A former Estherwood police officer has pleaded guilty to child sex abuse charges and sentenced to 15 years in prison.
Gregory Mire pleaded guilty to carnal knowledge of a juvenile and received the maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, District Attorney Donald Landry said. He said Mire pleaded guilty to two counts of indecent behavior with a juvenile and was sentenced to five years on those, for a total sentence of 15 years in prison.
Assistant District Attorney Luke Dupre said Mire was immediately remanded and will be serving those years in prison; he'll also be serving them without benefit of parole, probation and suspension of sentence.
Dupre said the victim, now 17, was in court when Mire pleaded guilty, and gave a witness impact statement.
"She was there when he said guilty, and she gave an impact statement. It was very powerful," Dupre said. "She was very strong throughout all of this."
Dupre said he took over the case from former ADA Elliott Cassidy, who now serves as a federal prosecutor. He said Landry had told both him and Cassidy to handle this case like any other, despite the position of the defendant.
"This is a great day, not only for the family that are the victims of this crime, but for any other child victims of crimes whose perpetrators have public authority like police officers," Dupre said. "These victims can know that justice will be done, they can report these crimes and they can proven. Any victim would be hesitant about the system, thinking that because it's a police officer, everything will be swept under the rug. But from the beginning, Mr. Landry said to treat it like any other case. Things don't get swept under the rug."
Back in 2023, Mire and his wife, an Estherwood alderwoman and police officer, both were arrested and booked. She was booked with obstruction of justice/felony evidence tampering; cyberstalking; and false imprisonment. He was booked with cyberstalking; obstruction of justice/felony evidence tampering; and felony indecent behavior with a juvenile.
In 2024, Gregory Mire was booked again, this time with violation of protective orders, felony carnal knowledge of a juvenile and felony indecent behavior with juveniles.
Gregory Mire was indicted in the case, but the grand jury declined to indict his wife, Landry said.
Back at the time of Mire's 2024 arrest, Acadia Parish Sheriff KP Gibson said the 2024 charges are related to the 2023 charges - they're all part of the same investigation. Detectives turned up more information as the investigation continued, and that evidence resulted in these additional charges, he said.
When the couple was booked in June 2023, the Estherwood Police Chief told us that the wife was put on leave at the start of the investigation, and that her husband had been an officer but had not been for some time. At that time, the chief said he received some information and started an investigation, but as evidence turned up he called Gibson to ask that his agency take it over because the village's police force is small and because he has known both of them for many years.
Here are our stories about this case:
