A bandaid on a severed artery

Congrats, Ray! You actually showed up somewhere! You made a big stink! You fucking pretended to care!

Jeebus this makes me sick.

Anybody that voted for this man should just go Herman Brood themselves right now, for the good of our city. Boulet, Couhig, and Watson should lead the way.

Ray, this job obviously bores the fuck out of you, and you aren’t the slightest bit interested in it anymore. So resign! There’s no shame in it…you won the election, you’re a bidnessman and should have no problem finding another job (Houston beckons). I bet you can even cash in on this by writing your memoir! Get Chris Rose to ghostwrite.

But leave. Get the fuck out. I swear to the Lord my God we will put someone who cares in there. Someone competent. Somebody who gives a damn, and has the cojones to implement real change.

But this bullshit today just sucks.
What the fuck do you honestly think this will accomplish? Really, what?

You’ll piss off the tourists, you’ll piss off the locals, and you’ll piss off the police officers. Yes, even more than you already have.

Let’s get rid of all three of them…these living monuments to the peter principle: Nagin, Riley, and Jordan.

Special election: Landrieu for mayor, Bayard for chief, and hell, I dunno…somebody get Connick back in there. Get his son in there for all I care; he’s got to be more trustworthy.

You will “allow NOPD to work on more serious crimes”? Bullshit. Total and complete fucking bullshit. If you cared, you’d get guys like Tim Bayard (“the best street cop I’ve ever been associated with, and his integrity is beyond reproach”) away from behind the desk and back in charge. Maybe of the homicide unit if you really wanted to do something about it.

Starting a clergy program giving youth alternatives to crime? You gotta be fucking kidding me. Have you been living in English Turn for too long, Raymond?

Here’s Ashley’s plan to do something about it:

1. Don’t pander to the public with bullshit like “we’ll add cameras”, “check your thug card at the city line”. We see through that shit. Get a real police that the other officers respect to be in charge of the department. Bayard will work. Shit, Pennington would work. Get a real police in charge, and tell him what’s important.

If he’s real police, he already knows. It’s not guys walking around with a 40. It’s not people smoking a blunt on Frenchman street. It’s all the murders, the armed robbery, the B&E, the assaults. A real police will prioritize this shit and do something about it.

Not just put dope on the damn table.

2. Get Jordan outta here. A 12% conviction rate on murderers should get your ass crucified. Totally fucking unacceptable. No fucking deals, no fucking pleas: you shoot somebody, your ass goes to Angola, and fast.

3. Get more good cops on the streets, and give them a community. We want to know the cops in our neighborhood, and they want to get to know us. The police need to have their finger on the pulse of a neighborhood, and we do need to get community policing and neighborhood watches working again.

4. Keep tabs on the migrant labor. This doesn’t necessarily mean the people selling tortas out of roach coaches; this means the guys that get $1500 cash on Friday afternoon and plan to spend it all by Monday morning. To hell with the Karicians, the real problem is the Houstonians and others that come here to create their own private Idaho, complete with guns, liquor, and disrespect for all we hold dear.

Remember Dinerral Shavers. Remember Helinka Hill. Don’t let sons of bitches like Ray Nagin let them die in vain.

Let’s see some real change. Let's see some real leadership.

Yes, I’m pissed off. The whining and fear is over. Yes, I’m at the point where I’m really gonna fight for my city. I don’t want the fuckmooks like Nagin, that have enough money that they can live anywhere in the cosmos taking my city away from me.

But what do I know. I’m just the jive-ass honky from Black Pearl.

pix from nola.com, dave, and michael

Edit: also remember Steve Blair, Monier Gindy, Corey Hayes, Eddy Saint Fleur, Don Morgan, Jealina Brown, and Larry Glover. H/T Mac.

Comments

[mac]

remember Larry Glover, remember Jealina Brown...

[Adrastos]

Great post, Ashley. Tony Cannatella would also be an excellent chief. He's real police. A true street cop. I like Bayard too.

