CPSO makes ID theft arrest
The Guardian-Journal
Another person has been arrested in Claiborne Parish for
identity theft.
On April 2, a resident of Monroe contacted Chief
Detective Chuck Talley, of the Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Department, regarding
a traffic ticket that was issued to someone who used her identity on March 1.
Louisiana State Trooper Brandon Salmon stopped a vehicle in Claiborne Parish on
that date for speeding. The driver, Conswellist L. James, of Monroe, informed
the trooper that she did not have her driver’s license with her and gave him a
name and date of birth.
James was issued a ticket for speeding, no driver’s
license on person and no safety child restraint in the name she gave Salmon. A
notice was issued for court appearance to the name of the person James gave to
the trooper, and when notified to be in court, the victim contacted Talley
regarding identity theft.
Due to his investigation, it was determined that James
was the person who was stopped and gave false information to the state trooper.
Upon completion of the investigation, James was arrested by the Monroe Police
Department on Thursday, April 3. She was transported to the Claiborne Parish
Jail (Women’s Facility).
She was arrested on the following charges:
• Identity theft with bond set at $2,000;
• Speeding with bond set at $500;
• Resisting an officer by giving false information with
bond set at $500;
• No child passenger restraint system with bond set at
$500;
• No driver’s license on person with bond set at $500;
and
• Operating a vehicle wile license is suspended with
bond set at $500.
Her total bond was set at $5,000.
Identity theft has been on the rise in Claiborne Parish,
with an arrest made just last month. Fontonio Carter was arrested in Shreveport Wednesday, March 26, after running through $70,000 worth of fraudulent charges
in someone else’s name.
Citizens are urged to contact law enforcement if they
feel they have been a victim of identity theft. To file a complaint or report
an identity theft crime, call the Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Office at
318-927-2011; the Homer Police Department at 318-927-4000 or the Haynesville Police Department at 318-624-1311.
For information on identity theft prevention, go to www.ftc.gov/idtheft.
Pineview ‘coalition’ to fight closing
MICHELLE BATES, Editor
Parents of Pineview students say they will fight the
school board’s decision to potentially close the school.
Several community meetings have been held recently in an
effort to put together a plan to stop the closing of the school. Roy Mardis,
vice president of the Pineview Parent Teacher Student Association (PTSA),
confirmed that a “coalition” is being formed and they are in the process of
selecting an attorney to fight the closing of Pineview.
“We have also been discussing issues that we learned
about as we spoke with the Justice Department about other issues that have been
going on throughout the parish,” Mardis said. “In meeting with her (Justice
Department Attorney Iris Goldschmidt), we were not aware of all the complaints
and the allegations against the other schools about the problems they’ve been
having.”
Although he did not go into great detail, he did say that
those complaints dealt with discipline or behavioral problems.
“As a matter of fact, none of the schools were left out,”
Mardis said. “We’re concerned about our students leaving the school, where
we’ve not had problems like they spoke of. That concerns us even more.
“You’re saying you want us to move and close our school
and you’re going to put us in on top of these kinds of problems?” he continued.
“It didn’t feel real well.”
The attorney for the Justice Department has been in
Claiborne Parish, investigating all the schools in Claiborne Parish, with
school board attorney Bob Hammonds and Superintendent Wayne King at her side,
said District 6 School Board Member Tommy Davidson.
He said the Justice Department was investigating
Summerfield regarding its nearly all white student population. To look at the
other side of the coin, though, Haynesville, Athens and Homer schools are all
majority black – but racial disparity is not the main issue, he emphasized.
“It’s an issue strictly of the kids and the education
that they’re getting,” Davidson said. “Pineview is going down in enrollment and
there’s no way you can reverse that trend. Those kids are not getting offered
what they need. Our job (as a school board) is to get [these] kids educated.
We’re there to see that those kids get a chance to get educated. The parents
all want the same thing – they want the best for their kids.”
Mardis said they are researching other avenues from the
Justice Department that might work instead of the school board’s decision to
close Pineview and redistribute its students.
“We’re going to take a close look at what options we may
have and govern ourselves accordingly,” he said.
The parents and citizens understand the reason for the
school board’s decision, Mardis added, stating that the low attendance is certainly
a strong factor, but the other concerns they have outweigh low attendance.
