Mayor-President Josh Guillory sues to remove Lafayette police officer
Mayor-President Josh Guillory is suing to remove a Lafayette police officer from his job for using excessive force.
Lafayette Police Officer Jeremy Robert was suspended for a single day without pay after using excessive force during an April arrest when he pulled a handcuffed woman from a patrol car and later “hogtied” her.
He was later terminated by Guillory, but Lafayette’s Fire and Police Civil Service Board, which oversees employee discipline, overruled Guillory, reinstating the four-year police patrolman. Guillory filed a lawsuit in September in the 15th Judicial District asking a judge to allow the city-parish government to terminate Robert.
“The actions of Jeremy Robert are not becoming of any officer in the Lafayette Police Department or any police department in the civil world,” Guillory said in a statement to the Daily Advertiser.
Robert was called to a domestic disturbance in April. A man and a woman were arrested, and the woman was placed into the back of Robert’s patrol car. She was “irate,” kicking the door of the car and banging her head against the protective screen, according to an Internal Affairs investigation.
At one point, Robert grabbed the woman by the chain connecting her ankles and pulled her out of the car, according to the investigation. She was on her stomach and hit her face on the car and the ground, causing her to cut her chin.
The woman was placed back into the patrol car, but she continued to kick the door. Robert then connected her ankle restraints and handcuffs, putting her in a “hogtie,” a controversial restraint method prohibited by the Lafayette Police Department.
The Daily Advertiser obtained the footage from Robert’s body-worn camera but will not release it until the woman’s identity can be obscured.
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