BATON ROUGE — The head of the local police union has sued the Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board, claiming the group violated the open meetings law when it went into executive session to discuss the disciplinary appeal of a group of former Street Crimes Unit officers fired over alleged misconduct.

Brandon O'Neal claims in the lawsuit that the board did not make a note on its agenda that it may go into executive session -- which means the public is shut out of the meeting while the board discusses something, and which can only be used for a select group of topics and types of discussions. The suit also claims the board did not properly announce the reason for its executive session.

State law requires that governmental bodies — from city councils to school boards to narrowly-focused groups like the Municipal Fire and Police Civil Service Board — conduct business in public, meaning that anyone can attend and watch what happens during the meetings. It allows a few exceptions, including for discussion involving collective bargaining strategies, lawsuits against the group or examinations of the character, health, competence and performance of employees.

Even in those situations, boards cannot vote in executive session. They must allow the public back into the meeting before motions are made to take action in response to the topics discussed privately and must vote in public.

O'Neal's suit asks the court to declare the board's executive session at the Jan. 13 meeting to have been in violation of the open meetings law.

At that meeting the board was considering requests by Troy Lawrence Sr., Douglas Chutz and Todd Thomas to throw out their firings from the police department, which resulted from the 2020 beating of a man in custody and a coverup of that conduct by discarding body camera recordings related to it.

The board did not include a notation on its agenda that an executive session might be needed in that case and O'Neal's suit says the board chairman proposed going into executive session "to discuss this matter."

O'Neal argues that those steps don't meet the standard laid out in the law.