Category Archives: trouble

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Community Outcry Over Proposed Bourbon Street Plans

“Yes, we need to clean up Bourbon,” longtime Quarter resident James Bullock stated after the meeting. “We need to clean up the French Quarter, we need to clean up the city. I just don’t understand how limiting us like this is going to do that.”

 

The next community meeting in this series is expected to take place in May. More information about the proposed Bourbon Street closures can be found here.

 

This is the same question that I have for Landrieu:
“Just what exactly is the problem you are trying to fix?”

 

 NOLA DEFENDER

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Unsafe Esplanade: write to City Hall!

Many, many residents have realized that the situation on Esplanade has grown beyond casual use by transients or one that fits under the usual homeless population issues City Hall continues to tackle.
The illegal activity is constant, as are the camps. The city has said that one reason that they cannot remove these squatters is because of their animals and so as a result, the number of unlicensed and untrained animals has also grown in these camps. I have personally seen animals that look sick and are so unsocialized that every person or animals passing by is in danger.

I am afraid to walk there and am also afraid to help remove any litter on my travels because I may be targeted or even hurt by what I pick up.
We invite you to come take a walk one morning around 7 am to see the full effect of this issue.
It is clear to residents and regular passersby that this is a separate and as important safety concern as the ongoing homeless issues that our taxpayer resources are used for and so it is clear to me that a separate response is needed by NOPD and City Hall. It makes no sense to any of us that City Hall is willing to spend millions on a poorly thought out “security” plan for Bourbon Street while letting the residential part of the Quarter be held hostage by the drug dealers and voluntarily unhoused on Esplanade.
Please spend time on this issue now.

As you well know, civic leader and Esplanade neighbor Sidney Torres has offered his assistance in working on a solution with City Hall and

NOPD. Please take advantage of his and and all assistance offered by residents to address this issue please.
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Mitch: Leave Bourbon Street alone. Leave our small businesses alone.

Mayor Landrieu: Rescind Your Cameras and Closed Doors Security Proposal

Petition is here

This is one of the nuttiest and most dangerous ideas that our mayor has come up yet. Making Bourbon a ped-only street will snarl the traffic that needs to serve a large neighborhood and will make Iberville, Conti and Toulouse (especially) virtual parking lots. (Iberville is already snarled between Bourbon and Royal when the parking lots are backed up.) That will undo the Quarter’s dynamic flow once and for all, and reduce the cross streets to 20 hour a day freight zones with the ensuing mess leaking onto the residential streets.

As for the 3 a.m. idea, I don’t even know where to begin. What about this idea will reduce random shootings, gang retaliations or even any other major crime issue? How does closing the doors of bars solve any of these? Instead we will have people leaving bars with no “eyes on the street” (meaning bartenders or bouncers or other workers) that are there now to watch out for them. Instead we will have bars and clubs going out of business.

Security cameras managed by the city have been tried and have failed. Better to incentivize businesses to install better cameras and for the city to actually USE those cameras rather than ignoring them as they do now. Spend money on building a force that investigates crimes, using available technology and witnesses and old fashioned analysis. Get OUT there and know community members, notice upticks as they happen,  build a knowledge base to actually solve crimes rather than just relying on Crimestopper rewards for the sensational crimes, ignoring the rest.

Community policing (more better paid cops, with more training, walking and biking on the streets and cops stationed inside partner businesses) will do more than any street-killing idea.

Honestly, Mitch Landrieu seems to be as out of touch as C Ray was in his last days as mayor. Maybe we need to do away with 2 term mayors…..

 

Some French Quarter Bars Owners Aren’t On Board With a New Citywide Safety Plan

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French Quarter safety plan could include cameras that can spot guns through clothing 

This idea is so messed.

Potential constitutional problems as the FQ surveillance plan could include cameras that could detect guns and other objects under clothing.

“I think that this is a violation of people’s constitutional rights, and I cannot imagine that the public will accept that,” Esman said. “It really defies common sense because it presumes that everybody carrying a weapon is going to use it for an improper purpose, and that’s just not the case.”

There are significant questions about how police would use the information gleaned from the cameras and whether that information would be enough justification to search those believed to have weapons, Esman said. That’s particularly true if they would be set up on a public street, where standards are different than requiring people to go through metal detectors or body scanners at airports.”

Cameras that can spot guns through layers of clothing — using infrared or similar technologies — may be included in sweeping new security measures for Bourbon Street to be proposed.

French Quarter safety plan could include cameras that can spot guns through clothing | State Politics | theadvocate.com

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Another day of guns and road rage in New Orleans

This year, one of our most popular ex-Saints football players was shot and killed on the busy streets of the busy Lower Garden District in the hours after one of our most attended public festivals. The story was initially reported as being that the shooter, Hayes, had followed him and shot him in an unprovoked attack. Hayes was reportedly carrying a gun legally and has said that he had it to his side pointed down until provoked by the victim. He says Smith went back to his car, got a gun and threatened him, although that gun has not surfaced. Smith’s wife was shot in both legs which certainly hurts Hayes’ story of only defending himself against a gun.
Hayes’ criminal record was immediately displayed as evidence of his lawlessness, even though it really told us nothing. The odd fact that the couple shot had just had dinner with the police officer who had shot Hayes’ father years earlier was used as evidence as vendetta by the media but for locals, it was just another version of the one or two degrees of separation and randomness that was super normal pre-K and is still expected.

