Five Louisiana officials in Evangeline Parish arrested in 2026, accused of leaking active-investigation data to a defendant

What happened

On April 7, 2026, Louisiana State Police announced the arrests of five public officials in Evangeline Parish: Ville Platte Mayor Ryan Williams, Ville Platte Police Sergeant Darrien Guillory, Mamou Police Chief Charles "Pat" Hall, Evangeline Parish 911 Dispatch Supervisor Chasecca Basco, and Opelousas Police Officer Yolanda Lewis.

All five were charged with malfeasance in office. Three of them — Mamou Police Chief Charles "Pat" Hall, dispatch supervisor Chasecca Basco, and Opelousas officer Yolanda Lewis — were also booked on trespass against state computers. Mayor Williams and Sergeant Guillory were charged with malfeasance only. The charges are allegations; none of the five has been convicted. Mayor Williams, through his attorney, called the accusations "baseless" and "meritless" and said he is factually innocent.

According to the State Police press release, the officials accessed state and local law-enforcement databases and shared sensitive information with an arrested defendant connected to one of the cases. That information included details about alleged victims in active criminal investigations. WWLTV and other Louisiana outlets reported the arrests the same day.

How the exposure worked

This case runs opposite to the usual data-broker exposure. There was no outside attacker. State Police allege the leak came from inside, from people with legitimate access to law-enforcement systems.

The information at issue was not the officials' own personal data. According to investigators, it was case data, including information about alleged victims and witnesses in active investigations. State Police say their names, addresses, and involvement in those cases reached a defendant the records concerned. The officials have not been convicted, and the allegations remain to be tested in court.

What this means for your own exposure

If you are a Louisiana peace officer, broker removal is not the lever for this kind of failure. The controls that matter here are audit logs on database access, role-based permissions, and the criminal charges that follow when those controls are abused.

Louisiana law does protect your own information. Under La. R.S. 15:1212.1(E), a peace officer's home address, phone number, birth date, and similar personal details held in the state POST training database are confidential and are not released through the public-records law. That exemption covers your data. It does not cover the victims and witnesses named in an active case file.

The broader point: every database that holds first-responder personal information also holds the personal information of the people named in the case. When access controls fail, both are exposed. An internal leak like this one is not something a privacy service can undo, which is why access audits and prosecution are the response when the breach comes from inside.

Frontline Privacy works on a different problem: finding and filing removals for the personal information that data-broker and people-search sites publish about you. If your home address is exposed on those sites, you can run a free scan to see what is listed.