Ex-narcotics agent faces drug charge - Joseph “Joe” Edwin LadnierSeptember 24, 2009
A former South Mississippi law enforcement officer turned power lifter and personal trainer was out of jail on $50,000 bond Monday following his arrest on a drug charge, according to Marshall Fisher, director of the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics.
Fisher said MBN agents and other state and federal authorities assisted in the arrest of Joseph “Joe” Edwin Ladnier, 45, at his home on Overlook Road in the Vancleave community Friday.
Fisher said agents went to the home armed with a search warrant and seized 1,000 dosage units of anabolic steroids, a Schedule 3 narcotic.
Ladnier was arrested without incident and charged with one count of felony possession of synthetic narcotics and taken to the Harrison County jail. He bonded out the same day.
The investigation was launched, Fisher said, after authorities “received information that led us to believe that he was going to be receiving a shipment of these drugs.”
Ladnier, who could not be reached for comment Monday, has a Web site, Joeladnier.com, which lists his current profession as a personal trainer and coach for bodybuilders and power lifters.
Twenty-one years ago, however, authorities said Ladnier served as a narcotics agent at the Jackson County Sheriff’s Department. Fisher said he’d also been a police officer decades ago at another police force in Mississippi, believed to be in Hattiesburg.
Though Ladnier was a sheriff’s deputy in Jackson County long before Sheriff Mike Byrd took office, the sheriff talked about his arrest Monday, saying, “It’s unfortunate that somebody who used to be in law enforcement (allegedly) violates the law like that, but they are going to have to suffer the consequences like anybody else.”
