Questions linger about public safety as La. state troopers depart

3rd November 2014   ·   0 Comments

As the Halloween weekend approach­ed, about 50 state troopers and public safety officers were preparing to leave New Orleans after a four-month stint patrolling the French Quarter and other parts of the city..

Louisiana State Police Superintendent Mike Edmonson told WWL-TV that more than 100 troopers remain at Troop B and public safety officers remain at work on some bridges.

The additional patrols by state troopers were requested by New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu after a Bourbon Street shooting this summer during which a 21-year-old nursing student was killed and nine others wounded. Most of the people shot during a brazen French Quarter gunfire exchange were not from New Orleans.

The incident occurred as the City of New Orleans was preparing to host the annual Essence Festival and Fourth of July celebration.

French Quarter resident Mike Tilbury told WWL that the state police patrols have cut crime. He created an online petition to keep the troopers. Nearly 700 people have signed it.

Despite that assistance from state police, a recent French Quarter surveillance captured a violent attack on a man by four or five men. During the attack, the victim was punched, pushed to the ground and repeated kicked as several cars drove by and several patrons watched. There was also a hate crime that began in the French Quarter when two men purposely bumped into a same-sex couple and started an argument. The couple was subsequently followed to the Walgreen’s drug store on the corner of Baronne and Canal Street where the couple was physically assaulted.

In both cases, NOPD officials reported that they had at least one suspect in custody.

The biggest flare-up during the four-month stint came late in the summer when popular musician Shamarr Allen accused state police of racially profiling and excessive force after he was stopped in the Lower Ninth Ward as he was heading home from a late-night gig.

LSP officials looked into Allen’s claims but concluded that the suspect was uncooperative with state troopers and that the troopers did onto act improperly.

The state troopers were initially scheduled to remain in New Orleans until the close of the Labor Day Weekend but shortly thereafter extended their stay through the month of October.

The state police departure comes as the city prepares to kick into high gear for the holiday season and all the visitors that flock to the Crescent City between November and March. Popular annual events include the Thanksgiving Day Parade, Bayou Classic, Christmas caroling in Jackson Square, the Annual New Year’s Eve countdown in the French Quarter, local college bowl games, New Orleans Pelicans basketball games and Carnival Season.

Carrollton resident Janelle Collins said last week that she will likely stay away from the French Quarter during the holidays because it will feel less safe without the state police.

“I’m sure the police will do the best they can to keep people safe, but they’re short-handed and can’t be everywhere at the same time,” she told The Louisiana Weekly. “Something’s got to give.

“It can get a little scary. I don’t go out after dark unless I have to, but I know that even that can’t keep me completely safe. When it comes to avoiding areas where there is a high chance of beaching a victim of crime, I always say ‘Better safe than sorry,’” she added.

In early October, U.S. Attorney Kenneth Polite announced that the City of New Orleans has been given a @1.8 million grant to hire 15 additional NOPD officers.

Polite said the grant “underscores (the U.S. Dept. of Justice’s) commitment to ensuring public in our local communities.

“This money is critical to reducing violent crime not in select portions of the city, but in every New Orleans neighborhood,” U.S. Attorney Polite explained.

The grant announcement came just weeks before the state police were scheduled to end their four-month assignment in New Orleans and in the modest of the NOPD’s ongoing manpower shortage. With its numbers reaching a 36-year low and the department losing officers faster than it can replace them, the NOPD is scrambling to find long-term solutions.

The grant money, part of a nationwide $124 million initiative awarded by the DOJ’s Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS), includes funds earmarked for salaries and benefits for the new officers for three years.

During the summer, French Quarter business owners voted to pay for extra police protection. The City of New Orleans responded by announcing that $2.4 million collected by the City in hotel taxes would be used to pay for the hiring and training of civilian patrol officers to handle minor problems in the French Quarter, a program unveiled earlier this summer by the Landrieu administration.

However, the French Quarter business owners told the Landrieu administration that the money earmarked to hire and train civilian patrol officers should instead be used to hire additional NOPD officers.

Meanwhile, residents say they want the City of New Orleans to understand that added police protection and public safety in the French Quarter should not come at the expense of every people. Nor should increased efforts to improve public safety allow any law enforcement agency to violate the constitutional rights of Black and poor residents, some said.

“We want the French Quarter to be a safe place to visit, but I want to feel safe in my neighborhood too, Gentilly resident Michelle Adams told The Louisiana Weekly. “We only what to be treated like law-abiding, tax-paying citizens. Fair is fair.”

Some residents say that it is exasperating that elected officials and law enforcement agencies sometimes ask communities of color to choose between safer streets and racial justice.

“It’s not that complicated a problem, not really,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly Thursday. “We pay taxes and want the government to protect us from both crime and all forms of discrimination. We demand equal protection under the law.

“The overwhelming majority of this city’s Black residents are being systematically exploited by the local business community, undereducated and underserved by the local school system and exploited and unfairly targeted by the criminal justice system,”Aha added. “Most of the city’s Black residents are being locked out of educational and economic opportunities to lift themselves out of lives of poverty, hopelessness, despair and de facto slavery. Is it any wonder there is so much rage, desperation and violence in the Black community? What’s amazing is that we haven’t seen the kind of violent explosion here that we’ve seen in other parts of the country.

“The solutions are as clear as day,” Aha added. “Allow schools that serve Black children an opportunity to teach them what they need to learn to become productive and self-sufficient; end the economic exploitation of the Black masses; stop allowing the police to violate the constitutional rights of Black residents; sep resisting the DOJ’s efforts to reform the NOPD; stop allowing ‘venture capitalists’ to siphon money out of public education under the guise of reforming public educate; and honor the laws and ordinances that protect the rights of Black businesses to compete for public contracts.”

This article originally published in the November 3, 2014 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.