Three vie for Eunice Police Chief election

By Todd C. Elliott
todd.elliott@eunicetoday.com

Eunice voters will decide who will lead the Eunice Police Department in November. Currently, three candidates have said they will be on the ballot: Eunice Police Chief Ronald Dies, who will seek a second term; Raymond “Bubba” Cole, a retired Eunice police officer and current city employee; and Randy Fontenot, chief probation officer and city court administrator, both of who ran against Dies four years ago.
For the benefit of the voting public, the Eunice Citizen Advisory Board – which is a bi-racial committee of Eunice citizens appointed by the Eunice City Council to discuss community issues and possibly return to the council with suggestions – held a question-and-answer session last week with the three.
The road ahead for either candidate will be a rough one as the Eunice Police Department has been marred by declining staff, non-competitive pay and the recent revelation of outdated and overworked police vehicles. The job will be a challenging one that all three candidates welcome.
The panel wants to familiarize themselves with the candidates and their views on a range of issues.
“What we are doing is, as a committee, is inviting all candidates for all public offices to come and sit before this board,” said Mary Ellen Donatto of the Citizen Advisory Board last week.
“What the committee is looking to do is now possibly doing a second round when other candidates are available. We wanted to get started now, even though there’s still time for more people to apply. We have three other public offices next month that we are going to meet with ... until we have met with every political office candidates.”
According to Donatto, the candidates for the Chief of Police position just happened to be the first in their series of proposed question-and-answer sessions.
She said that the committee devised five questions and a protocol for the candidates. She said that the interview process will be the same for all candidates for all offices.
The first candidate to make a general, closing comment before the Citizen’s Advisory Board was Fontenot.
“We live in a community,” said Fontenot. “And one of the questions was about communication. And it’s funny how the community and communication seem to come together a lot.
“I think it’s a good idea to have officers from within the community as much as possible. Because they live here, they know the people here and they’ve been knowing them.
“And I think that when you know people and you have to deal with them on a daily basis, your interactions will be better and more personal than if you come here not knowing anybody. I’m not saying that out-of-town police officers are necessarily bad.
“I came from out of town but the longer I was in Eunice and when I became a part of the community, my interactions with the community changed for the better. So I think it’s good to have police officers being a part of that community, living in the community and with the people.”
The second candidate to speak before the Citizen’s Advisory Board was Cole.
“I’ve been a policeman for 28 years-plus and I care about this place,” said Cole. “I care about Eunice, and all I want to do is make a difference and make it a better place. To have somebody that people know, that you can talk to and that can talk to you and we can all just work this together.
“And learning what I learned through the years and not be able to give it back, because I am retired and I could just say ‘skip it all’ . I can go on about my business, I can do all kinds of other things, but I’m not going to do that because I care.
“I care enough to go for the election of chief of police, because this is something that I know, this is something that I’ve been doing. That’s where my heart is. To have somebody as a police chief that everybody knows.”
Chief Dies made the final closing statement.
“This is going to be a job that is going to continue as long as we have law enforcement,” said Dies. “This is a job that doesn’t come with a book that tells you how to be a chief. There’s no perfect moment, there’s no perfect job.
“Situations come up everyday that you have to deal with. This is something that you can’t learn and I had no experience with it, but I am learning quick.”