Constitutional policing

A consent Decree is an agreement or settlement that resolves a dispute between two parties. Well, we have a major dispute happening in our city right now. It’s between law-abiding citizens and the people who want to rob, kill, carjack, rape, beat, abuse, and hurt innocent people. My question is can we have a Consent Decree for them? Can we make them sign a Federal, State, or Local agreement where they agree to:

• Not to shoot or kill us while they’re shooting at each other?

• Not to carjack our mothers, daughters and wives, and elderly while they’re trying to get gas or make groceries (it’s what we say in New Orleans).

• Not to shoot the Woman and Child if he’s the one you’re really looking for and the one who harmed you and your gang.

• Not shoot up the car unless you’re sure the one you’re looking for is driving (not like the shooting that took the life of an innocent young woman and shot up my niece and landed her in a trauma unit for several months because they couldn’t see in the car because of the illegal dark windows with no brake tags and no license plate so they shot it up 57 times).

Can’t we have Constitutional Criminals like we have Constitutional Policing? Look before I started getting rained on with a hail of bullet-like words know, that I’m for Constitutional Policing. I despise rogue Cops who prey on innocent people just because of the color of our skin or where we live, but shouldn’t we despise the pain that our mothers, grandparents, and innocent children are going through because we have people who want to prey on them? We seem to live in a society now where the rules only seem to apply to people who want to follow the rules.

Can we please have a killer, rapist, robber, carjacker, molester convention where Federal Authorities lay out the rules to them so they’ll know to what degree they can Prey on us while we Pray for each other? Wouldn’t it be nice if they knew there was a certain degree of carjacking and that you couldn’t carjack us while we were in the car, or drag us while a limb was stuck in the car? Wouldn’t it be nice if they were told they could only shoot at each other if our grandparents and children weren’t around or we had designated “OK Corral,” areas that citizens and killers were made aware of?

How about the Constitutional Criminal Consent Decree that highlights, no killings or shootings at Drug Stores because our Grandparents and maybe even yours may be picking up their medicine? So many just want to live, work, and play. Many want to simply enjoy the fruits of their labor. So, to you Mr. Big Government and the People who make all the rules, it is time to decide and admit that if you can’t protect us, at least let them know to what degree they can hurt us.

– Oliver M. Thomas
Councilmember District E,
Chair of Criminal Justice Committee

This article originally published in the January 2, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.