Senior Police Officer Brandon Coleman faces 350 Brandon Coleman overtime charges after Louisiana State Police arrested him on August 7 in an alleged overtime fraud case. He was booked, later posted a $17,000 bond, and was released while the case moves to court again on September 9.
Coleman is charged with 325 counts of filing false public records, 23 counts of public payroll fraud, one count of theft and one count of malfeasance in office. Louisiana State Police said he received more than $111,000 in fraudulent overtime payments between December 2024 and December 2025, while the Louisiana Attorney General's Office said at his first court appearance that he collected more than $172,000 he should not have received.
Brandon Coleman overtime charges
Judge Juana Lombard found probable cause on all of the charges at Coleman’s first appearance in Orleans Parish Criminal District Court. The New Orleans Police Department placed him on unpaid administrative leave, and Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick said the department cooperated with the independent investigation and would continue doing so.
Bobby Hjortsberg called the charges “absolutely baseless.” He also argued that footage does not by itself prove Coleman was not already performing police work, pointing to Mardi Gras assignments and citywide duties that did not require him to remain at a station throughout a shift.
Video and records
The case rests on a comparison between where Coleman said he was working and what investigators said video showed. FOX 8 said undercover cameras recorded Coleman at home on multiple occasions while department records showed he was on the clock.
On July 22, 2025, Coleman’s initial timesheet showed a shift beginning at 6:25 a.m., and video showed him entering his police vehicle at 10:08 a.m. On July 29, 2025, records again showed him clocking in at 6:25 a.m., while video captured him leaving home at 7:41 a.m. Coleman discovered one of the undercover cameras on July 28, 2025.
Louisiana State Police and the New Orleans Office of Inspector General
Louisiana State Police and the New Orleans Office of Inspector General began a joint investigation in April 2026 after payroll records drew attention to Coleman’s overtime. FOX 8 said the review started after those records showed he was among the New Orleans Police Department’s highest-paid officers.
Coleman earned approximately $229,000 from NOPD in 2025, more than three times his $68,000 base salary. The arithmetic is straightforward: the alleged overtime payments alone exceeded his base pay by more than $40,000, and the state later said the disputed total was higher still.
What investigators say happened is now set against what the defense says can still be true. The charges test whether the records and video prove false reporting, or whether the defense can show Coleman was working in the field when the camera caught him away from a station. He is due back in court on September 9.
