Louisiana DAs use diversion traffic tickets to 'openly violate' ethics laws, complaint says

Louisiana district attorneys are illegally padding their budgets by using off-duty police officers to write profit-driven traffic tickets that can be dismissed for a fee, a legal watchdog said in an ethics complaint filed Tuesday.

The Southern Poverty Law Center is asking the state's ethics board to investigate and order district attorneys to return millions of dollars they have generated through "diversion" traffic tickets. Standard tickets written by on-duty officers don't give drivers the option to "buy their way out of prosecution," the group's complaint says.

"The State deserves more from its elected district attorneys than this unethical scheme to generate profits through the threat of prosecution," it says.

The Alabama-based law center is accusing District Attorney Richard Ward's office of abusing its prosecutorial powers to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from drivers who pay $175 to get a ticket dismissed and avoid having it reported to the state Office of Motor Vehicles. The state's ethics code prohibits district attorneys from profiting off the threat of prosecution, the group says.

Read more: http://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/news/article_c8c42824-73e1-11e8-bb06-0be0227bfe0f.html