Tuesday, January 27, 2009

This afternoon, while walking the dog,

This afternoon, while walking the dog, I noticed a fairly old, somewhat beat-up, dark green Mercury Mountaineer. The driver came around the corner really fast, tires squealing, and the passenger leaned out the window, dreds flapping, and yelled, "BLAT, BLAT, BLAT" and started laughing. They drove off in a hurry.

I was not amused, especially in light of recent events.

Many other local bloggers are also hearing gunshots nearby. Not good.

A couple of news items to point out:
Upset Quarter Residents Blast Police
A captain from Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman's office was also at the meeting tonight, but she garnered harsh criticism after she tried to explain to those in the audience that residents are not being pro-active enough. Frustrated and even angry members of the crowd fired back, telling her they're calling police every chance they get. One man even yelled, "go back to the Sheriffs Office."

Mostly Crimey, with more crime expected later. Good comments.

New Orleans breeds bold killers. 50% of NOLA homicides occur in broad daylight. An astonishingly high percentage. If you want one statistic that illustrates the total futility of the justice system in the city, there you go. No fear whatsoever.

More on New Orleans Crime and Punishment.

2 comments:

Unknown said...
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JohnnyB said...

Clay,

I work in Neuroscience. After Katrina, the Society for Neuroscience, which has a 30K member annual convention, moved the 2009 convention from New Orleans to Chicago. The concern was that NO wouldn't have the infrastructure in place for such a large convention. At the time I was angry and talked to SfN adminstrators about this. As a graduate student (and now post-doc) I don't have much sway. But the continuous bad news coming out of there has me rethinking this. Despite my Louisiana roots I am personally boycotting New Orleans until things get better. Let the dread heads run wild. Pretty soon government will have to start looking for places to cut the budget to pay for these egregious stimulus packages and bailouts. Will it be section 8 housing? Sadly I don't think President Obama will produce that kind of change. For Pete's sake, get your butt to Kenner or the West Bank.