Evangeline Parish sheriff halts escort service for funerals

By Elizabeth West Ville Platte Gazette

Funeral homes in Evangeline Parish, as well as funeral homes in neighboring parishes received a certified mailed letter on from the Evangeline Parish Sheriff’s Office informing them that the sheriff’s office “will no longer be in the funeral home escort business.”
According to Sheriff Eddie Soileau’s Feb. 18 letter, it is the lack of funds and the high amount of calls his department has to handle that has led to this. In the letter, Soileau wrote, “With the Federal, State, and Local Government budget cuts and also cuts to the local employment; as well as the rise of the volume of calls handled by this department with the manpower available, it will not be possible to continue providing this service.”
LaVille Funeral Home owners Darren and Rebecca Bordelon said when they received the notice their biggest concern became “safety.”
Darren LaVille said, “If it is a matter of expenses, then we hope that funeral home owners and the sheriff can work together to figure out a way to get the escort service back. The deputies provide safety for everyone when they escort a funeral procession.”
In Soileau’s letter, he stated that these services will no longer be offered as of April 1.
However, according to Pam Quirk, funeral home owner of Quirk and Son in Eunice and Basile, her funeral home has recently not received these services. Quirk said, “A little over a week ago, we had a funeral in Eunice and then drove to Basile for the burial. We were escorted by St. Landry Sheriff deputies, but when we crossed into Evangeline Parish, there were no deputies there waiting to escort the funeral procession to the burial site.”
While at this time there has been no solution to this problem, funeral home owners have already begun to try and come up with ways to fix the issue at hand.
Quirk said, “In St. Landry Parish, we have auxiliary police that the sheriff’s office will send for the funeral processions. Sheriff Soileau could maybe look into starting something like this.”
According to Quirk, the auxiliary police are typically volunteers or former law enforcement officers that have retired.
When it comes to how Darren LaVille feels this could be worked out, the Ville Platte funeral home owner said, “We have never had to pay for these services before, but if that is what it comes to then funeral home owners and the sheriff need to discuss what the fee would be. We all need to work together, because that is the only way we are going to find a solution.”

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