RandyTravis' Blog

When we last saw Ernest Rieux, he was pretending to be a cop, parking his Mercedes along a street at Atlantic Station and making sure his police sign and APD patch were clearly visible in the windshield.

The Westwood College criminal justice professor thought he had everyone fooled. For months he told students and fellow teachers he was a career cop from New Orleans who had to move here to Atlanta after Hurricane Katrina. He even had the police badges to back up his claims.

Only trouble, his students weren't as gullible as he thought. Some brought their suspicions to us. They also told us Mr. Rieux repeatedly used vulgar language in class, even though he claimed to be a minister.

One of the students agreed to take a hidden camera into class. We hoped to capture some of that salty language for our story. We were as surprised as the students when their teacher walked into class that day with a real gun on his hip. Even more shocking, he took the gun off and left it unsecured during the entire class period, even sticking his head outside the classroom to talk to other school employees.

Atlanta Police investigated, but I don't think they ever seriously pursued this case even though we had videotape of a man bringing a gun into a classroom. That's considered a crime in Georgia.

A few months later, we started getting calls from other people: Mr. Rieux was working for a private probation service in DeKalb County. Someone recognized him and alerted their superiors. He lost that job.

But the most outrageous sighting we got was last week, when we discovered this fake cop working as a real probation officer for the Georgia Department of Corrections in downtown Atlanta.

How could the state have hired someone without thoroughly checking out his claims? That's what the Department of Corrections wants to determine. A spokesman says Mr. Riuex never claimed to be a cop when he was hired, and his bachelor's degree checked out.

He was quickly fired for leaving out sections of his resume, like his entire employment at Westwood College. Later this month, Mr. Rieux was scheduled to repeat his probation officer training program because he failed one of the most basic parts of the class.

Yes... he couldn't pass the firearms test.

As an investigative reporter, story endings don't get any better than that.