The Big ‘Disease-y’
22nd October 2018 · 0 Comments
By Edmund W. Lewis
Editor
Some years ago, more than 1,000 New Orleans residents marched on City Hall to demonstrate their anger and frustration with the city’s crime and violence.
The anti-violence rally came on the heels of a particularly bloody period in New Orleans between December 2006 and January 2007 that included the high-profile murders of filmmaker Helen Hill and Hot 8 Brass Band drummer Dinerral Shavers.
On that day, New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin saw up close and personal how fed up many residents were with the city’s inability to make the streets of New Orleans safe. Responding to enraged protesters, he vowed to do a better job of fighting crime.
That never happened.
The next mayor, Mitchell Landrieu, also promised to do away with violent crime and keep us all safe from harm.
Instead, he kept a scrapbook of the city’s youngest murder victims and promoted NOLA For Life as the silver bullet to end the scourge of violence that makes it impossible for residents and tourists to let their guard down.
So much for that.
Now we got Mayor LaToya Cantrell vowing to “Cure Violence.”
Every time we hear about a brazen shooting or murder, it underscores the fact that the city has a long way to go before it can call itself a safe place to live.
These murders and nonfatal shootings tell residents in no uncertain terms that none of us are safe. It doesn’t matter if we keep our noses clean, mind our business, buy homes in nice neighborhoods or stay home behind locked doors; we can still find ourselves staring down the barrel of a gun or at the mercy of the city’s emboldened criminals.
I think part of the problem is the hand-me-down police chiefs we keep getting. Nagin chose Eddie Compass, who appears to be a good man but just didn’t seem up to the task of tackling the city’s violent crime problem. Landrieu chose his childhood buddy, Ronal Serpas who ended up stepping down after the NOPD failed to report for 24 hours that a female officer had turned off her body camera before shooting a suspect in the head during a scuffle while the department was in the midst of a federally mandated consent decree. Like her two predecessors, Mayor Cantrell promised to conduct a national search for a new police chief but instead decided to go with Serpas’ replacement, Michael Harrison.
Again, he appears to be a good man, just not the best possible police chief for the job.
None of the aforementioned police chiefs come close to demonstrating the talent, leadership, insight and professionalism of the late Richard Pennington, who turned the NOPD around in the 1990s after he was tapped by New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial to lead the department after former NOPD Officer Len Davis’ reign of terror led to a federal consent decree.
For the most part, our elected leaders have not done a good job of selecting police chiefs.
But if we’re going to be fair, when it comes to failing to make New Orleans a safe place to live, there’s plenty of blame to go around.
The criminal justice system, for example, must share the blame for not doing enough to protect witnesses in recent years and failing to end the revolving-door practices that have returned many violent criminals to the streets to commit additional murders. It must also answer for allowing police officers to repeatedly get away with murder, a reality that has left many residents with no respect for or trust of police or the law.
Local elected officials and state legislators must be held accountable for not finding a way to improve police salaries and benefits in the hopes of attracting a better grade of applicants and for failing to provide law enforcement agencies with the resources they need to effectively do their jobs.
Families and residents must share the blame for failing to raise children who respect the law and for not doing more to keep children on the right track. All of us need to do a better job of forming a circle of protection around young people and preparing them to meet the academic, social and economic challenges of the real world.
Local and federal law enforcement agencies must answer for failing to stop the flow of illegal drugs and guns into the city. With the kinds of surveillance technology that exists today, it is inexcusable to continue to allow drug and gun traffickers to continue to engage in their genocidal undertakings.
School officials must do a better job of keeping young people’s interests in school and partner with families to teach children conflict resolution practices that work. Administrators and education experts must stop exploiting the dire straits in which the public education system finds itself to line their pockets with dollars.
The business community must answer for failing to expand economic opportunities for the poorest among us while continuing to exploit the working poor.
So far there doesn’t appear to be any light at the end of this tunnel. Like many, I suspect that’s because we haven’t elected local or state leaders who know what it means to think critically or lead by example. Instead of being led out of this tunnel and into the light, we are being led around in circles by elected officials too proud or dishonest to admit that they either have no idea what they are doing or simply don’t care about the ongoing slaughter of New Orleans residents.
The bottom line is that our children need help. They need better parenting and guidance, mentoring, safe home environments, greater recreational opportunities, better schools, access to health care, creative outlets, employment opportunities and a chance to pursue their dreams.
It’s not enough that we make sure that our own families are alright. We need to make sure that every family in New Orleans has the resources it needs to lead healthy, productive lives. Otherwise, the toxic living environments in which some families find themselves will continue to boil over and poison the lives of the rest of us.
We need to do a better job of supporting the efforts of the small number of ministers who have been in the trenches every day fighting the city’s growing crime and violence problems. All of us who claim to believe in a Higher Power should be reminded often that “faith without works is dead.”
Instead of enjoying a single night out against crime, we need to take back the night and spend each day ensuring that every human being who calls New Orleans home has an opportunity to reach her or his full potential. At the same time, we need to do a better job of protecting law-abiding residents from those who insist on breaking the law no matter what opportunities they may have to do the right thing.
It’s going to take every member of this community to get actively involved in finding solutions to the city’s escalating crime problem for us to reach better days. Only then will we be able to return to the days when we are no longer shackled by fear, angst and distrust of one another.
This article originally published in the October 22, 2018 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
