Complaint: Prosecutors illegally pad budgets with tickets

BATON ROUGE, La. (AP) – A legal watchdog group claims 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 complaint filed Tuesday by the Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center asks the state’s ethics board to investigate and order district attorneys to return millions of dollars they have generated through “diversion” traffic tickets.

The complaint says District Attorney Richard Ward’s office abuses its prosecutorial powers to collect hundreds of thousands of dollars annually from drivers who pay $175 to get a ticket dismissed. The law center says the state’s ethics code prohibits district attorneys from profiting off the threat of prosecution.

Ward, whose jurisdiction includes West Baton Rouge Parish, didn’t immediately respond to an email and phone call seeking comment.

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