The Economist did a story on the NOPD today, mainly about the Danziger and Glover cases, but also about the culture of corruption at NOPD in general:
“The cases—in which 16 officers have been charged so far—are shocking for their brutality and their strong whiff of institutionalised racism. They also expose deep corruption in the department. In both cases, police appear to have decided on a cover-up even before the blood on the pavement was dry. And the conspiracy was by no means limited to the officers who took part in the mayhem.
In the Danziger case, for instance, a detective allegedly drove another investigator to his house to procure what he called a “ham sandwich”: a gun to plant at the scene. According to the prosecution, two witnesses who supported the police account, “James Youngman” and “Lakeisha Smith”, the second a stereotypical black name, were invented from whole cloth. When a police supervisor was unsatisfied with his detective’s first attempt at a whitewash, he rewrote it to make it smoother.
In the Glover case, the police would not face such stiff charges now if they had simply owned up to a questionable shooting. Instead, they burned the evidence, and then claimed ignorance when Mr Glover’s mother filed a missing-person report.”
It sounds overly dramatic to say you’re more afraid of the police of New Orleans than the criminals.
But sometimes, you are.
And besides the abundant and outrageous cases of corruption, the NOPD’s priorities are also ridiculously screwed up. They’re out giving speeding tickets for doing 33-in-a-30 on the outskirts of the French Quarter while people are being shot to death within it. They also waste time giving out tickets for public drunkenness and lewdness, while two blocks away people are getting punched in the face and robbed at gunpoint.
These frustrating events are contributing factors to the public’s disgust with their ‘protectors’. And believe me, I’d be happy to put up with a drunkard pissing on my sidewalk if it means they’re out chasing killers.
There is a bloody WAR going on in the streets here, and we have the highest murder rate in the nation. But is the city jail filled with murderers? No, it is filled with people who smoke marijuana – the least violence-inducing illegal drug in the country. It is also filled with people who didn’t feel like sitting in line for 14 hours to get their driver’s license renewed and so it expired and they got arrested at a random harassment-stop checkpoint. It’s filled with people who didn’t show up to pay one of those petty doing-33-in-a-30 speeding tickets and then got another one. And it’s filled with people who dared to mouth off at the officers giving them seat-belt tickets.
Basically, it’s filled with people I’m not afraid of.
I’d like to see Serpas adjust the NOPD’s priorities, as well as fix their corruption issues. But I’m not hoping. And I’ll stick to avoiding the NOPD whenever I can.
