We Asked a Question. New Iberia Police Officers Got Their Voice Back.

For most of the restored New Iberia Police Department’s existence, its officers had no representative on the board responsible for their civil-service rights. That changed this week. On July 21, the New Iberia City Council ratified the election and appointment of Greg Pete as the police department’s representative on the New Iberia Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board. Resolution 26-93 gives Pete a three-year term ending July 26, 2029.

That may sound like a routine appointment. It was anything but routine. The seat was not restored because City Hall discovered the problem and corrected it on its own. It was restored after Citizens for a New Louisiana requested records, examined the board’s composition, compared the city’s practices with state law, published what we found, and refused to let the issue disappear.

More importantly, the city’s first response was not to restore police representation. It was to ask the City Council to approve a resolution that would have continued excluding police officers from the board. The council rejected that proposal. A police election followed. Now, after years without a voice, the department’s officers finally have the representation Louisiana law provides.

This is what public oversight can accomplish.

A Board Designed to Divide Power

The Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board helps oversee examinations, hiring, promotions, disciplinary matters and other decisions that can determine the careers of police officers and firefighters. Louisiana law establishes a five-member board whose membership comes from several sources. One member is appointed by the governing authority, two come from university nomination lists, and two are elected by classified employees—one from the fire department and one from the police department.

That structure distributes authority. It gives both departments a voice while preventing the mayor or council from controlling every seat.

New Iberia received a special statutory exception after the city ceased operating its police department. Under that exception, the city could operate with only one employee-elected member and give the remaining seat to a mayoral appointee—but only under the circumstances described by law and only if the City Council formally approved the exception by resolution.

The city later rebuilt its police department. Voters approved a funding source in 2017, and New Iberia police officers began patrolling on July 1, 2018. However, a police representative to the Civil Service board did not return with them. Year after year, the department operated without an employee-elected voice on the board. The city continued filling the board as though its special exception were in effect.

There was just one problem: when we asked for the resolution authorizing that exception, the city could not produce one.

The Question City Hall Had Not Answered

Our investigation began with a straightforward question: What legal authority allowed New Iberia to deny its police officers their own representative? The city’s records did not provide an answer. On April 20, we published “The Board That Ignores the Law,” documenting the missing police representative, the absence of the required resolution and additional problems involving appointments, university nomination lists and oaths of office.

By then, City Hall knew the board’s composition was under scrutiny. Its response might be the most revealing part of this story. Mayor Freddie DeCourt placed Resolution 26-46 before the City Council on April 21. The resolution would have formally approved the exception allowing only one civil-service employee (a fireman) to sit on the board.

In practical terms, it would have preserved the arrangement that excluded the police department. City Hall’s initial response to our findings was not to call an election and seat a police representative. It was to seek council approval to continue operating without one.

During the meeting, DeCourt made an extraordinary admission:

“We as a body, and those before us, back all the way to 2014 have never passed a resolution invoking our exception granted to New Iberia by the state to not have a police representative on the board.”

For years, the city had operated as though the exception were in effect. The mayor acknowledged publicly that the required resolution had never been adopted. Then the council unanimously rejected Resolution 26-46. That vote changed the direction of the city’s response.

The Outcome Was Not Inevitable

It would be easy to look at Greg Pete’s appointment today and treat the controversy as a paperwork problem that City Hall eventually corrected. That interpretation ignores what actually happened. Before our investigation, the police department had no representative.

After we requested the authorizing records and the city could not produce them, officials still did not restore the seat. Instead, the administration placed a resolution on the agenda that would have continued the one-employee arrangement. Only after the issue became public—and after the council refused to approve that resolution—did the process move toward a police election.

The sequence:

1. 2017, the police department returned, but its civil-service representation did not.
2. The arrangement continued for most of the department’s restored existence.
3. We requested the legal authority supporting that arrangement.
4. The city could not produce the required resolution.
5. We published the evidence.
6. City Hall proposed a resolution that would have continued excluding a police representative.
7. The City Council rejected it.
8. Police officers elected Greg Pete.
9. The council ratified his election and appointment.

That is not government correcting itself in the ordinary course of business. It is government changing direction after our pressure made nine years of status quo impossible to ignore.

Why This Work Matters

Investigative work does not always end with an indictment, resignation, or courtroom judgment. Sometimes the result is quieter but still consequential: a public body begins following a law it had disregarded, an employee gains a voice that had been denied, or an entrenched government practice finally changes.

No new law was required in New Iberia. No legislative amendment was necessary. The law already provided for police representation. What was missing was someone willing to examine the records, compare the city’s conduct with the statute, and ask why the two did not match.

That is the work Citizens for a New Louisiana does.

We request the documents. We read the agendas and minutes. We follow the statutory language. We publish the evidence so citizens can judge for themselves. And when officials attempt to dismiss, minimize, or work around a problem, we continue following it until the public can see the outcome. Greg Pete now holds the seat that New Iberia police officers should have had throughout the nine years of the restored department’s existence. His appointment does not answer every question about the board’s past composition or validate every action it previously took. But it does change the future.

An entire police department now has a voice it did not have before our investigation began. City Hall was prepared to continue the old arrangement. Our work stopped it. That is not merely a story about a civil-service board. It is a case study in why independent oversight matters—and proof that asking the right question, documenting the answer, and bringing it before the public can change what government does.

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