Officer Travis “Clay” Depew, who has held onto his law enforcement license despite his criminal history, took another step last week to keep himself out of the crosshairs of state oversight officials: He resigned from the Jackson Town Marshal’s Office before he faced any discipline for his latest arrest.
Depew’s lawyer said he resigned because he was charged with stalking and a judge issued a protective order, meaning Depew cannot legally carry a gun. Depew was also convicted of simple battery in January, in a case where a Black teenager said Depew choked him and called him the N-word.
Louisiana’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Council, which has the power to revoke the credentials of problematic officers, says Depew falls into a legal gray area, in part because the agency relies on local departments to refer officers for decertification. That hasn’t happened in Depew’s case.
POST is only required to decertify officers who have been convicted of felonies, or who have had their gun rights permanently stripped. So unless that happens in Depew’s stalking case, there’s nothing in Louisiana law that will prevent him from continuing to work in law enforcement, said Bob Wertz, POST’s executive director.
State Rep. Randal Gaines, who drafted reforms around decertification in 2017, suggested POST can take action against Depew anyway because of his earlier battery conviction. State law allows — though it doesn’t require — the agency to decertify officers found to have used excessive force.
But in what Gaines said was an apparent “loophole,” the law only grants POST that authority in cases where an officer resigns or is fired for using excessive force.
Jackson Marshal Fred Allen didn’t fire Depew upon his battery conviction, and Depew eventually resigned over a separate matter after his stalking arrest.
Gaines, a LaPlace Democrat, said he didn’t envision a scenario under which an officer could be convicted of a crime relating to on-duty behavior, but not lose their job.
Officer Travis "Clay" Depew was arrested July 21, 2023 and charged with stalking, the West Feliciana Parish Sheriff's Office said.
“That really allows them to circumvent the law,” Gaines said.
Allen didn’t return messages seeking comment. Depew’s lawyer, John McLindon, said Depew declined to comment on his stalking arrest. In the earlier incident that led to his battery conviction, Depew has denied using a racial slur.
The West Feliciana Parish Sheriff’s Office declined to release details of Depew’s stalking arrest, his second in the last six years.
The last time Depew was charged with stalking, in 2017, he was a deputy in the Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s Office, and the sheriff fired him. That was after an investigation found Depew tailed his ex in his department vehicle and used department equipment to run license plates of vehicles parked outside her home. Depew was hired in Jackson in early 2020.
Ronal Serpas, a former New Orleans police superintendent, said Depew’s case demonstrates that police accountability needs to start with local departments, where top brass should act as a frontline defense.
“First, background investigations of police applicants must be complete, and hiring authorities are therefore responsible for the decisions that they make to hire a candidate,” Serpas said.
Serpas, now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University, also called on the Legislature to “clarify, modify and make clear in law what activities, on duty or off, that rise to the level of decertification.”
The Times-Picayune reported in April on just how rarely police officers are decertified in Louisiana.
POST has averaged about one decertification a year over the last half-century, though the pace has sped up slightly in recent years. Other states, like Georgia, average hundreds a year.
The newspaper highlighted the case of the New Orleans police shootings on Danziger Bridge, which occurred in the days after Hurricane Katrina and led to the convictions of 10 officers.
In June, POST decertified five of those officers — roughly 18 years after the incident. The other officers have yet to be decertified.
Officers like Depew generally fly below POST's radar because, under state law, their offenses don't rise to the level of automatic decertification.?
The Times-Picayune | The Advocate identified 228 law enforcement officers in the last decade who 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.
Only about 1 in 5 of those officers have been decertified.
