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St. Landry Parish: In a village of less than 170, no one wants to be police chief

Posted at 10:30 PM, Jul 25, 2018
and last updated 2018-07-25 23:30:09-04

In St. Landry Parish, one political race features no candidates at all.With a size of about one square mile, the small Village of Palmetto is facing a big problem. "Nobody’s come to the plate, no. Nobody’s interested," said Alderman Guyton Budden.Police Chief David Krull moved out of the village, meaning he couldn’t run for re-election.Since no one is running for the position, the seat will become vacant when Krull’s term ends in January. The chief is also the village’s only police officer."They had as many three once, with two deputies and the police chief and now we’re down to just the police chief," said Budden.Budden says none of the nearly 170 people in the village want the job."We just talked to everyone, everybody’s been knowing about it but nobody– I had a guy who is retiring in December but he’s just not interested. It wouldn’t be a hard job," said Budden. He said word of mouth and social media is how they have been trying to inform and ask people about the job."Yeah, well word of mouth can get around to 200 people," he laughed.KATC’s Dannielle Garcia asked a few people in the village why they wouldn’t be interested in the position."Haha. No, I’m good," said one resident, Marcus Andrus."Well, probably because we’re in our retirement years," said another resident, Sharron Dunn.The lack of a police chief has some residents worried about chaos coming to their quaint village."There’s a lot of really good people here and don’t need a lot of police protection. But when we do, it’s concerning that we can’t pick up that phone and call somebody that is close by," said Dunn.Andrus says have no police protection would be "trouble," so the Board of Aldermen is now looking at other options."We’ve been offered by the Sheriff’s Office to hire them to patrol or we can go through the legislature and stuff like that to appoint somebody. We’d have to see, everything comes at a price and we’ll have to see if it’s in our budget," said Budden.The issue will be discussed at their next town meeting on August 13, 2018.