Inside Northside May-June 2025

POLICING WITH HUMOR

Sheriff’s Office Goes Viral for a Good Cause

Written by Mimi Greenwood Knight

If you’re not following the St. Tammany Parish Sheriff’s Office Facebook page, what are you even doing with your life?”

I thought my niece was crazy when she asked me that question a year ago. Now, I start each morning with a cup of coffee in one hand and my cell phone in the other, eager to see what this hilarious page is offering up. I’ve even got family members in the Midwest following them. If you’re not yet, you’re missing some much-needed levity in your day. I’m talking about posts like:

“Good morning to everyone… except to those who treat a roundabout like a four-way stop. Yield does not mean panic and slam on the brakes, Karen. #RoundaboutRejects”

Why can’t admonishment be funny? On this page, it absolutely can. Recently, we sat down for a chat—and a laugh or two—with the personalities behind the page and—surprise—they’re girls!

“Everyone assumes we’re guys,” said Lieutenant Suzanne Carboni, who, together with Lieutenant Carli Messina, creates all this tongue-in-cheek content. “I guess it’s because most officers they know are men, but we get lots of messages like, ‘This page is great. Thank you, sir.’”

“We’re just a couple of tired moms,” Messina said. “And we’re talking to other tired moms around St. Tammany. I’m responsible for the funny stuff, and Suzanne is here to put me back in the box when I need it.” So, Carboni is basically Tina Fey to Messina’s Amy Poehler. But mostly, they’re public information officers with a passion for their jobs.

“We’re not so much good cop/bad cop as funny cop/less-funny cop,” Carboni said. But meeting them in person, I found them equally funny. And their 157,000 followers seem to agree. TikTokers have taken to reading their posts aloud. Old posts recirculate years after they were originally written. Carboni even had a surreal experience recently when her parish priest read one of her posts during his homily—unaware that the content creator was sitting in the pews.

“We always say we’re one Facebook post away from getting fired and one Facebook post away from getting a promotion,” Messina said. Since they took over the page, they’ve each gotten two promotions, so the latter seems to be the case. And the careful scrutiny they began with has basically transitioned into carte blanche to say what they want, the way they want to say it.

A fan favorite is Who Dat Wednesday, where they feature footage of an actual crime and criminal caught on security cameras, interspersed with clips from a movie or TV show—and a healthy serving of sarcasm. They end with, “Slide up in our DMs and snitch to us.” And here’s the thing— people do!

When I asked Carboni how often they actually catch the criminal as a result of a Who Dat Wednesday post, she said, “Almost always. We’ll post something on a Wednesday, then come in to work Thursday morning to dozens of messages all identifying the same person. We say, dang, this girl ain’t got no friends.”

“If they’re local, we can almost guarantee they’ll be ID’d,” Messina said. “The ones we don’t get good tips on, we feel like it’s a national group just hitting places right off the interstate, then moving on.”

It’s not just criminals they’re featuring, though. In addition to notifications about school closings and weather alerts—like “It’s colder than your ex’s heart out there” (in which they always refer followers to Zach Fradella, whom they call “the Taylor Swift of meteorologists”)— the page is a clever way to humanize deputies at a time when law enforcement is struggling with public perception. It says, “Hey, we’re one of you, and the things that matter to you matter to us. We have good days and bad days. We have families we love, and we love St. Tammany Parish.”

Their posts are filled with tributes to the men and women in blue, reminding us of their sacrifice. There are introductions to “officers on the rise,” shout-outs to “the heroes behind the headsets” (AKA dispatchers), atta-boys to neighboring parish and state departments for a job well done, and celebrations of large drug busts.

Their Facebook posts allow followers to see the human side of the men and women who keep us safe every day—with pictures of them holding baby animals at a livestock show, appearing in costume at a school or fundraiser, or volunteering at a retirement home. They offer heartfelt tributes to fallen officers, no matter where they served, and work to point out the good in every situation. A fan favorite is videos of retired K-9 officers living their best retired-doggie lives.

It’s often surprising what they can convince the sheriff’s deputies to do for a bit—wear costumes, dance, perform an original rap, or compose a complex light show using the light bars atop patrol cars and fire trucks.

“It’s like a junior high dance when we try to convince them to do something,” Messina said. “They’ll all stand around, but once one guy starts doing it, nine times out of ten, the rest will join in.”

“We know our fun shifts and our fun people,” Carboni added. “The traffic guys on the motorcycles are always good for content. They love being on socials. Special Ops will do absolutely anything we ask them to do. Patrol is 50/50. The sheriff is a big Facebooker and is usually the first one to like anything we post.”

The pair come from different backgrounds. While Messina is actually a sheriff’s deputy with a background in juvenile sex crimes, probation, and parole, Carboni came from the newspaper industry, having served as managing editor of the St. Tammany News. Or as Carboni put it, “She’s actually a po-po. I can’t arrest you, but I have a lot of friends who can.” It was when these two came together that the magic happened.

Of course, they don’t hit it out of the park every time.

“Babe Ruth didn’t hit a home run every time he came up to bat,” Messina said. “Sometimes something cracks us up but nobody likes it. Other times, something goes over huge and we have no idea why.”

One running gag is their supposed animosity toward the fire department. “We love to razz them, but I’m married to a firefighter and many of our friends are firefighters,” Carboni said. “It’s all in fun. We’re friends with their public information officers, and believe me, they give it back as good as they get it.”

Recently, when a local sign company offered to donate some signage to the sheriff’s office, they used it to sneak a sign onto the lawn of the fire department that read, “WE LOVE STPSO.”

All this flippancy is about more than just putting a smile on the faces of thousands of St. Tammanians—although that’s certainly welcome. The purpose is to amass followers who are in the habit of reading their posts, so when there’s a message that needs to get out, they’ve got lots of eyes on it.

“We do all the funny stuff to get followers, but we want the followers so when we need to tell you something, we have your attention,” Carboni said.

“They’re checking our page to see if we’re making fun of somebody for not using their turn signal, and we can show them a missing or endangered person or alert them to dangerous traffic conditions,” Messina said. “If it’s funny, you’ll read it. If it’s really funny, you’ll share it. If your friend thinks it’s funny too, they’ll follow us. And the more times that happens, the better our chances of getting important messages out when we need to.”

Meanwhile, their posts educate, entertain, inform, and connect with the community— and they do it all with one overriding message: “We’re proud to serve a community like St. Tammany Parish, where y’all make our job worth it every day.”

And don’t forget their trademark message: “Don’t crime, St. Tammany!”