“The pluses outweigh the minuses when you talk about the
education that they are getting, the lack of problems that they’re having,” he
said. “We don’t have a discipline problem at our school, and we don’t have a
learning problem at our school even though we have gone through some seasons of
not having all certified teachers at our school. But our students have still
been able to excel.”
In October 2007, a public hearing was held regarding
Pineview and the options given to the school board to rectify the issue on all
fronts.
The school board voted, by a vote of 8 to 1, in a special
meeting called on March 25, to submit “Plan A” to the federal court for
approval. This plan calls for the closing of Pineview and the redistribution of
its students between Homer and Summerfield schools. Not only does the plan
rectify the issue of the low attendance, but it also brings Claiborne Parish
schools into compliance with the court order.
In that same public hearing held in October, Hammonds said the alternative to one of the five plans offered was to let a federal judge
decide on the future of Pineview. That would have meant consolidation of all
the schools, i.e., closing Summerfield and Athens as well and redistributing
its students between Homer and Haynesville.
Under the chosen plan, teachers will be able to transfer
to the schools of their choosing within the parish. Also, transportation costs
would be reduced as well as saving the school system an estimated $400,000 per
year.
Right now, the school board is getting approximately
$5,500 per student from the state. For Pineview, it is costing the school board
more than $9,000 per student.
Don’t forget!
As of Monday, April 14, Homer Memorial Hospital will become a smoke-free campus. That means no one will be allowed to smoke anywhere
on the hospital’s campus. Signs will be posted beginning Monday. For more
information or for questions, call the hospital at 318-927-2024.
HMH streamlines patient records
MICHELLE BATES, Editor
Homer Memorial Hospital (HMH) has undergone some major
physical changes in the last year, and now it is getting ready to streamline
its patient records.
Thanks to $1 million of an $11 million grant from the
State of Louisiana, HMH is getting ready to convert its paper patient records
and charts to electronic health records. The hospital is one of seven
participating in a project envisioned by Dr. John McDonald, chancellor of
Louisiana State University Health Sciences Center (LSUHSC) in order to make it
easier for doctors and staff to communicate with other hospitals.
Other hospitals participating include Mansfield, Jena, Olla, Bunkie, Delhi and Farmerville.
The beauty of the electronic health record is that when
the hospital goes “live” on May 1, it will be able to pull records from other
hospitals in order to better treat its patients.
“If my patients go there (LSUHSC) or their patients come
here, we’ll be able to pull it up and see it without it being faxed,” said Doug
Efferson, HMH administrator.
First, the hospital had to install several hundred
thousands of dollars worth of electronic equipment to be able to make the
electronic health records. Without getting into the technical end of it, the
hospital has a “central server” that will connect it with other departments
within the hospital as well as LSUHSC.
The new system will not only handle the financials
(billing and collection), but it will handle clinical, lab work, X-ray reports
and images, nursing and other things.
This system is all centered around what happened after
Hurricanes Katrina and Rita when the Charity Hospital in New Orleans flooded.
Paper patient records were forever lost, and all the evacuees who came north
basically had to start new medical records with physicians in the area.
“It is centered around Gov. Blanco’s desire to create a
system that is similar to the VA (Veteran’s Affairs) system, where no matter
where the patient is, when they need care, we can get the information from
their previous records and treat them properly,” Efferson said. “In the event
of a disaster, everybody went to Shreveport. Shreveport had no beds, but there
were people who needed care. The goal is that in the case of a disaster to
treat the patients in the Shreveport/Bossier area, but also assist local rural
doctors in maintaining a higher level of patient care in the rural setting,
reducing the amount of patients transported to that hospital.”
Another aspect of the grant is that HMH will receive
telemedicine. Telemedicine by definition is all elements of a physical exam as
if the doctor was in the room. It works like a teleconference, or a webcam. The
patient will be able to see the doctor and the doctor will be able to see the
patient, and all the patient’s records will be at the doctor’s disposal.
