Fred Oswald, the former No. 2-ranking person in the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office, was fired in 2017 because he was a whistleblower, his attorney said Monday as the trial began in Oswald's lawsuit against his former boss, St. Tammany Parish Sheriff Randy Smith.
Smith's decision to deal with a deputy who was stealing drugs during traffic stops internally rather than opening a criminal investigation was malfeasance, the lawsuit claims. When Oswald, then Smith's chief deputy, wouldn't go along with it, he was terminated, it claims.
But Chadwick Collings, an attorney for the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff's Office, said Oswald, far from being a whistleblower, was instead a loyalist and lapdog for Smith's predecessor, former Sheriff Jack Strain, part of a culture that tolerated misbehavior, and that Smith had decided Oswald no longer fit in with the new administration.
The suit will be decided by Ad Hoc Judge Michael Kirby, who is presiding over the trial at the St. Tammany Courthouse in Covington this week because the judges of the 22nd Judicial District recused themselves. Oswald's suit, filed in 2018, seeks seeking back pay and damages.
Oswald's suit stems from events in 2017, during Smith's first year in office, when a deputy, Kenneth Szalajeski, was accused of stealing drugs during traffic stops for his then-girlfriend and illegally using law enforcement databases to research other men she was dating.
Oswald has said a criminal investigation was warranted. He also...
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