Under the stewardship of Lieutenant Michael Brooks, the Hickley M. Waguespack Center and Study Commons in Donaldsonville, Louisiana, has evolved from a substation for the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office into an after-school center, a library branch, and a public gathering space that offers educational programming to people of all ages. This in turn has helped lower crime in the surrounding neighborhood and provides a case study for what is possible when law enforcement partners with residents to envision solutions for a community’s challenges. 

As with all success stories, the center started with an idea. In 2017, Ascension Parish’s then sheriff Jeff Wiley was searching for an answer to high crime rates in a Donaldsonville neighborhood. Other sheriffs in the area advised him to rebuild a youth detention center to address the issue, but Sheriff Wiley was more interested in investing in young people before they encountered the criminal justice system.  

“Why pay for them on the backend,” explained Lt. Brooks, “when we can be proactive and try to win their trust?”  

Sheriff Wiley tapped Lt. Brooks to spearhead the initiative. Lt. Brooks and his wife, both raised in Donaldsonville, saw it as an opportunity to give back to the community. He began by asking local schools what they thought was needed to keep the kids of Donaldsonville safe. 

“We did a whole survey,” said Lt. Brooks, “and each school pretty much said the same thing: ‘We need a place where the kids could express themselves in a safe manner.’” 

A place where they could do their assignments while their parents or guardians were at work. A place where they could play basketball or climb monkey bars. A place they could walk to and have access to laptops, Wi-Fi, and books. 

From this outreach, the Hickley M. Waguespack Center and Study Commons emerged. 

The Wag Center, as it’s more commonly known, transformed from a substation for the Ascension Parish Sheriff’s Office into campus with a variety of public resources, programming, and facilities accessible to children and adults alike. Today, it regularly hosts Prime Time Family Reading, a six-week program of the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities that facilitates discussion with children and their families around books. The Ascension Parish Library established a permanent branch on the grounds staffed by three employees five days a week. Tutors come after school to provide one-on-one instruction to students. Then there’s the programming for adults: workshops on internet literacy so grandparents can learn to access telehealth appointments and monitor their grandchildrens’ social media, free tax preparation days, assistance with expunging records, and health fairs that offer routine exams and tests. Community groups like churches, the Ascension Council on Aging, the local Retired Teachers Association, and the Masons have all used the center for meetings. Basketball courts, volleyball nets, soccer goals, and playground equipment keep kids entertained after they finish their homework. The breadth of programming and facilities only seems limited by Lt. Brooks’s imagination, who serves as center manager. 

And the deputies who originally worked in the substation? Lt. Brooks moved them to another building so there was more room for the kids. When that still wasn’t enough space, he had another building on the property remodeled into what is now called the Study Commons. Prioritizing education, community engagement, and relationship building has paid off, with crime dropping in the area. The center has been so successful in this regard that Lt. Brooks’s brother, the Chief of Police of White Castle, Louisiana, is trying to duplicate the center’s model in Iberville Parish. 

Lt. Brooks credits the center’s success with the vast support system surrounding it, from Ascension Parish Sheriffs Wiley and Bobby Webre, who have kept the center funded, to people like Wanda August, a “mountain of information” who helps Lt. Brooks with site administration. In addition, Lt. Brooks leans on his faith for guidance and motivation to continue his work. 

“I asked the Lord, if You want me to do this, I’ll do this,” he said, referring to his decision to manage the center, “but I want this place to be a light. I want this place not to be the darkness anymore. I want it to be a light.” 

For Lt. Brooks’s transformative and visionary work, the Louisiana Endowment for the Humanities is proud to recognize him with the 2025 Light Up for Literacy award.  

Morgan Randall is a writer, communications professional, and student in the University of New Orleans’s MFA in fiction program.