BATON ROUGE -- The first tryst happened on a frigid night four years ago, when Lt. John Cannon parked his State Police unit so far off the side of U.S. 61 that it became stranded in wooded West Feliciana Parish.
Cannon, a shift supervisor who was supposed to be working, was actually having sex in the backseat with a woman he met at a car wash in New Roads.
But his superiors -- and State Police dispatchers -- had no means of monitoring his whereabouts that night, or weeks later when Cannon drove the same woman to a home in Geismar for another on-duty rendezvous.
Cannon was suspended for neglect of duty, with State Police brass saying his actions threatened to "bring the department into disrepute." His misconduct might never have come to light, however, had his paramour not reported the relationship to local authorities after she was arrested for drug possession.
The case highlights a yawning gap in the oversight of State Police, an agency reeling from a series of scandals involving troopers who bilked taxpayers for hours they did not work.
Police departments around the country have tracked officers for years with GPS or computer-aided dispatch, systems that boost accountability and quicken response times to crashes and crime scenes.
But even as the Louisiana State Police have adopted other advanced technologies, maintaining a vast network of automatic license-plate readers and a state-of-the-art crime lab, the agency still lacks real-time surveillance tools that have become increasingly common in modern policing.
$147,000 IN OVERTIME
As they have for decades, troopers are expected to report their location over the radio when responding to calls for service. But supervisors have no independent means of knowing whether a trooper actually has headed home early or is otherwise shirking his duties, as was the case last year with three troopers who were suspended after WVUE-TV captured undercover footage that strongly suggested they committed payroll fraud.
One of those troopers, Daryl Thomas, was paid $240,000 in 2016 -- including $147,000 in overtime -- and repeatedly submitted time sheets claiming he was on the clock when he was filmed at his house by the television station.
The State Police communication system is so antiquated, in fact, that troop sergeants were tracking simultaneous crashes on paper last week when the wintry weather wreaked havoc on the state's highways.
"It's absurd that, in 2018, we're making a handwritten list of crashes when we can have this technology," said Maj. Doug Cain, a State Police spokesman.
BUDGET CUTS
The agency's lack of a computer-aided dispatch system has taken on new urgency following the retirement of Mike Edmonson, the longtime State Police superintendent who is accused of ordering troopers to chauffeur his wife around the state.
A legislative audit released last month said Edmonson may have broken several laws during his nine-year tenure, in part by accepting an array of handouts and using public resources for the benefit of his family and friends.
The State Police have intended to acquire a computer-aided dispatch system but have been thwarted in recent years by budget constraints, Cain said. The technology had even been funded last year to the tune of $2 million but was axed by a mid-year cut.
The agency did not request funding for it in the current fiscal year because officials erroneously believed they had acquired it the year before, Cain said.
'WE CONSIDER IT CRITICAL'
"We're going to continue to fight for it, as we consider it critical to our service," Cain said, and the agency will again seek funding for a computer-aided dispatch system next fiscal year. "But the last thing we're going to do is lay off troopers so we can have a CAD system."
Computer-aided dispatch has been a part of American policing since the mid-1970s, when the St. Louis Police Department became the first major law enforcement agency to automate the tracking of patrols. By 1983, the technology had been implemented by more than 80 departments nationwide and was described in a National Institute of Justice report as "undoubtedly a permanent part of law enforcement operations."
Its use has grown exponentially since then, as agencies large and small began arming dispatchers with real-time data about officers' locations. The Tennessee Highway Patrol rolled out a statewide CAD system in 2004.
Closer to home, cash-strapped DeSoto Parish purchased a similar system in 2006.
"It's really a shame that St. Landry Parish has computer-aided dispatch and State Police doesn't," said a retired State Police captain who once oversaw dispatch operations and spoke on the condition of anonymity. "When I was a trooper, I could tell my people whatever I wanted to over the radio, and they had no way of telling where I was."
Not only do the State Police not use computer-aided dispatch, but the agency was left out of a $10 million initiative under former Gov. Bobby Jindal that equipped thousands of state vehicles with GPS devices. The technology, used by several state agencies, is so sophisticated that it alerts supervisors when an employee is driving erratically.
The Baton Rouge Police Department has used GPS tracking to discipline several officers in recent years, including one who failed to respond to the scene of a fatal shooting and then lied about it.
It's not clear why State Police vehicles were not included in the GPS rollout, which the Jindal administration said at the time would apply to the entire state fleet. Cain said the agency may have been excluded because the computer-aided dispatch system that officials were eyeing at the time "would have accomplished the (tracking) goal."
The GPS initiative stemmed from a multimillion-dollar efficiency study that the Jindal administration commissioned in 2014. The study, by Alvarez & Marsal, a consulting firm, recommended the State Police purchase computer-aided dispatch with GPS mapping in order to enhance "emergency operations and trooper safety." The firm included the upgrade among its "most notable recommendations."
"Existing (State Police) software enables GPS enabled positioning at very low cost," the consultants reported. "For budgeting purposes, CAD acquisition and installation costs are assumed to be approximately $800,000."
'THEY DIDN'T WANT TO'
While Cain said financial constraints are to blame for the agency not upgrading its dispatch system, a half-dozen current and former troopers said in interviews that other factors have gotten in the way of the agency tracking its employees. Edmonson, they said, cultivated an "off the books" culture in which troopers were permitted to cut corners so long as it didn't compromise their overall performance.
"There's only one reason they didn't acquire this extremely basic technology, and that's because they didn't want to," said another retired trooper who worked patrol and was once assigned to the SWAT team. "It's been an option for a long time, but it would make the current way of doing things impossible."
Edmonson did not return messages seeking comment.
His successor, Col. Kevin Reeves, said greater accountability is just one benefit of acquiring computer-aided dispatch. In a recent interview, he said the technology also would improve trooper safety and make dispatching more efficient.
"I would say it's a necessity for our agency," he said.