Posted on 01/09/2007 8:46:01 PM PST by blam
Checkpoints to Combat New Orleans Crime
Wednesday January 10, 2007 4:01 AM
By MARY FOSTER
Associated Press Writer
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Police plan to set up checkpoints beginning Wednesday to help curb a crime wave that has claimed nine lives since the start of 2007, Mayor Ray Nagin said, stopping short of imposing a curfew on this tourism-dependent city.
The checkpoints will operate between 2 a.m. and 6 p.m., when about a third of the city's violent crime occurs, and will target drug and alcohol violations as well as motorist insurance. The first one was to be held in a crime-ridden area of the city.
Nagin said the police force would also increase foot patrols, sheriff deputies would supplement the force, and authorities would increase the number of surveillance cameras in high-crime areas. Speeding homicide cases through the court system is also part of his plan.
``This city will focus on murders,'' Nagin said, flanked by Police Superintendent Warren Riley, District Attorney Eddie Jordan and others speaking at the bloodstained site of the city's first murder of 2007. ``We're drawing a line in the sand, and we're saying, 'We've had it.'''
A curfew had been opposed by the city's tourism leaders, who said it would further hurt businesses struggling since Hurricane Katrina. While Nagin did not declare a curfew, he said the message to citizens was to stay off the streets in high-crime areas and in early morning hours.
(Excerpt) Read more at guardian.co.uk ...
Hey, are the "politically correct" Liberals in Congress going to redeploy our combat troops to New Orleans since we have no other enemies anywhere else in the world?
Stay off the streets in high-crime areas during early morning hours?
Excuse me? That's all anyone ever said the entire 22 years I lived in the surrounding area!
God, what a joke.
Quagmire. Re-deploy to Houston.
Fat boys don't commit too much crime. Give em free beignets and muffoletas.
What were the estimates after Katrina? That maybe one third of the Louisiana police force didn't actually exist, but somebody was pocketing their pay. At first it was thought that half the police bugged out before the storm hit, but then it turned out that most of those missing police didn't even exist.
Let's see, that was under the rule of Mayor . . . Nagin, wasn't it?
The good news is they're setting up checkpoints to catch crooks.
The bad news is they're staffing them with N.O. cops!
New checkpoints . . . increase foot patrols . . . supplementing the force? This is just needless escalation and will not solve the problem or reduce the violence. Teddy Kennedy just told me so. Perhaps we should just redploy the NOPD to Baton Rouge?
LOL.. Theft, rape and beatings, riots and other stuff will have to fall in line...
They have done as much damage to Houston as they have done to N.O. I say we send all the people that came from N.O. to Houston back, and raise the IQs of both cities!
Good idea! They gonna put one in front of Rep William Jefferson's house?
What happened to the Chocolate City?
I wish the left wing statist GOP Congress and president hadn't turned every airport into a gun grabbing checkpoint, but there you have it. It's only natural that the local governments start aping the federal. It's going to be interesting when we've spent years and years with all this civil surveillance and we get a president who is willing to go throught he FBI files of enemies (oops, that's nothing new). I do wonder how far the pendulum swings before people get fed up with it.
Ooops, wrong thread.
I never thought I a hurricane could have entertainment value, but The Thing is making daily news around here better than a Mel Brooks movie!
Checkpoints-yeah...all the gun toting thugs out for retribution will get rounded up that way!
Even a curfew( which I support, but which would send the 'negative message' that the city isn't safe!) isn't going to keep the bodies from piling up. Criminals don't obey laws.
Does Ray-Ray think a confrontation will go like this?--
Cop- "Stop, there's a curfew! You're in violation."
Thug-" Oh- I'm sorry, officer. I'll go home right away!"
What we need is the Marines. One soldier, per block, throughout the city, with orders to shoot to kill anyone asking for it.
That's the ONLY thing that will work. When enough of the thugs are dead, crime will decrease. It's come to that. The criminals, and those related to/supporting them, are the MAJORITY in N.O. now.
There is no way to 'educate','counsel' or 'wuv' these barbarians into people of conscience and morals. They must be killed in large numbers or they kill any society they infest. That's the ugly truth-and no one, believe me, NO one in authority in N.O., will ever be that harsh.
