A Las Vegas police union is calling on a judge to resign for warning a defendant not to be around police officers because he might not survive — a piece of advice she said she follows herself.
The Las Vegas Police Protection Association wants Clark County Judge Erika Ballou – who previously wore a Black Lives Matter pin in court while a public defender — to resign after her eyebrow-raising message while addressing a defendant in court Monday.
“Hey, Judge, you are a disgrace to the bench,” the police union tweeted Thursday. “You have dishonored the robe you wear. You need to resign immediately.”
Footage had circulated showing Ballou speaking directly to the black suspect, KLAS reported.
“You’re the one making the decisions not to walk away from cops,” Ballou told the defendant. “You’re a black man in America. You know you don’t want to be nowhere where cops are.”
Ballou, who is black, then inserted herself into Monday’s courtroom diatribe.
“You know you don’t want to be nowhere where cops are cause I know I don’t, and I’m a middle-aged, middle-class black woman,” the judge went on. “I don’t want to be around where the cops are because I don’t know I’m going to walk away alive or not.”
The defendant in Monday’s case is accused of committing battery against an officer while on probation for an earlier case. Prosecutors had been seeking to get his probation revoked, KLAS reported.
Erika Ballou in 2016, when she worked as a deputy public defender in Clark County. AP“Even if the cop like came after and was harassing your group, you should have walked away instead of staying,” Ballou told the suspect. “You needed to walk away because you knew you were on probation.”
Ballou found the man in violation of his probation, which she revoked and reduced his sentence from 24 to 60 months to 19 to 48 months, according to KLAS.
In 2016, Ballou made headlines while working as a deputy public defender when a Las Vegas judge asked her to remove a Black Lives Matter pin. She later removed the button, but insisted it wasn’t a political statement, the Las Vegas Review-Journal previously reported.
“This is an issue about criminal justice,” Ballou told the newspaper in 2016. “I believe a courtroom is the proper place to make issues about criminal justice. This is not political speech.”
Ballou was elected in November 2020 and her term runs through 2027, KLAS reported. A district court spokeswoman told the station she supports “proper law enforcement” in a statement released Wednesday.
“I support proper law enforcement,” Ballou said. “What the record shows is that I communicate with those who appear before me in a manner that is straight-forward and understandable.”
The police union, meanwhile, said it took exception to Ballou’s “disparaging” remarks against cops.
“We also ask the Judicial Ethics Commission to sanction her for violating the Nevada Code of Judicial Conduct,” the union said in a statement. “Judge Ballou has demonstrated that she is biased against law enforcement and cannot live up to the standards required of a jurist … Police officers and the law-abiding citizens of our community deserve better from the judiciary.”
Ballou earns a salary of more than $138,000, KLAS reported, citing a state website that tracks public employees. Her total pay and benefits, meanwhile, exceed $191,000, according to the station.
