Residents decry that streets are unsafe in N.O.

12th January 2015   ·   0 Comments

Mayor faces a hailstorm of criticism from businessman, PANO president

Less than a week after New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu touted the success of his administration and said that things are looking up, residents fed up with the rise in armed robberies and violent attacks gathered at Jackson Square to voice their discontentment and a police union leader lambasted the mayor with a fiery letter that accuses Landrieu of turning his back on the police department.

Holding signs that read “Enough is enough!” “What will it take?” and “Safety every day, not just on big events,” about 150 residents, some of them recent victims of crime, took their anger and frustration to the streets in an effort to let elected officials know that they are fed up with the sharp rise in armed robberies and violent crime.

“This is as scary as I ever remember,” Nathan Chapman, who has lived in the French Quarter for more than three decades, told Nola.com Tuesday. “We need more police in the residential parts of the French Quarter. People are tired.”

Bryan Drude, president of the group French Quarter Advocates, told Nola.com that the entire community should be concerned about the brazen criminals that have been terrorizing French Quarter residents, workers and tourists and how those crimes impact the city’s bottom line and sense of safety.

“If the French Quarter suffers, everybody suffers,” Drude ex­plaine­d. “If you don’t take care of the golden goose, the golden eggs get taken away.”

Ironically, the Landrieu administration has been presenting that same message to the rest of the state, hoping that New Orleans’ role as the state’s golden goose might convince Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and Louisiana State Police Col. Mike Edmonson to deploy more state troopers to New Orleans to keep residents safe as the NOPD struggles to get a handle on the sharp rise in violent crime.

According to NOPD statistics, there were five fewer murders committed last year but violent crime rose by 38 percent in 2014.

On Tuesday, the Police Association of New Orleans released an open letter that blasted the mayor for his failure to support the NOPD and accused Landrieu of turning his back on police, a jab that for some brought to mind the adversarial relationship between NYPD officers and NYC Mayor De Blasio.

NOPD Capt. Michael Glasser, PANO’s president, spelled out in the letter the police union’s grievances with the mayor, among them the Landrieu administration’s refusal to fight for higher salaries for cops, the changes made to the NOPD’s off-duty detail system and the mayor’s efforts to utilize civilian patrol officers, sheriff’s deputies and state troopers rather than turn to NOPD officers to address public-safety issues.

“Rather than recognize the recovery the NOPD made in the aftermath of Katrina and the progress made to date, you chose to vilify the men and women of the NOPD,” Glasser told Mayor Landrieu in the letter. “And, as would come to be a Landrieu hallmark, place blame on the former superintendent and command staff and call upon the federal government for help.”

Glasser also pointed out that when Landrieu took office in 2010 there were 1,550 officers on the force —the total number officers on the force has since dwindled to just over 1,000.

“You have ignored the dedicated men and women of the NOPD, who have demonstrated a quality with which you appear to be unfamiliar….LOYALTY,” Glasser told Landrieu. “Loyalty to the city and its citizens, and to the department to which they have dedicated most, if not all of their adult life. Loyalty by those younger members who see what has happened and wonder why they should stay here, and recruits who wonder whether they should even start here at all. And you wonder why officers are leaving en masse and why it’s so difficult to hire new officers while other local agencies have waiting lists. It’s been nearly five years….you can’t blame the ‘old guard’ any longer. This failure is purely on you.

“Each day, every member of the NOPD writes a check to the City of New Orleans, payable upon demand, for an amount up to and including their life. And each day they hope that check never gets cashed. And they come back again tomorrow. And you turn your back on them, seeking help from any quarter you can, using trendy catch phrases or buzz words touted by professional PR salesmen to sell the next quick fix from someone, somewhere.

“The policies and strategies of your former superintendent now have to be slowly unraveled and replaced, as the current superintendent struggles to figure out how to police a city requiring 1,600-1,700 cops with a shrinking and demoralized department of just over 1,000,” Glasser added. “And the citizens pay the price….

“[D]espite your obvious disdain, disregard, and disrespect for the men and women of the NOPD, there remains a dedicated force willing to serve the citizens of this city,” Glasser wrote. “Officers and supervisors of good moral character, tenure, education, and practical experience. They remain loyal and ready to protect this city, its visitors, and its residents.

“Let this be a call to action by the citizens of New Orleans to tell this mayor you have had enough,” Glasser concluded. “He isn’t listening to his dedicated officers – perhaps he will listen to you.”

Landrieu responded Tuesday in a statement that said, “To support our officers, we’ve funded the first police pay raise in eight years, bought hundreds of new police cars and built new police stations. To improve the NOPD, we equipped NOPD officers with body cameras, and invested millions to implement the Consent Decree. To more officers on the street, we’re hiring new recruits, calling on reservists and investing in aggressive recruitment.”

“He’s never turned his back on us,” NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison said Tuesday. “That’s absolutely ludicrous and foolish.”

“All the issues in New York of the demonization of cops are going on here,” Tulane University criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf told Nola.com in a recent interview. He said the current rift between the mayor and the NOPD can be traced back to the Landrieu administration, which he says made “a bunch of unfortunate statements that old a bunch of cops, ‘You’re not important,or worse.”

Adding to last week’s drama and intrigue was the airing of a new commercial that took a swing at the Landrieu administration for its inability to effectively address residents’ crime concerns. Torres, the former owner of SDT Waste Company, says he was compelled to air the commercial after the door to his son’s room was kicked in, his house was robbed and he received a phone call from his crying mother about a brazen armed robbery that took place near her French Quarter home.

“The mayor doesn’t want to deal with certain issues with the police department in protecting the French Quarter. He wants to put it off on other groups and bring other people in. They can’t get his attention,” Torres told FOX 8 News last week.

“Rebuilding a city is not as easy as Mr. Torres seems to think it is,” the mayor fired back. “He made millions of millions of dollars off of garbage contracts in the French Quarter, and maybe he should take some of that money and do it himself if he thinks it’s that easy. It’s just not, and it requires an investment of not just individual citizens, but a collective gathering to make sure citizens are safe.”

While the Landrieu administration continues to try to get more protection from Louisiana State Police, LSP Col. Mike Edmonson has said that since the NOPD’s ranks are larger than the LSP force, the state-run agency will not be able to boost its regular deployment of officers to the city but will continue to lend assistance to the city during special events like Mardi Gras and the Essence Fest.

In another effort to boost its ranks, the NOPD’s top brass said last week that an effort is under way to remove the requirement that says new police recruits must have completed 60 hours of college coursework, a hiring standard implemented by then NOPD Supt. Ronald Serpas four years ago. The NOPD is asking the New Orleans City Council and Landrieu administration to consider removing or suspending the requirement so that it can replenish its work force. Among those who oppose the change is Rafael Goyeneche, executive director of the Metropolitan Crime Commission.

This article originally published in the January 12, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.