Former Ville Platte Police detective sentenced for role in burglary

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Former Ville Platte Detective Nathaniel Savoy was sentenced to 18 months in prison in November 2016 for falsifying a police report to cover up his own involvement in a “conspiracy to burglarize” a local Ville Platte business.
His plea of guilty came just one and a half months before the Department of Justice released a report citing the Ville Platte Police Department for performing illegal “investigative holds” on individuals during the years of 2012-2014.
According to official court records from the U.S. Western District Court of Louisiana, in March of 2015 Savoy “entered into an agreement” with a civilian “to steal shingles from Doug Ashy Building Materials.”
To execute the burglary, on March 9 at around midnight, Savoy dropped off his partner in the crime at Doug Ashy in his “unmarked Ville Platte Police Department Ford F-250 truck.”
Savoy then “pointed out where the shingles were” and told him “that he needed 20 packs.”
The former detective then left Doug Ashy and “drove across town to provide backup at a traffic stop.” From there, Savoy, “the senior officer on the scene, ordered the other officers to check houses and local businesses” that were “miles from Doug Ashy Building Materials.”
While officers patrolled other areas, Savoy returned to Doug Ashy, where his accomplice proceeded to load “approximately 20 packs of shingles into the bed of the pickup truck.”
Worried that he may have been caught on surveillance video committing this crime, Savoy wrote and filed an official police report that read: “I Detective Nathaniel Savoy was patrolling the business area of Dardeau St. at approximately 1:30 a.m. when I noticed several items lying on the left side of the road behind Doug Ashy, upon noticing those items I stopped to see what they were doing so I noticed that they were about five packs of shingles. In noticing this I loaded them into my truck.”
According to court records, “those statements were false,” and they were made “with the intent to impede, obstruct, and influence the investigation” into his actions.
For the crime of falsifying a report, Savoy will serve 18 months in federal prison and then, upon his release, the former detective will be on active supervised probation for not more than three years.