🥊DING, DING, DING ROUND 3: COMMISSIONER JOHN-PAUL YOUNG VERSUS MAYOR TOM ARCENEAUX🥊

By: John-Paul Young

Mayor Arceneaux has generated media interest in recent days with his proposal to change the City’s property standards law to facilitate the arrest of trespassers found inside uninhabitable, blighted houses.  I applaud the Mayor’s effort to do something about the trespass problem, but his proposal fails to hit the mark.   

The mayor’s proposal would allow police to remove and arrest persons found inside clearly blighted and uninhabitable houses (as evidenced by lack of current water service), and this certainly represents an improvement over current policy (under which police allow trespassers to stay in such houses).  But the vast majority of vacant houses in my Highland neighborhood are in good shape and many with active water accounts, and this new law would do nothing to keep trespassers out of those structures.  

For example, the once-cute house at 358 Boulevard Street was in fine condition and had water service on in January 2024, but after the owner passed away, intruders began entering the property to use drugs and play with fire.  Multiple neighbors had reported these acts of trespass to SPD, but officers, following SPD policy, allowed them to remain on the premises. The house eventually burned nearly to the ground, and a year later only its charred frame remains standing, an ugly monument to the administration’s inaction.  

The new property standards law proposed by Mayor Arceneaux would have done nothing to prevent this tragedy on Boulevard Street, and at the current rate we can expect another twenty to thirty house fires just like it to occur this year in the Highland neighborhood alone. This same pattern is also playing out in nearly every city council district simultaneously. 

The real solution to the issue of intruders and house fires is to enforce Louisiana trespass law – just as police do in Bossier City, just as the Caddo Sheriff does, and just as everywhere else in the state.

Mayor Arceneaux has frequently stated, and local media have frequently repeated, that state trespass law requires homeowners to give written or verbal notice, asking an occupant to leave or asking the police to remove them, before the police can arrest them for trespass.  The actual trespass statute says no such thing.  

To the contrary, Title 14, Section 63(J) explicitly states that "notice" from a property owner -- whether in the form of a sign or otherwise -- is "not required." This subsection explicitly applies to all the other text of the statute, and contains no exceptions.   

The trespass law itself (Title 14, Section 63) is short and simple. It has ten subsections lettered A-J.  It does not require any specialized skill to read or interpret, and I’ll walk you through it:  

• Parts A, B, and C define trespass as entering or remaining on any kind of property without express, legal or implied authorization. 

• Part D says that a defendant charged with trespass may produce evidence of any authorization to defend against prosecution for trespassing—after he’s arrested and brought into court. 

• Parts E and F contain complete and exhaustive lists of exceptions to the rule: everyone from federal officials and utility workers to delivery persons and people looking for a lost pet, but this complete list of exceptions does NOT include “squatters.” 

• Part G contains scaled penalties for first and subsequent convictions. 

• Part H forbids trespassers from suing property owners for injuries they receive during their trespassing unless there is gross negligence or worse (like a booby trap) by the owner. 

• Part I exempts children under ten years old. 

• And Part J (discussed above) explicitly says that notice from the owner is NOT required by the entirety of the statute, but in Louisiana, at least two forms of notice, a sign or stripes of purple paint, MAY be used.

Just last year (in 2024), the Louisiana state legislature added two clauses about “squatters” to Part C.  Mayor Arceneaux has cited these to insist that they create some sort of barrier to arrest without the complaint of an owner.  They do no such thing; to the contrary, these sections were added in order to dispel the common myth that there is such a thing as “squatters’ rights” in Louisiana (beyond the archaic and rare practice of “acquisitive prescription” which takes thirty years of continuous, open, and peaceable occupation – which all agree does not apply here).  The law defines squatters as trespassers who have already been told to leave, but won’t; but it creates no affirmative notice requirement for property owners in defiance of Subsection J.  It just clarifies that squatting – like all other trespassing – is “prohibited” and that squatters are those who remain on property without authorization, i.e. trespassers. 

I encourage readers to Google “LA RS 14:63.”  Read this short law in its entirety for yourself, and decide whether you believe Mayor Arceneaux is telling the whole truth in good faith when he suggests that police need the permission of a homeowner before arresting an obvious trespasser in a vacant house after complaints from a scared neighbor.  

In my opinion, the real story the media should be covering is not the new property standards law that Mayor Arceneaux is proposing, but his continuing refusal to interpret existing state law to allow police to make arrests when neighbors report seeing trespassers entering vacant properties.  Police in Bossier City, as well as everywhere else in the state, are free to do so -- and indeed, they often make such arrests after exercising their discretion.  Louisiana caselaw amply confirms this interpretation, and the Caddo District Attorney‘s office stands ready to prosecute. 

The mayor and police are bending over backwards to fabricate a loophole to avoid arresting trespassers.  What are they so afraid of?  In the rare case of overzealous enforcement, a trespasser could have charges dropped or be acquitted at trial, but they’re unlikely to sue the city and incredibly unlikely to ever win a judgment.  The risk of arresting trespassers is low, while the benefit – restoring law and order, and preventing fires from destroying neighborhoods – would be high. 

By mis-stating what Louisiana law says, the mayor misleads the public into believing that the city's hands are tied, that he and the police are doing all that they legally can, and that weekly house fires are just something my neighbors and I in Highland have to accept as normal.  They are not normal, and we will no longer tolerate them. We simply cannot live like this any longer.

My neighbors and I are fed up with the city's inaction on crime and blight. We believe the mayor's position on trespassers is a defensive one: he is more concerned with not having to admit he and SPD enforcement policy have been wrong than he is with doing everything he can now to keep our neighborhoods safe.  We want him to enforce the full and complete Louisiana trespass law just like city and parish leaders do everywhere else in the state. We don’t want to wait for the City Council to debate and pass a new law.  We want SPD to enforce existing state law – starting today.