Photo Illustration by Erin O’Flynn/The Daily Beast/Getty Images and City of Bogalusa/Facebook
In 2016, Fate Ferrell stood at the microphone in front of the Bogalusa, Louisiana, city council on the eve of the appointment of a new police chief.
The room was boiling over as residents urged council members not to confirm a longtime officer named Kendall Bullen to the top job. One of the primary grievances: that Bullen had allegedly committed an act of police brutality about 15 years earlier by striking a Black man, Johnny Lee Johnson, in the head with a flashlight. At the time, Bullen denied the allegation, and local media reports suggested it was not substantiated.
Others took to the mic to protest the appointment as the product of a “good ol’ boy system” within the police department.