White’s attorney: Holden’s micromanagement of BRPD evident in emails

As the war of words escalates between Mayor Kip Holden and fired Baton Rouge Police Chief Dewayne White, White’s attorney says an email exchange between the two illustrates the counterproductive ways in which Holden was micromanaging the police department. Specifically, the email shows that three days before he was fired, White alerted the mayor to a disciplinary action he was taking against a white police officer for uttering a racial slur at the scene of a homicide. Jill Craft, White’s attorney, says the email was sent because the police chief was verbally ordered by the mayor about a month before his firing to run all personnel and disciplinary matters through the mayor’s office first. But the mayor’s office denies White’s claim and says White was free to issue disciplinary measures himself. “I guess he sent that [email] as a heads up,” says Chief Administrative Officer William Daniel, who also insists that the officer isn’t a high-ranking officer in the police union. “I don’t even know who the police officer was; he was in the homicide unit.” Craft, however, says it wasn’t the only personnel decision White had briefed the mayor on in the weeks leading up to his firing. “[Holden] was micromanaging the entire department, and it wasn’t just this disciplinary action, it was several of them,” Craft says. —Adam Pearson