A Jackson town marshal with a criminal history was arrested again Friday and charged with stalking, authorities said, the latest controversy for an officer who has held onto his policing license despite a checkered history in law enforcement.
The West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office on Friday said Travis "Clay" Depew was booked into the parish jail on one count of stalking, but declined to release any other details.?
An attorney for Depew said he hadn't yet reviewed any records from the arrest and wouldn't comment.
Officer Travis "Clay" Depew was arrested July 21, 2023 and charged with stalking, the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office said.
It was Depew's second stalking charge in six years. In 2017, he was fired from the Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff's Office after an investigation found he followed his ex-girlfriend from work in his squad car and used department equipment to run license plates of vehicles that were parked outside her home.
Depew found work at the Jackson Marshal's Office, where he was accused in a February 2021 incident of choking a Black teenager and calling him the N-word.?Depew was convicted of simple battery, but has remained on the job.
An officer who answered the phone at the Marshal's Office on Friday said Depew's status there has not changed, despite his most recent arrest.
An attorney for the teenager's family who sued the town of Jackson, Ron Haley, said Depew's latest arrest provides ample evidence that he should be barred from policing.?
"This is yet another example why he should not be employed as a law enforcement officer due to his volatile and extreme temperament," Haley said.
Depew's case is a recent example of how police officers in Louisiana who are fired over serious allegations, or who break the laws they swear to uphold, can fly below the radar of state police oversight officials and continue working in law enforcement.?
The Times-Picayune in April reported that?at least 228 law enforcement officers in the last decade were convicted of — or lost their jobs over — offenses including violence or harassment, dishonesty, theft, sexual assault or indecency, malfeasance and other serious on-the-job misconduct.
But Louisiana’s threshold for permanently banning police is so high that only 1 in 5 of those officers have lost their credentials, the newspaper found.?
Unlike other states, Louisiana's Peace Officer Standards and Training Council only decertifies police if they have been convicted of a felony.
The newspaper identified 328 officers in the last decade were fired for cause or resigned under investigation. Records show more than a quarter of those cases involved violence, dishonesty, sexual misconduct or malfeasance.
But as was the case with Depew, because they didn't involve felony convictions, not one was decertified.
