Louisiana Town Council Votes Unanimously to Fire KKK Cop
The town council in Lake Arthur, La., voted unanimously Wednesday evening to fire one of its police detectives who admitted being a participant in a Ku Klux Klan rally last year in North Carolina.
The town council in Lake Arthur, La., voted unanimously Wednesday evening to fire one of its police detectives who admitted being a participant in a Ku Klux Klan rally last year in North Carolina.
The council’s action terminating Det. Raymond Mott’s employment came after he refused to resign as requested by Lake Arthur Police Chief Ray Marcantel who placed the officer on unpaid leave last week. The chief forwarded his termination request to the council for action.
After he was fired, Mott told the Jennings Daily News that he intends to file a lawsuit for wrongful termination and defamation.
The police chief cited “dishonesty as the reason for the termination request,” the newspaper reports in today’s editions. During an internal investigation by the Lake Arthur Police Department, Mott initially denied attending the Klan rally, but later recanted.
When approached last week by reporters for the Jennings newspaper, Mott initially confirmed he attended the rally, but said he was on a “secret mission” for the FBI. But he later recanted that version, too, the newspaper reported.
The 33-year-old police officer attended the standing-room only meeting Wednesday in the Lake Arthur City Hall and opted not to have a closed, executive session as allowed for personnel matters.
Those attending the public meeting had to pass through a metal detector. Several armed police officers, including Mott’s colleagues, were in attendance as some observers were forced to remain outside the crowed council chamber.
Mott said he was not employed as a police officer at the time he joined the Klan, and learned about the group from a flyer he received when he was a police officer in Eunice, La.
The police officer said after he resigned from the Klan, he provided information on the racist group to the FBI, the Lake Arthur newspaper reported. The police chief confirmed to the newspaper that he and Mott, along with Lake Arthur Assistant Chief Terrie Guillory, participated in a phone call with an FBI agent from the Lafayette field office. The phone call took place after Mott originally denied to his superiors that he had any connections to the KKK.
After he was fired, Mott told Sheila Smith, the managing editor of the Daily News, that he intended to fight his termination.
During the August 2014 anti-immigration rally in Troy, N.C., sponsored by the Loyal White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan, Mott was photographed wearing a black, paramilitary-style KKK uniform with the racist group’s traditional blood-cross, doing a Hitler salute. A photograph of him began circulating in social media last week, four months after it was forwarded to the Lake Arthur Police Department.
The Jennings newspaper broke the story last Friday and, in two follow-up articles on Sunday, Mott confirmed he, indeed, was the man in the photo. He told the newspaper he since had resigned from the Klan and become an ordained minister, tending to the less fortunate in his off-duty time.
