CORPORATE CRIME REPORTER
Louisiana Attorney General in Firestorm Over Incident at ExxonMobil Facility
19 Corporate Crime Reporter 17(3), April 21, 2005
A group of New England students want the Attorney General of Louisiana to re-hire
Willie Fontenot.
Fontenot had worked for the Louisiana Attorney General’s office for 27
years.
His job: outreach to citizens on environmental issues.
Last month, Fontenot was giving a group of students from Antioch New England’s
graduate school a tour of cancer alley – a group of chemical facilities
that stretch from New Orleans to Baton Rouge.
The students were part of Professor Steven Chase’s environmental advocacy
program.
Fontenot was showing the students the ExxonMobil facility in East Baton Rouge
Parish.
The students were on a public sidewalk outside the facility.
They were taking pictures of the facility.
As they were getting back into their van to leave, they were approached by a
group of officers who were working for ExxonMobil, but were dressed in sheriff
uniforms and were driving East Baton Rouge Sheriff vehicles.
The students were told that it was illegal to take photos of an industrial facility.
But apparently it is not against the law to take photos of an industrial facility.
According to Fontenot, a sheriff’s captain approached him and asked him
to collect the students' identifications.
Fontenot thought that this was the job of the police officers, and told them
so.
The captain complained about Fontenot to the Attorney General’s office.
The next day, Fontenot was told by the Attorney General’s office that
he should take a leave of absence.
Since Fontenot was in the middle of radiation treatment for prostate cancer,
he went on sick leave.
And he’s been on leave ever since.
The students in Professor Chase’s program smell a rat.
“It is a shame that Louisiana’s top law enforcement official chose
to punish the person upholding the law, rather than those who were misusing
it,” one student said.
Chase and his students have started a campaign to get Fontenot his job back.
In a letter to the Attorney General, Chase asks: why would you dismiss a dedicated
public
servant who has the respect of community activists and corporate executives
alike?
“Either you are an unjust man with little respect for civil rights, academic
freedom, and citizen participation, or you are a very busy man who received
bad advice and believed unsubstantiated rumors about Mr. Fontenot that you didn’t
feel you had time to investigate,” Chase wrote. “I’m hoping
the situation is the latter and that you are a busy, but just man – one
who will be big enough to investigate this situation and see that Mr. Fontenot
did nothing wrong by assisting us in setting up contacts for our study trip.”
(For the complete nine-page interview with Steve Chase, see 19 Corporate
Crime Reporter 18(10), print edition only)
The Attorney General did not return calls seeking comment for this story.
But last week, Fontenot said that he got word that Attorney General Charles
Foti wants to meet with him.
And so, he will meet with the Attorney General on April 27.
The students think that maybe ExxonMobil is behind Fontenot being forced out
of his job.
But Fontenot thinks it might just be a off duty police officer working for ExxonMobil
who got irritated with the situation.
“I’m not sure what ticked him off,” Fontenot told Corporate
Crime Reporter. “He’s involved in some homeland security training,
couldn’t find a terrorist, was frustrated and he was practicing on me.
He thought I should have been more responsive, like getting the drivers licenses
from the students. I didn’t think that is what I should have been doing.”
“The students got out of the van and took their pictures,” Fontenot
said. “We walked back into the van, we were getting ready to leave, one
of the students said there were a couple of police cars behind us with their
lights flashing.”
“I got out and showed them my ID. They walked up to the van and asked
the students for their drivers licenses. One student innocently asked –
and what are you going to do with the licenses? The two police officers took
a half step back and walked back to their cars.”
“When the captain arrived on the scene, he asked the two younger police
officers if anyone had gone onto Exxon property. One of the police officers
responded – yes three of them walked on the parking lot. This is an area
that used to have homes on it. It is fenced and has signs that say – no
trespassing. I had told the students to stay on the sidewalk or the street and
not to go onto Exxon’s property.”
“And they did not go onto Exxon’s property,” Fontenot said.
“The captain called and complained to my office. The next day when I went
into the office, there was a fella I had never met before. And he interviewed
me on tape about what happened. A few minutes later, he said that Attorney General
Foti wanted me to go on annual leave until this blew over. So, I said to myself
– if the Attorney General wants me to go on leave, I’m on leave.”
“I serve at the pleasure of the Attorney General,” Fontenot said.
“He can discharge me without cause.”
Fontenot believes that he somehow rubbed the captain working for ExxonMobil
the wrong way.
“He might have been sipping a cup of coffee and had to leave his coffee,”
Fontenot said. “Or the call took him away from watching his favorite video.
I don’t know that it has anything to do with Exxon or Homeland Security.
The head of security for Exxon came up to the van and apologized to the students
in the hope that this incident would not reflect negatively on Exxon. He apologized
for the captain’s harsh demeanor.”
“I don’t think this was a plan by Exxon to get Willie Fontenot,”
he said. “But it turned into that. That was the result.”
Fontenot said that he is constantly being told by security that people can’t
take photographs at industrial sites, that it is against the law to do so.
But it is not against the law, according to Fontenot.
“I’ve been told that outside of the Shell refinery at Norco,”
he said. “A sheriff deputy drives up with lights flashing and tells me
it is against the law to take pictures of an industrial facility. I’m
not going to argue with a police officer. But that’s not the law.”
The Attorney General is feeling the heat from the Fontenot incident.
A number of articles have been written about it in Louisiana.
And Foti is getting calls from around the country.
Fontenot said that he received a call from former Attorney General William Guste,
Jr., who hired Fontenot to help citizens deal with environmental problems.
Guste is now in private practice in New Orleans.
Guste called Foti to complain about the Fontenot situation.
“The response the Attorney General is getting is not something I had generated,”
Fontenot said. “If I had organized a response, there would have been a
lot more.”
“Even though the Attorney General has the authority to hire and fire at
will, there should be a process for how questions like this are resolved,”
Fontenot said. “The best I can tell, I lost my job because a captain didn’t
like the way I responded or did not respond. But just because the Attorney General
has the authority to hire and fire at will doesn’t make it right.”
Corporate Crime Reporter
1209 National Press Bldg.
Washington, D.C. 20045
202.737.1680