[Banzai Bill]

Yeah You Right!!!

[saintseester]

Since I am not a resident, I really have no input. But, I was still thinking about the possibility of a recall, and the near impossible odds right now.

BUT, it seems the time has expired on people being able to vote who no longer live there. They are voting and leaving you guys to deal with the results. That seems to be very wrong in a constitutional sense. So some legals down there, first need to go to the courts and have them stricken from the voting rolls.

After that, you can probably get the quota needed on recall signatures.

[Richard P.]

Hit the nail on the head. It isn't the guy lighting one up on Frenchmen St. or the lady going five miles an hour over the limit. The solution has to start with an overall change in philosophy. Less hassle, less edginess, less lording it over everyone, less, well, NO corruption and more courtesy and more working to build a bridge from law enforcement out to the greater community, i.e. real neighborhood community policing.

Everyone talks "we're getting, we're getting tough...."

It's like the War on Drugs. The hardcore bad guys aren't quivering. It's only the rest of us who get to feel the pain.

How about dealing differently with the rest of us and actually focusing on going after the ones that they should be going after and coming down hard on?

[Marco]

Bravo Professor! Don't let up.

[Sophmom]

Well said, Ashley, but, please, we would like to keep Pennington. He made a big difference. *sigh*

I hesitate to say it out loud, but, borne of a belief that much of this violence is driven by the illegality of street drugs, might NOLA be just enough of an emergency to implement decriminalization in an effort to stop the bleeding? Just a thought.

[G Bitch]

Not one person has ever mentioned gun control.

[karen.boudreaux]

My husband and I want to come home. His background is law enforcement. But with a salary of 30K not including cost of uniforms and a duty weapon and other job related expenses that are not paid by the department. Being an NOPD cop means practically becoming destitute when you add in the increase cost of finding a home, and increase cost in almost everything from electricity to even groceries.

Also, being a cop in a city where the powers that be don't support their officers is troubling.

I'd also like to mention the bonuses we have all heard talked about on the radio. They are Bull. Ask a recruiter or civil service and they will tell you there are no funds and they know nothing about it. Funny but they have to have heard the same radio add.

You want cops on the street offer them a living wage.

[ashley]

Karen, you're dead right.

There are subtle changes happening. Cops don't have to live in Orleans Parish anymore. That's always been a bone of contention and is now a big plus.

Howzabout this: if your hubby comes home, and enlists for the NOPD, I'll personally pay for his service weapon.

Hell, I'll start a fund, because when "us yuppies" find out that the department makes the officers pay for their own uniforms, weapons, and supplies, they'll get pissed and put their money up.

I can't help on the bonuses. Supposedly they're real, but you're more tuned in to that than I.

G: I don't see gun control making a difference at this point. The whole fucking city is armed to the teeth. After K, nobody is going to give their weapons up, either.

Also, typically gun control advocates go after handguns. It was a shotgun that shot Helen and Paul.

But then, yesterday was such a pathetic dog and pony show. People driving cars aren't the shooters. 2am to 6am people are coming home from Vaughn's, not just cappin' folks.

And Sophmom, you've just written my next post...

[karen boudreaux]

Ashley, your a sweetheart for your offer but I am saving up for the duty weapon now. I'm a local and my husbands from florida. He sees whats going on and wants to get involved (I love him for that). He also sees how my attitude changes when I go home. He says my "spirit" becomes joyful. So even with crappy pay for both teachers and police we are coming home. We'll figure the rest out a we go along.

[Will]

You go Ash.

Unfortunately, your blog is writing checks that your voters can't cash.

It's no mistake that Eddie Jordan is the DA. The folks that voted for him knew exactly what they were getting: if your baby gets booked for selling some dope and carrying a 9MM, we'll have the charges dropped and have him back on the street in 24 hours, guaranteed. So he can go clean up whoever he thinks might have fingered him in the first place.

