Gunfire on Bourbon St. brings accusations

7th November 2011   ·   0 Comments

By Christopher Tidmore
Contributing Writer

NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas launched a verbal offensive against veteran Bourbon St. entertainer Chris Owens, blaming the blaring of “hip hop” music and rap tunes from her club for a 12:30 a.m. All Saints Day shooting last Tuesday that ultimately killed two and wounded 14.

Claiming that the musical selection of her club made it the meeting place for gangland slayers brought a stiff response from Owens. In an interview with The Louisiana Weekly, the famed local singer said, “We have never played rap music or hip hop at my club. You can ask anyone who visits. But, for Ronal Serpas to claim that music is the the reason that someone opened fire on Bourbon Street is ridiculous.

“It didn’t even happen in front of my club,” Owens continued. “The shooting occurred in the middle of the street. The shooter never walked into my club. [He was] a lunatic,” not a patron of hers, she emphasized. (Owens noted that she was shocked by Serpas’ personal allegations. The lounge owner has long been a supporter of NOPD, most recently paying for new helmets for the Vieux Carré’s mounted patrol.)

Crimefighters president Irv Magri, the founding chairman of the Police Association of New Orleans (PANO) and a 30-year veteran cop, agreed that the shootings had nothing to do with Chris Owens or her club.

“The rising street violence is due to turf wars over the distribution of illegal narcotics, not because of a club on Bourbon Street. Instead of blaming Chris Owens who has raised thousands of dollars over the years for NOPD, let’s focus on the real reason for the shooting: Drugs. We must get a handle over the horrific narcotics problem that is plaguing our city, or incidents like this will continue.”

“Imagine the bad press that New Orleans is getting across the country. Tourism will be affected by this unless we send a clear message that violence will not be tolerated,” Magri told the Weekly in an interview.

As such, in his role as President of Crimefighters, Louisiana’s largest victim’s-rights organ­ization, he called on Governor Bobby Jindal to order the Louisiana National Guard’s Military Police Units to New Orleans to augment the New Orleans Police Department in the wake of the French Quarter murders on Tuesday.

“We need extra police officers in New Orleans NOW to deal with the recent rise in street violence,” Magri explained. “We need to augment NOPD, so that police officers can be freed from their desks, and track the violent offenders before they murder again.”

“This is urgent,” Magri continued. “The governor must act now. Let me be clear: We’re not calling for large deployments of National Guard troops. Just military police. On behalf of our 12,000 members of Crimefighters across Louisiana, I beg Bobby Jindal to simply send military police detachments to New Orleans immediately to help fight this wave of crime during the city’s critical tourist season.”

In the future, Magri and his board have said that the City of New Orleans must construct a 500-bed juvenile detention facility, provide for early intervention for juveniles with five arrests or more, and make mandatory narcotics education in grades K-12.

“Drugs are the real problem. These criminals don’t care about violence as long as they can make money selling drugs. It is our belief that many of these homicides, woundings, and home invasions are due to fights by drug gangs over territory and control of the profits. The violence all centers around the distribution of illegal narcotics. Only if we free up NOPD officers can we even start to deal with the narcotics problem. The only way to do that [in the short term] is to bring in National Guard Military Police detachments to man the desks, so our officers can be on the streets fighting this crime wave.”

“Long-term, starting in kindergarten and going every year through the 12th grade, we must teach kids the dangers of drugs, or this violence will never stop.”

This article was originally published in the November 7, 2011 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper