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Prof predicted alum’s ‘Top Cop’ job

Nancy Morris Cook
Col. Henry Whitehorn, superintendent of the Louisiana State Police and deputy secretary of public safety services in the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, chuckles at a prediction made by one of his instructors when he was an undergraduate at LSUS in the ‘80s.

At the time Whitehorn was a state trooper working full-time and going to night school pursuing a degree. Dr. Fred Hawley, then an LSUS professor of criminal justice, told Whitehorn he’d go all the way to the top with the state police.

“I remember him telling me one day that I was going to run the organization,” Whitehorn said in a telephone interview from his Baton Rouge office.

“But that wasn’t in my plans,” the state’s Top Cop said. “I wanted to go into federal law enforcement.”
In the beginning, Whitehorn admitted, he wasn’t interested in attending college. After he graduated from high school in St. Louis, he enlisted in the Air Force. At the time, he said, “the military seemed like the best opportunity to advance myself and see the world. It was a neat opportunity to see other cultures, adapt and learn tolerance.”

While stationed at Barksdale Air Force Base, Whitehorn met his wife, a Shreveport native. The couple was married, and after being discharged from the Air Force, Whitehorn went to work for the St. Louis Police Department.

It was a natural for him – he had two brothers on the St. Louis police force.

Fortunately for Louisiana law enforcement it was not a natural for Whitehorn’s wife. She missed Shreveport and wanted to come home. “I had a friend who was a Louisiana state trooper,” Whitehorn said, “and I got an application from him. I got the job and moved back to Shreveport.”

The rest, as they say, is history.

Whitehorn started out as a uniformed trooper with Troop G working shift patrol and in his career has worked most every “beat” in the State Police. There is little, if anything, the 1,055 commissioned officers who answer to him do that he hasn’t done in his career.

“I’ve worked crashes in the rain and spent those lonely hours on rural shift patrol,” he mused, adding that he also spent more than a dozen years in drug enforcement.

It was while he was with Troop G that he decided to go to college. “I knew without furthering my education I wouldn’t go anywhere,” he said. So, he enrolled in the criminal justice program at LSUS and began attending night classes.

He chose LSUS, he said, because “I was looking at opportunities in Shreveport, and it was the university flagship here.”

It took him six years of night school and summer school to get his bachelor’s degree, and he worked full-time throughout. He and his wife, a retired Caddo Parish school teacher, also managed to rear two children during those years, Henry, a Caddo Parish deputy; and Natasha, who followed in her mother’s footsteps as a teacher.

Though it was difficult, he never thought about taking a break. “I knew if I quit I would never go back,” he said, adding that he “had a great shift supervisor and the support of my family who all knew I had to study.”
Whitehorn’s tenacity paid off, and in 1987, he was awarded his degree in criminal justice. “It was a personal achievement for me,” he said. “I was the first in my family to get a college degree.”

LSUS Chancellor Vincent Marsala remembers Whitehorn’s student days well. “I had great admiration for him.” Marsala said. “He was outstanding. He worked full-time, yet was persistent and diligent, attending every semester – he did it in grand style.”

Whitehorn’s bachelor’s degree wasn’t the end of his formal education, however. LSUS didn’t offer a graduate degree in criminal justice, but Grambling did. Following his LSUS graduation, Whitehorn enrolled in Grambling’s program and earned a master’s degree in criminal justice.

All along, the young trooper attended school with an eye on federal law enforcement. He considered the FBI, DEA, ATF and even the U.S. Customs Service … it all seemed to fit with his experience in narcotics investigation.

What Whitehorn didn’t figure into the equation, however, were his natural leadership abilities. And it was those abilities that first placed him as commander of Troop G, then as regional commander over Troops G, F (Monroe), E (Alexandria) and D (Lake Charles) and deputy superintendent for investigations, where he directed and coordinated the criminal, narcotics, gaming and intelligence functions for the State Police.

After a quarter century of dedicated service, Whitehorn was considering coming home to Shreveport to do what he loves – fish on Cross Lake and garden.

But then, his predecessor, Col. Terry Landry, announced his retirement. Whitehorn and his wife, both deeply religious and active in their church in Shreveport, prayerfully considered his applying for the position. They decided to do it, and Whitehorn became one of six applicants for the job.

“There were several interviews, a few restless moments, days…”

When he got a call from the Governor’s Office, however, he knew.

“God had a plan,” he said.

Today, Whitehorn oversees 2,941 employees in the State Police; the Office of Motor Vehicles; the State Fire Marshal; the Highway Safety Commission; the Office of Management and Finance; Legal Affairs; the L.P. Gas Commission, and the Gaming Control Board.

He serves at the pleasure of the governor, whose office he talks with several times each week, sometimes daily.

His priorities are putting together a communications system for Homeland Security that involves all first responders, law enforcement agencies and the Louisiana National Guard that will swing into action at the first hint of national disaster or terrorist attack. In addition, a manpower collaboration model is being put together to determine if more troopers are needed and in what areas they’re needed.

Whitehorn unabashedly says, “I love my job, love it all.” If he had to pick the very best thing about it, however, he said, “I like meeting people.”

(Nancy Morris Cook, a career journalist and former member of the LSUS staff, is a special assistant to Caddo Parish District Court Judge Mike Pitman.)