Since July of 1992, Donaldsonville Fire Chief Kirk Landry was on a mission to convert a less than
professional fire department into one of the best departments in the state of Louisiana for the size city
they served, according to a LSU Fire Academy authority. He spent years training his fire fighters and
helping fire chiefs throughout Louisiana and parts of Texas with specialized training. Chief Landry often
attended national training programs and returned home to share his training with his department and
neighboring departments that couldn't afford to go. “Helping other fire fighters is just what you do” said
Landry. Chief Landry was also called to teach fire classes at the local chemical plants and refineries in
the Donaldsonville area due to his vast knowledge and experience. Professional differences with two
firemen, Mike Sullivan and James McDonald, put Chief Landry in the middle of a personal vendetta over
power, unaccounted funds by Sullivan and a vow by McDonald and Sullivan to ”Get the chief if it's the
last thing I do”. At one point, Sullivan even had to be removed from the fire station and Landry was
forced to put a restraining order on him. In a retaliatory gesture, Donaldsonville fire department records
were stolen from the fire station by disgruntled firemen McDonald and Sullivan and delivered to the
State Police Insurance Fraud Unit alleging that Chief Landry had illegally changed fire reports. The
normal chain of command would have been to present any evidence to the fire rating association,
Property Insurance Association of Louisiana (PIAL) for review and adjustment, then to the Mayor or the
City Council, and then to the Sheriff's Department if it was deemed that illegal activities had occurred.
How much is your career worth to you?
PIAL is an association that rates fire departments to determine their readiness and provide risk
assessment to the insurance companies through their ratings. The insurance companies set their
premium prices based on this rating. On a scale of 1 to 10, the lower the number, the better the rating.
PIAL receives a percentage of the insurance premiums collected for their services. The higher the
rating number that a department receives, the higher the premiums that the citizens pay and the more
money PIAL makes. PIAL does not make its rules and assessment regulations available to fire
departments. Therefore, a fire department must guess what the PIAL inspector deems important. When
Fire Chief Paul Gilmore asked a high ranking official from PIAL why they kept the regulations secret, he
answered “If we told the fire departments what our regulations were, they would cheat and get better
ratings”. So the rating is pretty much at the whim of the inspector. It’s nearly impossible for a fire
department to protest a poor rating. “How can you protest a rating when you don’t know how you got it?”
questions Gilmore. This has allowed for the emergence of a consultant industry that cities need to hire
to help the fire department navigate the PIAL maze. It also creates a culture of unaccountability and
“special” treatment expectations by the inspectors. It is widely discussed in fire department circles
which inspector should be taken to strip clubs, which ones to take on fishing trips and who likes the
really nice steak houses. But when the questions are “for the record”, all conversation ceases. Fire
chiefs can’t afford to fall out of grace with the inspectors who control their ratings and by proxy, their
jobs. So the game continues. Money needed for equipment and firemen salaries are used to pay for
consultants and “business” expenses related to PIAL inspections.
Let no good deed go unpunished.
So the city of Donaldsonville hires a consultant for the complicated process of preparing for the rating
assessment. The consultant’s name is Tom Cassisa. He had been an inspector for PIAL for years before
leaving to start his own consultant firm. He also has a lot of enemies in PIAL because he calls PIAL to
task and exposes the culture of abuse and favoritism. He has become an irritant to PIAL. Cassisa
advises Chief Landry to correct fire reports, according to PIAL’s regulations, to include fire trucks that
were dispatched to a fire, but cancelled before they arrived due to the fire being put out by the first
response team. Chief Landry does this. In the process, he makes two clerical mistakes on the reports.
The amount of credit that the corrected reports earn doesn’t change the ratings for the City of
Donaldsonville Fire Department, but it becomes fodder for McDonald, Sullivan and the State Police to
use against Landry.
If you get a fish in a barrel, shoot it!
The State Police Insurance Fraud Unit, which has a reputation for seeking publicity as a normal part of its
official capacity, couldn’t resist the opportunity to make headlines by arresting a fire chief, no matter
how questionable the evidence. This is the same unit that has a camera crew follow them to arrest an
insurance agent for fraud, but waits until the insurance agent is approaching the Mississippi River
bridge to make a throw-down street arrest, giving the appearance that the insurance agent was making
a getaway. Great for TV and the “Have your people get in touch with our people” attitude. During the
“investigation” of Chief Landry, the State Police Unit terminated their interview with the then assistant
chief, Chuck Montero, in less than 5 minutes once it was determined that Montero’s version was
different from what they wanted to hear. The lead investigator later admitted in court that, aside from the
assistant fire chief, they didn’t interview the consultant that the city had hired to assist in the fire chief
during the rating process, any of the fire captains from the department or basically anyone else who
might have shed light on the farce. The investigator did, however, interview a representative from PIAL
who agreed that they should pursue the case as a felony fraud, even though this was against PIAL’s own
regulations for such a minor discrepancy. Here was an opportunity to punish Cassisa and if Chief Landry
was in the way, it was just collateral damage. When presented with fire reports during the trial, the State
Police Insurance Fraud Unit investigator admitted that he didn’t understand how the fire departments
administration operated and what was required on the fire reports. This was obvious when the
investigator was asked why he didn’t bother to question how several fire reports that he had as part of
the investigation reported that three fireman had driven four fire trucks to a fire. Perhaps it was a
clerical mistake, just like the one that Chief Landry made on the reports and was now facing felony
prosecution for.
