Louisiana police officer charged in MS cockfighting case returns to court
One month after a Louisiana police officer was charged in a criminal complaint In Mississippi with retaliating against an informant in a cockfighting investigation in Bay St. Louis, a grand jury indicted the officer on a federal offense.
Hammond Police Officer Denver Keith Golmon, 37, was indicted June 23 on a federal charge of retaliating against a witness, victim, or informant. He’s accused of committing the crime between May 2025 and April 2026, according to the charging documents.
If convicted of the offense, he is facing a prison sentence of up to 10 years and up to $250,000 in fines, plus additional time in prison because he was a law enforcement officer when he committed the alleged crime.
On Monday, Golmon waived his arraignment on the federal offense in court in Gulfport and pleaded not guilty to the charge. He remains jailed without bond pending trial tentatively set in August.
During a detention hearing in federal court in June, a Homeland Security Investigation agent testified that Golmon used his position as a Hammond police officer and his city-issued laptop to identify and retaliate against the informant in the cockfighting investigation in Hancock County.
Golmon did so, the agent said, by recruiting some of his fellow officers assigned to an immigration enforcement task force to arrest the informant on an immigration violation.
According to the federal investigator, Golmon often participated in cockfighting derbies with his uncle, Bert Lester, who was arrested in February 2025 and later convicted for his role in the cockfighting matches in Hancock County. Lester’s sentencing is still pending.
Investigators said Golmon was so involved in the cockfighting matches that he had his own gamecocks he used in the matches. Golmon bowed out at the last minute of the 2025 derby that resulted in his uncle’s arrest along with at least 48 others.
A federal agent said Golmon had received training on the proper way to rile up his gamecocks for fighting before entering the matches.
During the course of the crime, authorities said Golmon repeatedly abused his position as a law enforcement officer by doing things like accessing the National Crime Information Center database to run background checks for individuals who were not under investigation.
After some of those checks, federal authorities said the officer used the information to create fraudulent immigration documents for some undocumented immigrants.
The investigation into Golmon’s alleged wrongdoing began shortly the informant informed authorities of the alleged threats and found a video circulating on social media that appeared to show a recording of evidence HSI agents had collected during their investigation of the cockfighting derby in Bay St. Louis.
According to testimony, the video showed a man matching Golmon’s description using a cellphone to record the evidence displayed on Golmon’s city-issued laptop.
In other evidence, authorities said they found written and recorded messages from Golmon in which he encouraged others to share a copy of the video evidence so that others would know the identity of “the rat.”
Shortly before his arrest, authorities said Golmon successfully recruited two Hammond officers to arrest the informant at one point on an immigration violation.
