Ethics board sets conferences with former LCPD employees

Published 3:10 pm Saturday, June 3, 2017

Conferences have been scheduled for three former Lake Charles police employees facing state ethics charges.

The Louisiana Board of Ethics in March announced its Feb. 16 decision to file charges against Thomas “T.J.” Bell, Jeanine Blaney and Arnold Bellow. The Ethics Adjudicatory Board is expected to conduct public hearings on the charges.

Kathleen Allen, ethics administrator, said Friday that no hearing dates have been set but that conferences have been scheduled with Bell on June 13; Blaney on July 12; and Bellow on July 26.

Bell, a former deputy chief, is accused of receiving credit for McNeese State University coursework completed by Blaney during Bell’s working hours — which, according to the board, he was not “duly entitled to receive for the performance of his position.”

Blaney is charged with receiving compensation from Lake Charles police while providing educational assistance to Bell and for receiving payment for hours — both regular and overtime — in which she provided no clerk-related services but was listed on the attendance log as doing so.

The board said Bell and Bellow, a former captain, allowed Blaney to leave work without completing the eight hours for which she was being compensated. They also said both men, as Blaney’s supervisors, failed to screen whether she was “needed to perform the work of the agency” and that they knowingly had Blaney on the payroll when she was “not rendering services for which she was being paid.”

Bellow, said the board, also knowingly signed and approved Blaney’s inaccurate work attendance log.

Bell and Blaney also face criminal charges in state district court in connection with the case. Bell will go to trial on Aug. 28 for malfeasance in office; Blaney faces one count of public payroll fraud on June 19.

Bellow was not criminally charged.