Really, the tragedy is the argument that led to this was likely over nothing and only shows the lack of maturity on both sides. The ending paragraph of the GQ story tells it all in a nutshell: Hayes had no idea who it was he shot and, having been a promising player once himself, was horrified to find out the man he shot had been one of his favorite football players.

Generations of men grow up here and other places with bright dreams that are slowly squashed by reality and then one day, another man brushes too close to his girl or taps his prized car without apology. That speeds up the damaged heart and the rage stored there is quickly pumped throughout the body, leading to the moment when a gun is pointed and the trigger pulled. Maybe the hope is mostly that the gun itself will serve as enough of a warning to stop any other action (a MAN standing his ground), but the truth is too often that is not the end of it, but the tragic beginning.

The misguided and escalating anger over slight damage to personal property along with the fear among high-strung men (esp. an ex football player once arrested for a domestic violence charge against his wife after an altercation in public) of being “played” in public seem to be the real story here. Neither should be the reason for a death or trial and likely punishment of another.  But here it is again.

Saint Will and the Man Who Shot Him | GQ

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Enough.

For a French Quarter blog, this is a subject that must be covered. Anyone who watches the news or lives in or near the fancier areas of town has noted the outright racism shown by authorities to groups or individuals of color as they walk through these streets. And, we residents should also note the juxtaposition of all white faces of residents behind the gates as people of color walk in from Rampart at 6 am in kitchenwear, maid outfits and maintenance shirts to service our community. How many executive chefs are Creole anymore? How many of our gallery managers or front desk managers are anything but overwhelmingly white? How long do heroic statues of those who fought (and lost) a civil war to enslave their neighbors stand?

It matters because institutional racism limits access without thinking, discourages incentive and punishes those with the “wrong” color with bullets and beatings for simply walking, or driving with a broken tail light or for a million mundane activities that those of us with white faces do without thinking. As for the response of “just do what the cop says and you won’t get hurt” I hope Sandra Bland or Michael Brown are at least examples of how that is a lie, and now as of this week, our most recent neighbor Alton Sterling as seen in the horrifying videos shot by witnesses.

I promise my neighbors to always be a witness too.

 

Two local women talk about this issue below, both cut and pasted from their FB page.

 From local photographer Cheryl Gerber:

That awesome conversation that always goes south. That joke that makes you cringe. That Obama comment that goes way too far. As a white person growing up in the south, these things are all too common. If you grew up here, you know exactly what I’m talking about. I’ve had to examine my own prejudices and reprogram my thinking over a lifetime. I’m still learning. To my dear black friends, I’m sorry. I sorry for every time I didn’t speak up in the face of ignorance. I’m sorry I didn’t bring my black boyfriend to the company Christmas party because I was afraid of the backlash. And I’m sorry I didn’t feel more outrage when this continually happened before cellphone videos captured what you’ve been saying for years. I was young and programmed to be racist. I never hated anyone. But I didn’t understand white privilege and what my black friends were up against. But I can’t go back in time. I can only move forward. I’m teaching Kid G the complexities of racism and how to check himself. How to stand up and never be afraid to speak up in the face of racism. So far, I think I’ve done a good job. I have hope for the future. But right now I feel a sadness to the depths I’ve never known before. I was sad for Michael Brown and Freddy Gray and Eric Garner and all the others. But this time
It was in our backyard. Where racist policies are made. Where football fans fly purple and gold confederate flags. Where people publish hateful comments after a disaster. Where other mothers at the skate park feel so comfortable in our mutual whiteness that they can express their racist vitriol to me. I’m so glad I checked myself and my fears as a young woman. But it doesn’t seem like enough. I’m digging deep. I can’t stop hearing the cries of the woman who videotaped the shooting. Or the image of Alton’s 15-year-old son standing next to his crying mother at the press conference. Let justice be swift.

 

Tricia Boutté-Langlo Langevåg, Norway ·

 People always ask me, “Why did you move to Norway?” My initial response was, “It’s a beautiful country with a great social system, a fertile arts environment with great musicians and a stable future.” It’s become so much more than that over the past few years. One of the #1 reasons now, I FEEL, SAFE.Last year a lady in New Orleans asked me the same question and I gave her my standard response. She still didn’t get it. She said, “But it gets so cold there!” “Yea, but we have good winter clothes, warm, well insulated homes, oh, and the chances of a cop killing me for no reason, are basically nonexistent.” She was white. My statement made her uncomfortable. Good.
Norway isn’t perfect. No place is perfect, but I choose to be in a place where I have NEVER had a police officer follow me around in shops thinking I might be stealing something. I have NEVER been trailed by a police car waiting or hoping I forget to use a turn signal or make a full stop to have a “reason” to pull me over and kill me. I have NEVER been randomly targeted by law enforcement in any form in the country that I now call home. I FEEL, SAFE.
People, as a right of being human, deserve to FEEL SAFE. Especially from those who swore to protect and serve ALL CITIZENS EQUALLY.
Why does my hue make me expendable? Why is my brown a target?
My mother always told me, don’t stay in a place where you don’t feel welcome. I didn’t.
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Kai Niambi
Philando Castile
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Stolen Bikes Nola

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AND support this wonderful group of neighbors who are doing so much for those of us who rely on our 2 wheels, while making the bad people look over their shoulder.