Youngsville Police Chief ‘Thought He Had Better Relationship with Council’
YOUNGSVILLE, La. (999 KTDY) - Youngsville Chief of Police Rickey Boudreaux has been speaking out about some controversy concerning himself and the job he carries out each day. Boudreaux has spent time telling "his side of the story" to KLFY.
Boudreaux told KFLY, "he thought he had a better relationship with the council". In April the council announced they voted to begin an investigation into Chief Boudreaux following an Advocate article about the Chief intervening in a traffic crash by now-former councilwoman Kayla Reaux.
At that time, Reaux hit a parked car. She called Chief Boudreaux for help. When asked by the officers for her telephone number, she sang "867-5309" to them from the popular J. Geils Band song. Reaux called Chief Boudreaux, and he came to the scene. Reaux didn't get a ticket or citation of any kind. She was allowed to go home.
Fast forward to today, Chief Boudreaux is saying he thought his relationship with the council was a stronger one. The council, for its part, has their financial auditors reviewing the Chief's expenses from September 2016 to today because officials have found over $18,000 of charges on top of the $1,000 car allowance he is approved for. The courts are still working out whether or not the Council has the authority to investigate Boudreaux since he was elected by the people.
In speaking with KLFY, Chief Boudreaux says Reaux was leaving his house when she crashed into the parked car in Sugar Mill Pond. Boudreaux told KLFY she was at his house late at night after coming home from an out-of-state trip. She was there to pick up makeup from a female friend of the Chief he had at his house. The woman was not giving a sobriety test at the scene.
Boudreaux told Channel 10 that he's certified in field sobriety testing, so he would have known if she was intoxicated. “There were no signs of intoxication, just exhaustion. She was very tired. She was almost nodding off while visiting with us,” Boudreaux told KLFY. “One of the things that was never addressed is that the car was illegally parked; because all the parking spots were on the other side,” he noted.
He says he was just a friend responding to another friend he was in need. He didn't give Reaux special treatment.
Boudreaux says he is questioning why the council is bringing all this up again when it happened in November of 2022. To be clear, a reporter with the Advocate first broke this story in March 2023. Many are asking whether or not this woman got special treatment because she was a councilwoman at the time. That's what prompted the council to begin asking questions about Chief Boudreaux and his action within his administration.
Whether or not Mayor Ken Ritter's administration and the council can look into all aspects of Boudreaux's administration will be determined by a judge according to Youngsville City Attorney Wade Trahan. He says no date has been set yet for that decision. The auditors are allowed to look into finances from 2016 through the present as they are currently doing. At a meeting of the council, Boudreaux stated council members asked him for favors.
Last year, the Advocate reported on a grievance filed by Heather Savoie while she was working as an officer with the Youngsville Department making the following claims:
Savoie alleged the following in the formal grievance:
- Boudreaux paid a woman with a criminal history and suspected unmedicated mental illness to do landscaping work at the police department and allowed her to live on department property with unsupervised access to loaded weapons, case files, personnel files, and the chief’s computer.
- Boudreaux stated on July 15 that he had been “betrayed” when someone jumped the chain of command and spoke to Youngsville Mayor Ken Ritter about the woman living at the police department. Boudreaux threatened to fire the next person who went to Ritter with an issue. Savoie said she was not the one who “betrayed” the police chief to the mayor and that a civilian was the one who took concerns to the mayor.