It might seem that people would be concerned about their
privacy of their medical records. Not to worry, Efferson said, the entire
system is HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) approved,
which means patients’ records are still as confidential in this new system as
they have been on paper. The hospital will benefit from this system on a daily
basis, but it will be extremely beneficial in the case of disasters. Case in
point is Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. More than 700 evacuees were housed at
local camps and the state park in Claiborne Parish. Because many of them needed
specialized care, they were sent to Shreveport and Bossier, and if telemedicine
had been available at that time, so many would not have had to travel to get
that higher level of care.
The third component of the grant is tele-education. The
goal through tele-education is, as physicians are trained at LSUHSC and sent
out into the region to begin practice, that they keep ties with the teaching
hospital and continue their education in disaster management – all the things
that will help them treat patients at a higher level of care in the rural
setting in the event of a disaster.
“The tele-education is all about educating before the
event,” Efferson said. “It’s all about the years before a major catastrophe
that keeps everybody’s mind on what’s happening.”
The system is expected to “go live” on May 1 within the
hospital and the entire system throughout the region on August 1.
For more information, or if anyone has any questions,
please call the hospital at 318-927-2024.
Water bill due dates change
The Guardian-Journal
The Town of Homer has overcome many obstacles in its
efforts to streamline its accounting practices, but billing for water usage
still seems to be a concern.
In the regular meeting of the Homer Town Council,
resident Scott Roberson had a complaint regarding his water bill.
He said the due dates for his water bill were
inconsistent, showing the council that between one bill and another, there were
only 12 days before he received another one. He also said that on the next
bill, there was 25 days between that one and the last one he received.
In January, the town implemented some changes that
effected billing, including for water. The current system gives customers
approximately two weeks to pay their water bill from the billing date, with the
cutoff date set one day after the due date. As of Tuesday, April 8, the due
dates have been changed.
The due date is now the 10th of every month. Bills will
still be mailed out the last day of the month so that they arrive to customers’
homes by the first of every month. Customers will then have until the 10th of
the month to pay their water bill. In the cases where the 10th falls on a
Saturday, the bill will be due the Friday before, on the 9th. For example, if a
water bill is due on May 10th, which is on a Saturday, then payment will be due
Friday, May 9. If the 10th falls on a Sunday, then payment will be due the
following Monday.
Town Clerk B.J. Lowe explained that billing is rated by
usage and not by days. In other words, customers are billed by how much water
they use between meter readings, which are taken every month. A customer’s bill
will reflect water usage, which usually fluctuates slightly every month. For
example, people tend to use more water during the summer months than in the
winter months. Meter readings on the bill will reflect that water usage.
For those who have complaints about their water bill or
questions regarding the due date change, please call town hall at 318-927-3555.
In other council news, a motion was passed to hold a
public hearing regarding a house in Homer. Owned by Verna Cheeks of Princeton,
Ala., the house is located on the corner of Martin Luther King Drive and Hill Street.
“This has been one of the highlighted homes by the Clean
City Committee,” Mayor David Newell said. “Numerous letters have been sent, and
now we’re ready to do something on it.”
Police Chief Russell Mills said he’d been in touch with
Cheeks and she is in the process of seeing what it would take to fix the home
or have it torn down.
A public hearing will be set regarding the issue.
A motion to tear down a home owned by Jerry Dunn on East 4th Street was also passed.
The council passed a motion to lease the other portion of
the old Wal-Mart Building to a pipeline company for nine months. The idea
behind the lease is to generate enough income from rental fees to renovate that
portion of the building, mainly installing restroom facilities.
When Delta Contract Interiors purchased half of the
building in 2007, they incorporated the restrooms in the building into their
portion, leaving the other half without bathrooms.
This lease is expected to generate the income needed to
renovate it for future use.
Another issue at hand was the safety of Mayfield Park. A motion was passed to begin the process of having the timber thinned in the
areas around the park to make it safer for residents to utilize the park.
Newell had said in an earlier interview with The
Guardian-Journal that he’d spoken with residents who live in the area, and they
just don’t feel safe to walk the trails. Roberson imitated that sentiment,
saying he would feel safer if the trees were thinned.
The town council also passed a motion to write a resolution
in support of House Bill 420, in which Rep. Rick Gallot is pushing to get the
oil and gas severance tax cap raised from $850,000 to $2.85 million.
