NEW IBERIA — There are only a few days left to vote early for the October 12 election and one of the races on the ballot is for Iberia Parish Sheriff.
All six candidates are confident they can do the job.
Roberta Boudreaux says her connection with the community makes her a strong candidate.
"The sheriff's office needs a leader that has compassion and integrity and honesty and has the capabilities of communicating with the community, without the community to help solve crimes, were dysfunctional." Boudreaux said.
Joe LeBlanc agrees, saying his work with the people living in the parish has put him in the right place for the job.
"I love helping other people, the youth and the elderly especially. The youth is too young, and the elderly can be misguided," LeBlanc said.
Clinton 'Bubba' Sweeney says he already knows how to lead from his experience as a manager.
"I come from 25 years of management, and I have been over hundreds of employees and hundreds of millions of dollars. I bring that aspect of it, I'm going to figure out what we need and what we need to get." Sweeney said.
Tommy Romero, Murphy Meyers, and Fernest "Pac-man" Martin say their experience in law enforcement is the reason they should be sheriff.
"After the 15 years of narcotic undercover work working with many different agencies and making many investigative narcotics, I went to protective services detail to cover Governor Jindal and Governor Blanco." Romero said.
"Every other day I went to work for 40 years I was wearing a uniform in a marked unit, I was a patrol man. I'm proud of that, I think I did a good job, and I think it gave me the experience I need to lead the sheriff's office." Meyers said.
"The fact that I'm in day to day and everyday operations, I'm a boots on the ground guy marshal, I think I'm in touch with the needs of the community of Iberia Parish and I think that's what makes me the best candidate." Martin said.
The candidates share similar ideas on what they'll do once in office. All agree drugs and crime are major issues throughout the parish.
"We plan to attack drug dealers vigorously, and same thing with crime, we're going to increase patrol." Boudreaux said.
"When we go in we're going to figure out, really get into the gang and the crimes, get a drug and gang task force." Sweeney said.
"Drug and crime rate, that's going to go down, because if you're community policing people will start calling." LeBlanc said.
To tackle all the problems plaguing the parish, it may mean calling in for back up. These candidates say the parish needs more patrolling.
"I'd like to increase manpower when it comes to narcotics and investigations, we might have to do some shifting around if there's not enough people around in that area." Romero said.
"I'll beef up patrol, we operate today with the same three patrol sections with the same number of deputies on a patrol shift that i operated with when i was a patrol officer in 1986." Meyers said.
"I'd like to see where we can try to help increase patrol and put some more outside in the rural areas and in the city, we don't want to abandon the city, we want to make sure we can assist the people in Iberia parish in and outside the city limits." Martin said.
