Sheriff Gautreaux Reminisces on Early Days In Law Enforcement as Deputy, Police Chief

While Sheriff Sid Gautreaux was at the East Baton Rouge Parish Clerk of Court’s office to qualify for reelection, the Sheriff granted the Central City News an informal interview while doing his qualifying paperwork. His wife Suzi and Clerk of Court Doug Welborn participated in the interview. CCN: Sheriff, you might be able to solve a mystery. We were trying to decide who was the longest-serving public official in the parish and we thought maybe it was Doug. But Doug said he thought it was you.

DOUG: I think it was him, because when I was a kid, he was an old man then! [Laughter] 

SUZI: When did you start?

DOUG: I was elected to the Metro Council in 1980 and took office in 1981.

SID: I started with the Sheriff’s office and resigned in 1979 to run for Chief of Police in Baker. I guess I’m one year ahead of you.

SUZI: He took office in 1980. He was 29.

SID: I was longest serving chief of police in Baker. And I think Pete [Heine] is the only one who served in office longer in Baker. He has the most years but not continuous. 

DOUG: Pete will be 91!  I want Sid to tell the story on my little brother Wade. I love it, and Wade loves it too. 

SID: I was a sergeant in uniform Patrol in Central. I went to work in the prison a year and then I went straight to Central.  I was a sergeant and had my shift. I got a call from the captain and he said, Do you know Captain Welborn from Baton Rouge City Police and I said, yes, I know him.  He said Well, his baby boy is going to work on your shift tomorrow night, and Captain Welborn would like you to come by to meet him. So I went by that night and Wade wasn’t there but I talked to Wade’s mom and dad. Captain Welborn said, “We’re glad he’s on your shift. We’ve heard good things about you. Just try to teach him.” I said, “For sure. I’ll do what I can.”

The next night I picked him up and he got in the car, and he was a lot bigger than me! This boy needs to take care of me — not me of him! [Laughter] But the story is your mom and dad bought him a 357 Smith & Wesson, because you could carry what you wanted if you could pay for it. 

He was so proud of the gun and the next day I said are you qualified for it, and he said no, not yet. Do you have bullets? No. Ok, we can go to Granberry’s and buy some bullets for you. So we went by old Granberry’s sporting goods. I said. “Go ahead and get your bullets. I’ll wait for you out in the car.”

In a little while, he came back out and said, “They won’t sell me any bullets!” I asked why. He said, “Because I’m too young!” I said,  “Give me your money!” So I went in and bought him his bullets! That was crazy. He was old enough to be a Deputy, but not old enough to buy bullets!

DOUG: Sid is my favorite person and has been a long time!

SUZI: Mine too! We were in the third grade together.

SID: I fell in love with her in the third grade. She had that little freckle face, but I wasn’t going to tell her that. Girls weren’t on my mind. She reminded me of that movie Pollyanna. I was in love with her but I never said anything. So when we got to the 7th grade, I gave her a jewelry box for Christmas, but I wouldn’t put my name on it. My mom said I should put my name on it but I didn’t want her to know it was from me. But when we got married she said she knew all along it was from me!  It ended up in the attic and her mom threw it away. 

I was afraid to ask her out because I was afraid she would tell me no.

SUZI: We’ve been married 44 years.

CCN: What school was that?

SID: It was Baker Elementary School. I was born in Baton Rouge and we lived off Park Boulevard, but on the poor side of Park Boulevard. We moved out to Baker halfway through the 3rd grade. In the 4th 5th and 6th, I went to St. Gerard and then back to Baker.

SUZI: My dad went to Istrouma.

SID: He is in the Istrouma Hall of Fame — Fred Eckert!

DOUG: I went to Istrouma in the 7th grade.

SUZI: My dad played football and boxed. 

SID: I finished Baker High in 1968. On the football team, I played cornerback but I was just another guy on the team. I was probably better at baseball but I liked football more. My coach was Coach Jack Baker. He was my coach and Jerry Boudreaux was there, Coach Callaway and Coach Thomas. We weren’t very good that year. We made AAA that year by four students and we weren’t ready for that. That’s the year Broadmoor won state championship, and Jerry Epperson was head coach. They killed us that year.

SUZI: But on the other hand, that’s the year I was head cheerleader and we won state! [Laughter]

SID: Oh, I used to look over there and she was going Yay! yay! but the football team was getting killed. We had a good cheerleading squad. We just didn’t have a very good football team. We just weren’t ready for that.

When we played, Central was a big rival. Glen Oaks was a big rival. We played Istrouma. Played Baton Rouge High. Zachary wasn’t a big rival. We beat Zachary several years.