Gene Coleman, who has been an advocate for raising the
severance tax cap for many years, said currently, about $14 million is
generated in oil and gas taxes for the parish. The law states that parishes are
allowed to keep up to 20 percent of those taxes generated up to $850,000,
sending the rest to the state.
“They [the state] get that money to do whatever they want
to with it,” Coleman said. “We want to be able to keep more of it here at
home.”
If the severance tax cap is raised to $2.85 million, that
means Claiborne Parish would keep approximately 20 percent of the tax income.
The next regular town council meeting is scheduled for
May 5, at 6 p.m.
Claiborne DART gets child advocate
JIMMY DEAN, Feature Writer
Mary Ellen Gamble with the Claiborne Domestic Abuse
Resistance Team (DART) recently announced the appointment of Krista Johnson as
the local office’s child advocate.
Gamble says, “Children victimized by or a witness to
domestic violence are deeply affected. Krista works with the children of women
seeking DART’s help because of domestic abuse.”
She continues, “We recently resumed our regular support
groups for women and their children on the first and third Tuesdays of each
month at the DART office. While the women are in support group meeting, Krista
works with the children.”
Krista explains her role as a child advocate: “I set up
playgroups to provide a safe setting for the kids to interact with other
children in similar situations. Kids in households that experience domestic
violence feel lonely, isolated, and afraid. Held at the same time as our local
women's group meetings, I plan activities that help these kids learn how to
deal with their circumstances. After all, they didn’t choose to live with
violence and abuse. So our playgroup provides learning through games, books,
arts and crafts, and other fun approaches. We want the playgroup meetings to be
a haven of peace and fun in their otherwise turbulent and disordered lives.”
She continues, “I teach the children about personal
safety, safe touch, how to cope with domestic abuse in their homes and related
topics. These activities are presented in a nonthreatening way as they enjoy an
hour of fun.”
Gamble says, “While the children are safely involved in
warm, supportive play, their mothers and other women of domestic violence can
focus on effectively dealing with their situations.” The meetings allow the adult
to express her emotions in dealing with the abuse and allow her to work out
more effective ways to deal with the situation.
If the need arises, Krista is also available to work with
the children one-on-one, and DART can refer women and children for counseling
with licensed counselors if requested.
Krista also speaks to groups and is eager to talk about
teenage domestic violence and related issues.
For more information or if you or someone you know is in
need of DART's services, call Mary Ellen Gamble or Krista Johnson at
318-927-2818. All calls are confidential.
— 0 —
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent.—Isaac
Asimov
Oilfield location burns, smoke seen for
miles
This was the scene when the Homer Fire Department arrived at
Henry Baker #1, an oil well site that caught fire late Monday morning, April 7.
The black smoke could be seen as far away as The Square in Homer. Belonging to
Jeems Bayou Production, the tank battery consisting of four tanks, one of which
was a fiberglass saltwater collection tank, caught fire due to what is believed
to be malfunctioning equipment. The other tanks contained byproducts of oil
production, and what was believed to be 50-weight crude oil. Claiborne Parish
Fire District #5 assisted by providing large tankers of water to extinguish the
flame. The Claiborne Parish Sheriff’s Department was also called to the scene
to secure and restrict access to the well site. No injuries were reported.
Also, on Friday, April 4, the Homer Fire Department was called to Adkins Well
#1, an oilfield location just south of Athens. The tank battery caught fire
after being struck by lightning. Firefighters were able to extinguish the fire
in less than an hour. No injuries were reported in that incident.
Chicken Charbroil tickets on sale now!
Don’t
miss the chance to get a good meal on May 9, from 11 a.m. until 1 p.m. Tickets are on sale now for the Homer Lions Club Chicken Charbroil. Tickets are $7 a
piece, and meals may be picked up at Regions Bank in Homer. The meal includes a
quarter chicken, baked beans, potato salad and bread. To get your tickets,
contact any Lions Club member.
Notice of Public Forum
Homer to host town hall meeting
All
citizens are invited to attend this public meeting to discuss the status of the
town at 6 p.m. Tuesday, April 15, at Ebenezer Baptist Church, located at 298-A Washington Street. Invite your neighbor to join you. All questions concerns and advice
are welcome.
This Film by Michael Haynes Productions was created in conjunction with 
