Baton Rouge officer accused of writing bogus summonses
A police officer was arrested Thursday and accused of falsifying misdemeanor summonses.
Police administrators wouldn’t speculate why Derek Jason Burns, 29, allegedly wrote the bogus summonses.
Officers are often paid overtime to appear in court for the summonses that they write.
Burns, 11756 N. Englewood Drive, was booked into Parish Prison on four counts each of injuring public records, forgery and malfeasance in office. The officer, who joined the Police Department in 2006 and is assigned to its prison transport division, is on paid administrative leave.
Police Chief Dewayne White said investigators with the Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division launched an investigation into Burns on July 3 after the officer’s supervisor noticed a summons Burns wrote that “just didn’t look right.”
Investigators looked into that summons and a random sampling of four others, finding at least four of the five appeared phony, White said. The fifth summons is still being examined.
Burns issued the four false summonses between June 6 and July 26 to three people without their knowledge, an arrest warrant said
The police officer forged the victims’ signatures on the summonses, the warrant said.
The victims told investigators they had never come into contact with Burns and never signed the misdemeanor summonses, the warrant said.
The summonses were sent to a certified forensic document examiner, who concluded all four signatures were written by Burns, the warrant said.
White said “the possibility is great” Burns falsified additional summonses.
He said investigators will go back as far as they can to determine how many other bogus summonses there might be.
“This investigation is in its infancy,” the chief said. “There’s a lot more work to do.”
The people whose forged names were on the bad summonses had lengthy criminal histories, White said.
One individual was a white man, one was a black man and the other victim was a black woman, the chief said.
White said he would contact U.S. Attorney Donald J. Cazayoux Jr. and ask him to look into whether anyone’s civil rights were violated if investigators determine Burns wrote additional phony summonses and the majority of the victims are black.
“We will continue to police our own,” White said. “When a police officer commits a crime, we will take action and we will take it swiftly.”
White said the accusations against Burns should not be considered a reflection of the work done by the majority of the Police Department’s officers, who “work tirelessly every day in a professional manner.”
Burns, 11756 N. Englewood Drive, was booked into Parish Prison on four counts each of injuring public records, forgery and malfeasance in office. The officer, who joined the Police Department in 2006 and is assigned to its prison transport division, is on paid administrative leave.