Four years ago, Albert “Buz” LeBlanc came within 12 votes of being forced into a runoff for Breaux Bridge Chief of Police. This year, he apparently wasn’t interested in taking any chances.
Hubert Augustine, a 27-year veteran officer of the BBPD and LeBlanc’s principal opponent in 2022, returned to challenge him again. This time Augustine was the only other candidate to qualify. Before voters could decide between them, however, Breaux Bridge Mayor Ricky Calais complained to the 16th Judicial District Attorney’s Office that Augustine did not meet the domicile requirement.
What followed was an extraordinary deployment of government personnel and resources in an unsuccessful attempt to remove LeBlanc’s only political opponent from the election ballot.
The Mayor also personally supplied City utility records (obtained in his official capacity as Mayor) to the District Attorney, without any subpoena or written request for records. LeBlanc himself approached residents whose affidavits were later used against Augustine. Four Breaux Bridge Police Department employees serving under LeBlanc testified about observations they made while performing official police duties. A Sheriff’s Office employee was subpoenaed. Two assistant district attorneys prosecuted the case.
They lost. The District Attorney’s Office appealed. And they lost again.
The Third Circuit Ruling
The Third Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed Augustine’s place on the ballot and assessed $1,774 in appellate costs against Mike Haik in his official capacity as the 16th Judicial District Attorney. And that figure doesn’t include the salaries of the prosecutors who pursued the case, the Sheriff’s Office resources, the salaries of the Mayor and Chief of Police, and whatever else taxpayers may have paid for Breaux Bridge police employees. At the same time, their elected boss’s only political opponent was being hauled into court over a civil matter.
All of this raises an obvious question: Why were so many public resources brought to bear to prevent Breaux Bridge voters from simply deciding who they wanted as Police Chief?
A First Term Worth Running On?
Perhaps all of this effort to resolve the election in a courtroom would be less remarkable if LeBlanc were carrying an especially sterling record into his first reelection campaign. In 2023, Citizens for a New Louisiana began examining the Police Department’s relationship with RM Partners, a public relations and social media firm. If that firm name seems familiar, it’s because it belonged to campaign manager Eddie Lau, who was arrested for distributing knowingly false information during a political campaign.
The firm had administrative access to BBPD’s Facebook page and became involved in a controversy after a person was blocked from the Department’s public-facing social media account. The Department later acknowledged corrective action.
Then came the money. As we reported in 2025, the Breaux Bridge Police Department paid RM Partners $28,000 between February 2023 and March 2024. There was just one problem: the Police Department subsequently acknowledged that the proposed $2,000-per-month agreement with RM Partners was never executed. Twenty-eight thousand dollars went out the door anyway.
LeBlanc’s Other Unusual Administrative Adventures
Also in 2023, an internal election was conducted to select the Breaux Bridge Police Department employee representative to the Municipal Police Civil Service Board. LeBlanc issued the election notice and scheduled voting. After one of the three candidates resigned during the voting period, the ballots already cast were sealed, and the election was discarded. A second election was then conducted with the two remaining candidates.
The City later told us that the Office of State Examiner had advised that the first election became invalid when the candidate resigned and should be repeated. That advice, however, came after Citizens for a New Louisiana raised the issue with the State Examiner. It was another peculiar episode requiring outside intervention in what should have been a fairly routine administrative process. We documented the whole strange affair at the time.
Professional experience matters in a race for Police Chief. In 2022, KATC described Augustine as a 27-year Breaux Bridge police officer with experience in patrol, narcotics and investigations. It described LeBlanc as a retired Navy veteran who had worked with the St. Martin Parish Sheriff’s Office and managed a business.
Then, in April 2024, LeBlanc accidentally shot himself during what authorities described as a routine annual firearms-qualification session. Authorities never publicly disclosed how the accident occurred.
Ricky Calais’s Complaint
The lawsuit alleged that Augustine had not been domiciled within the City of Breaux Bridge for the year preceding qualification. The 16th Judicial District Attorney’s petition said their office had been “presented with evidence by one or more registered voters” questioning Augustine’s eligibility. The identities of those voters were not disclosed in the petition. However, after we asked the District Attorney’s Office to identify the voter or voters who presented the evidence described in its petition, District Attorney Mike Haik responded himself. He said that Mayor Ricky Calais had contacted him by email on or about August 7.
When First Assistant District Attorney Alister Charrier and Felony Prosecutor Halee Maturin went to court seeking to remove Hubert Augustine from the ballot, the case was presented as a straightforward question of domicile. What followed, however, was not merely the presentation of evidence gathered by private citizens. It also included the testimony of officers working under the direction of Chief “Buz” LeBlanc.
We’ve established that the Mayor was the complainant. Evidence contained in the court records also indicates that incumbent Police Chief Albert “Buz” LeBlanc personally questioned residents about Augustine’s residence. The State then marshaled testimony from four Breaux Bridge police officers serving within LeBlanc’s chain of command. No subpoena for those officers appears among the subpoena records produced in the case, leaving unanswered who arranged their attendance and, if they appeared while on duty, who authorized the use of their time.
This seems uncomfortably close to La. R.S. 18:1465, which prohibits using public funds to urge electors to vote for or against a candidate. Then there’s La. R.S. 42:1116(B), which prohibits a public servant from using the authority of his office to compel or coerce another person or public servant into activity supporting or opposing a candidate.
