Scandal rocks N.O.-based narcotics task force
10th July 2017 · 0 Comments
For the past year, the U.S. Department of Justice has been investigating allegations of a host of improprieties committed by a New Orleans-based narcotics task force. The allegations, some of which were committed too long ago to prosecute, include selling painkillers, threatening confidential informants and pocketing cash seized during drug raids.
The scandal, which is still unfolding, has already cost Chad Scott, a veteran DEA agent and leader of the task force, his gun and badge. It has reportedly also compromised a growing number of federal criminal cases and led to felony charges against two members of the Drug Enforcement Administration task force.
In addition to DEA agent Scott, a Tangipahoa Parish sheriff’s deputy has already pleaded guilty to his role in a wide-ranging drug conspiracy.
The New Orleans Advocate reported Wednesday that while the full scope of the DOJ investigation is still not clear, new concerns and questions are emerging regarding the oversight of the task force and a series of red flags that officials apparently overlooked for years before a DOJ investigation was launched in early 2016.
After interviewing four current and former law enforcement officials and reviewing documents, The New Orleans Advocate reported that the DEA had been warned more than a decade ago by its own agents, confidential informants and other sources of information that task force members, including DEA agent Scott, had been playing by their own rules, disregarding DEA policies and at times even profiting from an illicit drug trade.
One of Scott’s former colleagues said that Scott had enjoyed virtually free rein as leader of the narcotics task force and was routinely defended against misconduct allegations because of the large number of drug cases he made.
“The DEA allowed it, if not promoted it,” the colleague said, describing a “cowboy” culture that was pervasive on the task force.
Three sources familiar with the case said that after former task force members Johnny Domingue and Karl E. Newman were taken into custody last year, the U.S. Department of Justice quietly agreed to pay $200,000 to settle a whistleblower lawsuit filed by a veteran DEA agent who said that Scott, in an effort to boost his arrest numbers, had allowed confidential informants to sell drugs and commit other crimes in exchange for information. The veteran agent said he was targeted for retaliation for reporting Scott to DEA officials, the sources said.
As early as 2003, the agent told DEA officials that Scott had maintained a “stash room” in a Hammond hotel where he kept illegal drugs and cash and that Scott had sold Ecstasy in college.
The agent also reportedly also said in 2004 that the DEA’s top brass routinely allowed Scott to violate agency policy because of the high volume of drug cases he generated and that the DEA had been turning a blind eye toward corrupt law enforcement in Tangipahoa Parish.
Scott reportedly continued to violate DEA policy and the law even after being reported to the U.S. Attorney’s Office in New Orleans for allegedly pressuring an informant to sell 100 pounds of marijuana and two kilograms of cocaine and a Washington Parish resident told the Louisiana State Police that Scott had been “supplying narcotics” to an unnamed man.
“There were a series of complaints that went back years,” a law enforcement official familiar with the FBI inquiry told The New Orleans Advocate. “This is a guy who probably shouldn’t have been allowed to run his own task force.”
While it is unclear whether the DEA took any disciplinary action against Scott, he was suspended without pay last year and stripped of his security clearance after the U.S. Department of Justice began its inquiry.
A DEA spokeswoman declined to comment on the allegations dating back more than a decade or the whistleblower settlement but told The New Orleans Advocate in an email, “DEA takes very seriously any allegations of wrongdoing or misconduct and holds our employees to the highest possible standards.
“Due to this being an ongoing investigation and with respect to all parties involved, the DEA cannot and will not comment on personnel matters or inquiries related to this investigation,” she added.
The New Orleans Advocate reported that many members of the task force, including Chad Scott, Johnny Domingue and Karl E. Newman, began their careers with the Tangipahoa Parish Sheriff’s Office.
The DOJ inquiry began last year shortly after Domingue, a task force member recruited by Scott, had been arrested
In pleading guilty, Domingue signed a factual basis in which he admitted that he used hiss badge “to acquire quantities of cocaine hydrochloride and other Schedule II controlled dangerous substances, marijuana, methamphetamine, other prescription pills, cash from the sale of these drugs and cash seized from individuals who were arrested or ‘shaken down’ while acting under the color of law enforcement.”
Domingue also admitted to stealing some 300 grams of cocaine from evidence bags stored at the DEA’s New Orleans Field Division which he instructed a confidential informant to sell.
Domingue told investigators that the misconduct on the task force “was a practice that was already in place when he came on board, and he inserted himself sort of in that circle,” Douglas Bruce, an investigator with the DOJ’s Office of Inspector General, said in testimony during a court hearing last year.
Newman, who has been accused of also keeping cash confiscated during drug raids and using methamphetamine that had been seized by authorities, faces nine counts that include robbery and possession with intent to distribute cocaine and oxycodone.
It is not clear whether Scott will face criminal charges. He was suspended more than a year ago and remains at the center of the FBI’s widening investigation which has expanded to other law enforcement agencies.
The investigation has led to prosecutors being removed from more than a dozen cases in federal court and replaced with assistant U.S. attorneys from other states and dropped murder and drug charges.
A host of other cases have been placed on hold as the DOJ investigation continues to grow.
This article originally published in the July 10, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
