Cottonwood, LA, Fire Chief Facing Sanctions for Poking Police Chief

As Louisiana broiled in August 2023, the State Fire Marshal issued a burn ban, leaving it to local officials to grant exceptions if needed.

Chris Lemoine, chief of the volunteer Cottonport Fire Department, in Avoyelles Parish, approved one for himself a few weeks later that he would come to regret.

The “controlled” burn that Lemoine admits lighting on Aug. 20, 2023, didn’t stay that way long, after he and a fire captain got to drinking beers down the street, according to the Louisiana Judiciary Commission.

The blaze just outside of town ended up “catching an abandoned wooden structure, brush and trees, and electrical poles and lines on fire,” the commission alleges in misconduct allegations against Lemoine that were made public this week.

Lemoine, who serves as a Justice of the Peace along with his role as fire chief, downplayed the damage even as calls and text messages rolled in to emergency dispatchers. He told them he was at the scene and only an empty lot was affected.

A pair of Cottonport police officers arrived to find a structure ablaze, “and no one was around watching it.” They sent photos to the town’s police chief at the time, Jennifer Lofton, who “recognized the old slaughterhouse engulfed in flames” and soon arrived.

“You’re not going to make this a big deal, are you?” Lemoine asked her, according to the commission.

“Yes, it is a big deal that we’re in the middle of a serious burn ban and this could do a lot of damage,” she responded.

According to the commission, Lemoine “admitted ‘it got a little bit out of hand after that’ and you put your finger in her face and might have slipped and touched her.”

The police chief said Lemoine shoved four fingers into her chest, bruising her left pectoral muscle, and yelled as he walked away that she was out of her jurisdiction “and to mind her own business,” the commission alleges.

Lofton told a dispatcher that Lemoine had “put your hands on her several times and admitted to being intoxicated,” the commission claims.

Lemoine is accused of failing to uphold “high standards as both a judicial officer and as a fire chief, and failing to comply with the law by foolishly and negligently performing a controlled burn” during a ban.

The commission can recommend discipline of judges and justices of the peace to the Louisiana Supreme Court.

Lemoine lost his composure and temper, committed a battery upon the police chief and resisted arrest during “this embarrassing and frightening incident,” the commission alleges.

He balked at being handcuffed, and as an officer read him his rights, Lemoine “disparaged Chief Lofton, referring to her as a ‘bitch and a hoe,’” the document states.

A hearing over the allegations is scheduled for September.

“Your conduct also put your neighbors on both sides of your property and the tenants across the street who live in a large apartment complex in imminent danger or fear thereof,” the commission alleges.

District Attorney Charles Riddle engineered a resolution of the criminal case against Lemoine. Indicted on counts of battery of a police officer and resisting an officer, Lemoine entered a pretrial diversion program and later had the case expunged from his record, the commission said.

Lemoine admitted last week in a response to the charges that he drank “about six beers” within a three-hour period leading up to the altercation with the police chief.

“I was burning a pile of brush on my property, the structure that caught fire was abandoned for years and it did belong to me,” he wrote. “I did make the determination that it was safe but when I left for a minute, when I returned it did get a little out of hand and called it in.”

Lemoine says he was less than 100 yards away from the burn. His department sent a fire truck. He disputed that he could have caused the injury Lofton alleged.

“I did clench my fist, but by no means try to do anything but put my finger in her face while we were talking and yelling at her,” he wrote. “Maybe when I put my fingers by her chest she took it as me pushing her but I did not by no means want it to go that far. I did admit to her that I had a little to drink.”

Lemoine went on to write that Lofton “was outside the city limits of Cottonport and was not asked by the Avoyelles Parish Sheriff’s Office to assist them, who has jurisdiction where this occurred.”

He added: “I do not recall calling her a bitch hoe.”

Lemoine admitted, however, that he violated the judicial code of ethics and said he’d never before been in trouble with a state agency.

“I know what I did was wrong and did not act in a professional manner. I would ask for any and all help in this matter,” he wrote.

Less than a week after his arrest, the state Fire Marshal rescinded its burn ban, replacing it with a new one. The agency said the purpose of the change was “to remove the ability for exceptions to be granted by local authorities.”

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