Calais Didn’t Always Care Where the Chief Lived
Four years earlier, Mayor Ricky Calais viewed Breaux Bridge’s residency requirement as an annoying nuisance. In February 2022, Calais signed a City resolution asking the Legislature to convert the elected Police Chief into an appointed position. Among the City’s stated reasons was a shortage of residents qualified to be a Chief of Police. The resolution specifically sought authority to appoint a chief who could live outside the municipal limits.
Intense public backlash ultimately killed the proposal. Now, Calais is the complainant behind an unsuccessful lawsuit seeking to remove one of only two candidates from the ballot! One might be tempted to suggest he can’t have it both ways.
The Hearing
After hearing “the evidence” on August 18, District Judge Anthony Saleme, Jr. ruled that the District Attorney had failed to meet the burden of proof necessary to disqualify Augustine. The petition was denied. But the failed challenge left behind another question: Who actually built the case against Augustine, and were government employees and resources used to do it?
The first clue came from the City itself. Among the evidence used against Augustine were City of Breaux Bridge utility records for 910 Cecile Boulevard, the address Augustine claimed as his domicile. A public records request seeking information identifying who had requested those records initially produced a simple response: the City had no responsive documents.
A more specific follow-up produced a considerably more revealing answer. According to the City, District Attorney Michael Haik made a verbal request directly to the Mayor for a certified copy of the utility bill for 910 Cecile Boulevard. The record was then provided to Haik in person. The City says there are no records documenting the request or the exchange.
No Subpoena?
A district attorney can certainly obtain evidence while investigating a legal matter. But it does establish an unusually direct chain. The District Attorney confirmed that Mayor Ricky Calais was the complainant, and the City separately confirmed that Haik obtained Augustine’s utility record directly from the Mayor of the City of Breaux Bridge.
With the Mayor providing records from his office absent a subpoena or formal written request, it becomes difficult to determine where a “private complaint” ends and government involvement begins. There was no warrant. No subpoena. Not even a written public records request.
The witness list makes the question of the subpoena (or lack thereof) even harder to ignore. Court minutes show the State called Terry Latiolais, Andrew Wilson, Terril Bergeron, Martha Calais, Bobby Guidry, Saxon Wyatt, Henry Pascley, and Traven LeBlanc before resting its case.
However, only private citizens Bobby Guidry, Saxon Wyatt, and Henry Pascley, as well as St. Martin Parish Deputy Martha Calais, were subpoenaed. Their appearances were compelled through formal court process. But no subpoena contained in the court record compelled the four Breaux Bridge Police Department employees to appear.
Assistant Chief Terry Latiolais and Officers Andrew Wilson, Terril Bergeron, and Traven LeBlanc nevertheless appeared and testified for the State in an effort to remove the only political opponent of their boss, current Chief of Police Albert “Buz” LeBlanc. That distinction matters because the appellate opinion further confirms that those officers testified about what they had or had not observed at 910 Cecile Boulevard while on patrol and under LeBlanc’s supervision.
Voluntary Appearances?
There is nothing unusual about a police officer obeying a subpoena. Nor is there anything improper about an officer truthfully answering questions in court when lawfully required. But these officers did not appear to testify by compulsory process. They were either dragged into a civil dispute benefiting their boss or voluntarily interjected themselves into the middle of an election dispute contrary to the spirit of civil service provisions against “prohibited political activities.” And information available at the time of this publication indicates that some, if not all, were on duty. If confirmed by payroll and scheduling records, that changes the nature of the issue considerably, moving into a potential allegation of “misappropriation of public funds.”
An on-duty officer is not simply a private citizen deciding to spend the morning watching a court case outside of his jurisdiction. He is a municipal employee being compensated by taxpayers to perform police duties. His time is assigned through a chain of command. So, who authorized four Breaux Bridge civil service police employees to leave their normal duties and participate in a civil proceeding seeking to remove their chief’s only political opponent from the ballot? And when City resources are misappropriated it triggers a requirement that the “agency head”, in this case the Mayor who initiated the complaint, to notify the District Attorney, who prosecuted the complaint, of the alleged violation. The fox guarding the hen house?
Remarkably, three of the officers testified that they did not see Augustine’s Lafayette Marshal vehicle while patrolling Cecile Boulevard during the daytime—the time period they acknowledged Augustine would ordinarily have been at work. The only officer who patrolled the area at night indicated he wasn’t familiar with Augustine’s particular address.
Yes, the Voters Will Decide
What is no longer speculative is Albert “Buz” LeBlanc’s own participation in developing evidence used against Augustine. According to the court record provided to the Third Circuit, two Madeline Heights residents signed affidavits after LeBlanc personally asked them whether Augustine lived there.
Four years ago, Buz LeBlanc barely avoided a runoff. He received just 12 votes more than necessary to win outright. This year, the candidate who nearly forced a runoff returned as his only opponent. Before voters could render their verdict, Mayor Ricky Calais — who once complained that the domicile requirement unnecessarily restricted the pool of qualified Chief of Police candidates — attempted to invoke that same requirement to eliminate Augustine. The incumbent Chief personally helped in gathering evidence and affidavits. His employees supplied observations from their police patrols. The District Attorney took the case to court and, after losing, appealed. Only to lose again.
Perhaps there was a reason all of these parties preferred litigation to an election. The good news is they don’t have that option anymore. Breaux Bridge voters will get to decide their next Chief of Police.
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