Ignore the man behind the curtain!
The statute Chief Landry was charged with is as follows: 1) Fraudulent insurance act shall include but not
be limited to acts or omissions committed by any person who, knowingly and with intent to defraud: A)
Presents, causes to be presented, or prepared with knowledge or belief that it will be presented by an
insurer, reinsurer, purported nurturer or reinsurer, broker, or any agent thereof, of any oral or written
statement which he knows to contain materially false information…” According to the statute, Chief Landry
could be charged with felony insurance fraud if he had not made changes to the reports that he was on
trail for as this would have been an omission. At the trial, defense attorney Karl Koch who, by his own
words, admitted in court that he was unable to prepare for Chief Landry’s defense because Landry
broke no laws, was true to his word. He came in almost completely unprepared. It was the research from
Fire Chief Paul Gilmore who finally made Koch understand, after a year and a half of delays and recusals,
that Landry was, indeed, innocent. In all, it took over four years for Chief Landry to have his right to a
speedy trial. The core of the prosecutors case were two reports corrected by Chief Landry. Each report
listed one fire fighter being present when he was out of town and one being listed while on maternity
leave. This was due to an error made by Chief Landry when he was correcting the reports almost a year
later and used a drop down window in the report software that listed everyone assigned to the units
that were dispatched. Again, the normal procedure is for PIAL to make a phone call and question the
chief on the matter.
The high light of Koch’s performance was when he asked representatives of PIAL if, according to the
statute, they are an insurer, reinsurer, purported nurturer or reinsurer, broker or an agent. They
responded that they are not. Case dismissed, right? (you can’t make this stuff up) The prosecutor,
Stephen Street of the State Attorney General’s office objects, saying that a rating association and an
insurance agent are the same thing, despite the fact that the Louisiana Legislature has determined that
PIAL is only a regulatory agency. Judge Ralph Tureau accepts Streets logic and the kangaroo court is in
session. Street, who has a “win at all cost” and “let justice be damned” strategy, subpoenas Dwayne
Gibson, a fire captain under Landry at the time of the report changes, so that the defense couldn’t call
him first. Street knows that Gibson’s testimony will hurt his case. Street’s hack man, attorney Tom
McCormick, calls Gibson the night before he was to testify to announce that the defense was going to
make a fool of him on the stand. Gibson believes McCormick and goes into court in a defensive posture.
McCormick interrogates Gibson and after three question, has Gibson declared a hostile witness. “When
the prosecution succeeded in declaring Gibson a hostile witness, the jury just saw an angry black man
on the stand with no credibility, not the outstanding fireman that he is” points out Chief Paul Gilmore.
Attorney Tom McCormick, representing the people of Louisiana, has just successfully executed a street
level sucker punch to discredit a valuable witness for the defense in its never ending search for truth
and justice.
The second element to the prosecutor’s hide-the-truth shell game is the water shuttle exercise. To
improve response capabilities in rural areas, a water shuttle system was implemented by Chief Landry.
Water is driven out to the fire scene in a tank truck to compensate for not having enough fire hydrants.
Street claimed that since there were two clerical errors in the city report, there must be mistakes in the
reports for the outlying region. He attacked the two water shuttle exercises that were witnessed by the
PIAL inspector as being false or made up. Apparently Mr. Koch didn’t see the importance of pointing out
that not only was the inspector there, but they repeated the exercise twice on two different days with
the exact same result. And the inspector was there for both exercises! The importance of this event is
the fact that without the water shuttle credit, the outlying areas rating’s change, giving ammunition to
the premise that there was fraud against the insurance companies to lower rates. As the trial comes to a
close, defense attorney Koch displays to the jury the statute that Chief Landry is charged with to the
objection of prosecutor Street. The prosecution objects to the defense showing the jury the law? The
Judge sustains the prosecution’s objection, but allows the defense to continue.?! (It gets better) At the
close of the trial, Judge Tureau reads the wrong statute! The defense objects and informs the Judge
that he is reading the wrong statute and confusing the jury. Guess what, he continues reading the
wrong statute! The jury retires to decide Chief Landry’s fate. The jury soon requests a copy of the law
that Chief Landry is accused of breaking. The Judge refuses to send a copy in and has the jury brought
back into court so that he can read it again. The defense objects and the Judge proclaims that he will
give the jury what they need. After three announcements by the jury that they were hung, the Judge
sends them back in with a threat to keep them there until they return a verdict.
We can do better than this.
Chief Kirk Landry was convicted of felony fraud. The trial has bankrupted Kirk and his father. It has sent
a shockwave of fear through the ranks of fire chiefs throughout the state of Louisiana and has
empowered PIAL with the sense that they are untouchable. Kirk’s appeal brief is due by January 30,
2008. Kirk can’t afford to go on. The local TV stations, radio stations, newspapers or magazines are all
afraid to touch this story. Kirk needs the kind of help that he has selflessly given to everyone who has
crossed his path in all of his years as a first responder fire fighter. What can you do?
UPDATE: Prosecutor Steven Street has just been appointed Inspector General for the State of Louisiana.
It is good to see that some one benefited from Chief Landry's persecution.
You can contact Will LeBlanc at CB Relations, P.O. Box 90267 Houston, Texas 77290
Phone 281/893-3838 Fax 281/651-0664 will@cbrelations.com www.cbrelations.com
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