BATON ROUGE – A Baton Rouge Police officer was arrested Thursday on charges of falsifying records related to an investigation about marijuana.

Michelle Patterson, 28, was booked into jail on injuring public records and malfeasance in office charges. She was arrested October 26; the incident happened about a month earlier in September.

According to arrest information obtained by the WBRZ Investigative Unit, Patterson was dispatched to a report of a woman walking around the parking lot of Kelly Terrace Apartments on Rosenwald, showing “everyone” a bag of marijuana. Patterson arrived and, with her newly-issued body camera recording her every move, encountered the woman who had at least a marijuana cigarette.

After finishing the investigation, authorities said Patterson wrote an accurate and detailed report about what happened but went back later that same day and amended the paperwork to falsely depict that she did not discover marijuana on the individual or that the suspect was given a summons for court. It is believed, police said, that Patterson confiscated the marijuana but did not report it in the final paperwork she filed on the dispatch.

Arrest documents indicate officers later were able to figure out Patterson incorrectly amended her report by reviewing body camera footage.

Arrest records indicate Patterson was in jail after lunch and had a $1,000 bond.

Baton Rouge Police issued a city-wide statement on the matter after WBRZ obtained information from the jail.  

Police said Patterson has been on the force for two years and is assigned to the patrol unit.  She is on administrative leave. 

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