffman asked him if he worked with the NOPD – since the $8.00 admission fee was waived for law enforcement officers. “Yes,” was Perrilloux’s response and he then entered the gun show.

Fast forward a few weeks. August 30, 2007 was supposed to be one of the most exciting days of Travis’ life. His kid brother Ryan, a star high school quarterback, was scheduled to suit up for LSU as a backup quarterback to Matt Flynn in the Tiger’s nationally televised season opener. Ryan Perrilloux would go on to seal LSUs’ victory in the fourth quarter with a three-yard touchdown scramble, followed by a 15-yard touchdown pass as the Tigers won the game convincingly and then marched on to win the national championship that year.

As fate would have it, however, August 30, 2007 would become the worse day in Travis Perrilloux’s life.

At around 10:00 a.m., that day, according to Perrilloux, Detective Hoffman and two other Kenner detectives, after reportedly nearly a month-long investigation, arrived at Perrilloux’s home with a search warrant. He says, after confiscating his vehicle, laptop, and scores of other personal effects, they then contacted the NOPD and asked them to come to the Perrilloux residence. Upon arriving on the scene, Captain Michael Roussell, (the same Michael Roussell who was recently found guilty on three counts of application for a payday loan conspiring to defraud FEMA) contacted Sergeant Benjamin J. Glaudi, the supervisor of the NOPD’s Crisis Intervention Unit as well as Assistant Chief Craig McGehee of the New Orleans Civil Sheriff’s Office and requested their presence at Perrilloux’s home.

They had all gathered at the Perrilloux residence because says Perrilloux, Detective Hoffman allegedly claimed that Travis Perrilloux had told him that he was a police officer to get a free admission to the gun show at the Pontchartrain Center a month earlier, the cost of which was $8.00.

Reportedly, after a lengthy discussion, Perrilloux was arrested on the charge of Impersonating a police officer/firefighter to acquire financial gain (the $8.00 admission fee to the gun show). The charge was later amended to simply “Impersonation of a Peace Officer with the intent of attaining financial gain,” a felony charge with the possibility of being remanded to prison for up to two years of hard labor.

Allegedly, both Hoffman and Roussell would later state that Perrilloux had told them that he was in fact a police officer.

Perrilloux adamantly denies he ever made such statements.

“They didn’t care,” explained Perrilloux, “that I was a commissioned sheriff’s deputy, because I was voluntary and not a paid employee.

“Even though Assistant Chief McGehee had stated in a sworn deposition that I performed all of the how safe is payday loans same duties as their full-time officers when their full-time deputies were absent or on vacation. It simply didn’t matter to them.”

Some months later, a representative of Kenner’s police Internal Affairs division interviewed both Sergeant Glaudi and Chief McGehee, both of whom were present at the arrest, asked if they recalled Perrilloux stating to them and Captain Roussell that he was a police officer. They both denied ever having heard Perrilloux make such a statement.

My head is bloody, but yet unbowed

As the days passed, in the aftermath of the arrest, Kenner PD would continue to gather evidence to prosecute Perrilloux. Yet, for all of their efforts when the case was presented to the District Attorney, the Jefferson Parish DA refused to accept the case.

“…[F]or whatever reason they wanted to send me to jail for wearing a T-shirt,” Perrilloux told The Louisiana Weekly. “A T-shirt that anyone could buy right now in the French Quarter.

“They attempted to marginalize me,” Perrilloux continued, “because instead of being paid for the work that I did with the Civil Sheriff and NOPD, I volunteered – and because I volunteered, they attempted to make it seem like I did not work for either the NOPD or the Sheriff’s Office.”

The DA’s decision was a bittersweet victory for the Perrilloux family.

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“I was glad that the charges were refused, but I still felt violated,” Perrilloux recalls. “My reputation was now shot. Guilty or innocent, after something like this,” he explained, “people talk and begin to look at you in a different light”.

“Prior to this arrest,” he said, “I never, ever had a criminal past – my record was entirely clean, so clean in fact that I had a Secret Service clearance to work a security detail for then Senators Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton when they came to New Orleans after Katrina. If at any time someone would have come to me and said because you’re a volunteer and you don’t really count as law enforcement and you need to pay the $8.00 admission fee, I would have gladly given them the $8.00. I’m not going to risk my career over eight dollars. But no one ever did.

“Instead,” he continued, “they attempted to deprive me of my freedom, my dignity, and my sense of self-worth. As much as I tried to understand what had happened – I simply couldn’t. To say that all of this didn’t take a lot out of me – it did. It didn’t sit well with me and I knew I had to do something, and I did, but it was a decision that nearly cost me my life. The nightmare had only just begun.”