DOUG: Baker was our big rival at Central.

SID: It shows how much athletes have advanced. We probably didn’t have four maybe five guys who weighed over 200. The biggest one was about 240. The average size back in those days was 150 to 165. Today you couldn’t walk on the football field with that size.

I remember Coach Coon Porta came to Baker my last year. Coach Mel Didier called me in. I was scared to death. He was talking to each of the football players before the season began. He’s sitting there and said, “Sid Gautreaux, Sid Gautreaux. Who is your daddy?” I said Sidney Gautreaux. He said, “Yeah. Yeah. He went to Catholic High, didn’t he?” I said, “Yes sir!” He said, “Yeah, he and I played against each other!” He said, “I was the center, and he was the nose guard.” Then he pulls out his two front teeth, and said, “You see that? Your daddy did that!” I thought, “Oh no, let me get out of this room!” [Laughter]

CCN: Sheriff, what are your goals for the next four years?

SID: Woody, we looked back over the last 12 years and looked at all of our goals. We met or exceeded all of our goals except for one. Over the next four years, our goal is going to be to build a new Parish prison.

The Sheriff’s Office does not own that prison as some people think. The prison belongs to the City-Parish, and the ground it sits on belongs to the airport. But, under the law, the Sheriff is in charge of the security of the prison.

The City-Parish is charged with housing, clothing, feeding, and for the medical attention of the inmates there. The old part of the prison is where I worked in 1976. The prison was built in the mid-60s and is in deplorable condition. The infrastructure is falling apart. The only thing that can be done is to tear that down.

The newer part of the prison which was built in the mid-1980’s was not set up as a prison. It’s not a safe environment for the prisoners and we have to insure that, and it’s not a safe environment for the people that work there. We have to be looking at prisoners to make sure everything is okay. We have to make it as safe as we possibly can with what we have to work with. But it has to be torn down.When I took office, we had two self-help programs and now we have 22. The philosophy of the warden and me is if we have somebody for one day, one week, one month, or one year, we’re going to expose that individual to as much rehabilitation as we possibly can.

If we don’t, it won’t work and we’ll have a revolving-door of recidivism. Our goal is to keep people out of jail. Not have them come back. You’re always going to have some people in the population as you well know who are not going to do right and they are going to have to go to jail. 

But we’re going to try to rehabilitate everybody who is in there. We can’t make them but we’re going to expose them to it, but I could go on and on about all the reasons.  

I personally think that when the first proposal came out to build a new prison, they should not have tied everything together. I tried at that time to get them to separate the public safety things from all the other things and let the people vote on them individually. I think if that was done, we wouldn’t be having this conversation now but would be in a new prison. But that’s hindsight, and we are where we are.

We need the program space.

We started a faith-based wing. Then a GED wing. When we look at a people who are incarcerated, there are several things that will stick out. About 98-99 percent of people in prison have an addiction to drugs or alcohol. So addiction is a problem that leads to crime. The average educational level is 7th grade. So the lack of education is another deal. 

Now we’re having to deal with people with mental illness. We’ve had mentally ill people in jail since its inception, but it’s more so now. Since the state shut down all the mental institutions, these people are out on the streets. There’s nowhere for them to go. If they have family, the family washed their hands of them. So they commit some petty crime and they go into this system, which they really don’t need to be there. 

The Bridge Center is going to help but it’s not going to eliminate all the problems. We’ve already got so many people in there that need that help. We need a whole wing just for mental health. 

We need a wing for chemical dependency.Some of the people who have opposed the building of a new prison say we are just trying to see how many people we can arrest. Trust me, that is not the case. We don’t make money off people. 

When we build a new prison, I want it big enough to house our current needs. We have to get on board everybody in the criminal justice system — law enforcement, prosecutors, public defenders, and judges. You have to have the private sector on board. You have to have the mental health community on board.

We want everyone in the community to be onboard so we can reduce the number of people in our prisons.

You know, we pay millions of dollars every year housing prisoners out of parish and it costs all of us big money. If we build a prison that is big enough for us to house the people we have now, then we don’t have to send anybody out of parish.

If an attorney calls us and tells us I need to see my guy tomorrow or the next day, we go to get that person for him to see. But sometimes he needs to see him right then. 

Our goal is not to see how many people we can have in jail. We want people on the streets living a good life and being productive and not turning to a life of crime, but all of those things need to be addressed.

So that’s going to be my focus — my main focus. Continue to work on upgrades with technology, equipment, facilities, and personnel, but my main focus is going to be that parish prison, which is costing taxpayers too much money.

CCN: Thank you, Sheriff Gautreaux!