Chief seeks public's help in shootings

Police Chief Patrick LaSalle is asking for the public’s assistance to help police solve a series of cases involving discharges of firearms that allegedly have ramped up this summer, but he says no one’s talking.

Police have identified one suspect that they’re looking for and more people are likely involved in the incidents, the chief said.

But exactly how many shootings have occurred remains unclear.

At Tuesday’s council meeting, LaSalle said, “We have had over two dozen shootings within the last month, over two dozen, three injured parties.”

No one has come forward “to communicate with the police department” about the alleged shootings, LaSalle said during the meeting.

LaSalle appealed “to the black community” during the council meeting for people to come forward with any information on the shootings. On Wednesday, LaSalle asked anyone with information to call the police department at 985-395-6161 or his cellphone at 985-397-2249.

Then, on Thursday, LaSalle told The Daily Review that he checked and found there had been 30 reports of discharges of a firearm in Patterson during roughly the past month. But some of those incidents were listed as something other than gun discharges in the initial reports, he said.

The police chief clarified his statement regarding “three injured parties” in the shootings saying that one victim was confirmed to have been shot about a month ago and two others were shot in connection with an October 2016 shooting.

LaSalle believes all of the shootings or discharges of firearms are drug-related.

Mayor Rodney Grogan said at the council meeting that the shootings have occurred at trailer parks and that LaSalle owns one of the trailer parks where an alleged shooter lives.

On Thursday, Patterson police sent out a news release saying that Tyrique Jones, 19, is wanted on a warrant charging him with aggravated second-degree battery with medical attention and is a possible suspect in a shooting. He is also wanted by probation and parole and on warrants charging him with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.

Jones is wanted in connection with a late-June shooting where police discovered that a man had been shot in the arm near Murphy Street, then ran to Martin Luther King Jr. Avenue and was located in that area, LaSalle said.

The chief says he expects to issue arrest warrants for more suspects in the shootings and discharges of a firearm.

Police have found evidence of gun discharges on Murphy, Plum, Live Oak, Cleveland, Como, Taft, Park, Cherry and Williams streets in addition to Mill Road, LaSalle said. Multiple shootings have occurred on each of these streets, he said.

“Working with a staff that’s less than half of what it used to be, it’s extremely strenuous and dangerous for us,” LaSalle said. “People are shooting openly in the streets every other night. We’re working some operations. We’re bringing in outside personnel.”

LaSalle and other police officers have been doing extra surveillance in the areas where the shootings have occurred, he said.

“We’re doing everything we can, and I think we’re going to make some progress,” the chief said.

Grogan, who has often been at odds with LaSalle, wouldn’t talk for the record about the reports of shootings but did offer to take a Daily Review reporter to the neighborhood where many were said to have occurred. It was near a mobile home park owned by LaSalle on the corner of Plum and Murphy streets.

The mobile home park is also a block away from Martin Luther King Avenue, one of the areas named by LaSalle as a trouble spot during Tuesday’s council meeting.

Residents of the area also wouldn’t speak on the record about the reports of shootings, but they were generally doubtful that so many shootings have occurred in their neighborhood.