By Dean Boudreaux
The Advocate, Baton Rouge, La.
LAFAYETTE PARISH, La. — The Lafayette Parish Sheriff’s Office has received a $9,100 state grant to buy two cameras aimed at catching people who illegally dump trash and litter in the parish.
The office has not decided where the cameras will be placed but expects them to be operating by the beginning of next year.
Keep Louisiana Beautiful awarded the money through its Litter Enforcement Surveillance Camera Grant Program, Sheriff Mark Garber announced Tuesday. The program is funded by the Office of the Lieutenant Governor and the state.
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“This grant award represents an active partnership with KLB that will help us purchase cameras and other equipment to bring our litter enforcement programs to the next level,” Garber said in a news release.
LPSO spokesperson Chris Cormier said the office has identified multiple areas where littering is a problem but has not settled on locations for the cameras.
“We have multiple areas where we have problems with littering,” Cormier said. “We are considering all options at this point, so nothing is concrete.”
Cormier pointed to past litter cases as examples of the kind of dumping the office deals with, including an arrest involving 109 large tires dumped along Lajaunie Road.
The grant is LPSO’s first surveillance grant from Keep Louisiana Beautiful, Cormier said. The goal is to catch people responsible for large-scale dumping rather than issue citations for minor incidents caught in real time.
The cameras will not be monitored around the clock, Cormier said.
“It allows us to go back and find out who this person was and hold them accountable,” he said.
Susan Russell , KLB’s executive director, said the grant program is intended to help agencies establish litter camera programs or expand existing ones, as well as provide training on equipment selection and operation.
“Enforcement of the litter laws is a key part to getting a better handle on Louisiana’s litter problem,” Russell said in the release.
KLB has awarded 18 grants across the state since 2025, totaling $146,098 for surveillance cameras to deter littering, said Stacy Gilmore, a KLB spokesperson.
“Illegal dumping is a huge problem in Louisiana,” Gilmore said. “The use of litter enforcement cameras serves as a tool for our enforcement team as well as other enforcement officials to gather evidence for citations and prosecutions.”
Grantees are required to submit monthly activity logs documenting camera placement and monitoring, including the number of pending and issued citations, Gilmore said.
The program began in 2025; KLB does not yet have data showing whether the cameras have reduced littering or illegal dumping.
“KLB expects tracking for the next year to be more robust,” Gilmore said. “The first 2026/27 mid-year reports are not due until December 1 , so those statistics are not yet available.”
When asked, KLB did not provide a specific evidence-based citation proving the effectiveness of cameras as a litter-deterrence tool.
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