If you get him out of there, voters will replace him with another guy who does the same thing.

It's just like the school board: you can replace one set of theives with another and it doesn't make a whole lot of difference.

If you really want to make a difference, what you need to be marching for is handover of jurisdiction on violent crimes in the city limits to the feds. Given half an opportunity, Jim Letten would clear this shit up post haste.

[Adrastos]

Will has a good point. More federal involvement is a good idea: the feds have very stiff penalties for gun offenses.

[slate]

I'm with you, GBitch. As I said in my post, too many guns.

Let's let all the folks in jail for pot OUT and put people who use guns in crimes IN. Make pot legal and guns not legal. It's always made sense to me, but then I hear the second amendment people going on and on about freedom.

Freedom to me isn't owning a gun or the ability to own one, it's the ability to not have to think maybe you have one that you want to train on my ass.

I'll be carrying a poster with the names of ALL the dead listed in your post, Ashley. It's important that people see that the statistics had names and families.

[Jimmy]

GBitch, where do you live?

" . . . but then I hear the second amendment people going on and on about freedom."

I agree, Slate, that Constitution is a real pain in the ass. Life would be a lot better if we didn't have to contend with those Neandertals who think it actually means something.

[mac]

how does controlling guns violate the second amendment?

speaking of the bill of rights, jimmy how do you feel about amendments IV, V, VIII with regards to wiretapping, due process for U.S. citizen Jose Padilla, torture, and the death penalty?

[Sophmom]

I'm curious which part is your next post. We love Chief Pennington. He's cleaned up the APD in a big way (it needed doin').

I suspect the reference was to the other part. I said it in my most recent post too when I described "a wave of violence fueled by desperation and poverty, addiction and the criminal wild west enterprises that accompany the illegality of street drugs, fueled by easy access to firearms and a complete leadership void." The operative word being "illegality". People are dying everywhere to sustain this enterprise as criminal, but it's just escalated so much in New Orleans. *sigh*

[Jimmy]

Mac, Slate didn't say anything about "controlling" guns. She wrote "Make . . . guns not legal." If you don't know how that violates the Second Amendment you've clearly never read it.

[G Bitch]

The 2d Amendment is thought to refer to state militias rather than the way it is interpreted, as Guns for Everyone!

Gun control wouldn't eliminate or solve all gun crimes or eradicate illegal guns but it would reduce the huge flow of arms--national average time it takes for a legal gun to move to the underground economy--5 years; in NO--6 months. And stopping folks in cars between 2-6 am is bullshit and won't stop jackshit--it will fill what little jail space there is with more nonviolent offenders so the murderers have to be bonded out. Decriminalize pot and prostitution, make the police take reports and classify crimes honestly and realistically so they can see patterns (and try to prevent something rather than just mark the blood spatters after), create schools that sort of look like they give a damn and pay folks in retail, tourism, etc. a living fucking wage.

[mac]

Jimmy, I was responding to your question to GBitch "where do you live?", assuming you wanted to know if she lived in America, where "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed". But maybe you were asking her that for another reason.

[slate]

Jimmy, get real. Our founding fathers no way foresaw Tek9's and Glocks in the hands of kids. We, btw, DO have gun control with background checks, etc. Not much help, but there's also nothing in the second amendment about "Gee, but if you're a felon, um, no" but we do it anyway.

And yes, please re-read mac's comment.

[Jimmy]

"Our founding fathers no way foresaw Tek9's and Glocks in the hands of kids."

So that provision doesn't really apply? I guess Constitutional guarantees aren't really binding on the government; they're just policy suggestions.

[mac]

Are pipe bombs arms? Would I have to keep it concealed, or not concealed? I get confused on that whole thing.

[ashley]

Well, the founding fathers also intended for our constitution to be amended frequently...to be a dynamic document, not the carved-in-stone tablet that it has become.

[Chuck]

Then go ahead and amend it to outlaw guns.