The thin veneer of tarnished civilization in N.O. has been forever ripped away by The Thing. What nature has not destroyed, the thug culture is.
Okay, so a Brit newspaper does a story an American won't do...???
That's been true of New Orleans since the early 60's at least! This is nothing new!
What? I think it was long before President Bush and the GOP Congress came along, that folks were prohibited from carrying guns on board an airplane, unless you are a Law Enforcement Officer!
Yep, the simpletons will say "anybody out between 2AM and 6AM is up to no good".
It's not 'anybody' out between 2 and 6 am. It's the THUGS. But they can't 'profile' like that.
Look, I'm a native who talks straight.
It's black teens/men who are the majority of criminals in N.O.
It's the street culture, the tribal mentality people who kill in daylight too, but who insist on finding-and being-targets in the night.
Right now ANYONE in the street between those hours is in danger of becoming dead. And it's all over, because the only targets left are other thugs with vendettas and the parts of the city that were largely unaffected by The Thing. So the bluebloods Uptown don't feel so safe anymore( they never were), and the artsy/liberal crowd trying to gentrify the Marigny and other decaying areas are learning that 'wuv and understanding' isn't protecting them.
It's a full, strongly enforced, curfew or what we have now.
The thugs have the advantage, and PC protecting them, and they know it. Martial law or every law-abiding citizen remaining here arms themselves and starts shooting back-its that or put up with the crime until the next hurricane solves all the problems.
The real reason for a checkpoint ..... more revenue from fines.
That may be true in that one area of New Orleans, but unfortuantely checkpoints will be successful and will then be embraced by other parts of the country and that is a very bad thing.
The only reason with checkpoints will be successful is it it will increase the "on the street" presence of police officers. The same thing could be accomplished by just increasing foot patrols in bad areas. No one would have problem with that except for the lazy cops that are common today that just want to sit in their cars hidden in the bushes pulling or the adrenaline junkies that just enjoy serving no-knock warrants in the middle of the night so that they can play soldier.
Checkpoints are very anti-freedom and unfortunately both liberals and social conservatives love them.
We agree about checkpoints. But the laughable thing about checkpoints here, in N.O., is that they WON'T work.
First- the police are incompetent AND many are related to/friends with the thugs.
Second- these aren't little burgulars we're talking about. These thugs are armed with automatic weapons and they fear NO ONE. They will avoid the checkpoints handily, or they will take out the cops manning them.
COUNT on it.
There are miles and miles of empty,destroyed houses for thugs to hide in- not to mention the housing projects. Believe me, we could round up HALF the criminals in N.O. in one night by simply raiding the projects.
No can do- profiling again.
And checkpoints are going to stop vehicles( if they'll stop). How about the neighborhood thugs who walk down the street to rob and kill. That's mostly what we have here. Home they go, and the homeys in the hood saw nothing and know nothing.
Checkpoints, like every other law, will be obeyed by the law-abiding. Criminals will not be affected-at least not here. So don't worry that effective checkpoints here will cause other cities to adopt the practice. The increased presence of officers will be fruitless. Most cops here are thug friendly, and those that aren't are so disgusted they are talking walk-out.
I know ranking police officers- career men- who are talking major walkout. If that leaves 100 cops in the city I'd be surprised.
So it means Federal officers/military will be needed- and that can't go on forever.
The checkpoints will not work, and will not be seen as an effective tool against crime elsewhere- trust me.
Things here are too far gone. The animals are running the zoo. The non-criminal population is half gone, and the rest aren't willing to get ugly with criminals.
New Orleans is gone. The infrastructure is destroyed, the tax base is gone, business and tourism is being killed by crime and politics and here comes hurricane season again.
It's post-apocolyptic here, like a Mad Max movie, Bartertown.
Nothing short of martial law- and relocation to a higher altitude, will save New Orleans.
Exactly! Having lived in that city for the better part of the last decade and luckily left before Katrina, the main problem was and apparantly still is, the internal corrpution. It was horrifying with Mayor Mark Morial - IDIOT! and only got margianally better with Nagin (who I voted for as he came across as a conservative business leader which makes me an IDIOT!). I lived Uptown and was one of the only people I knew who wasn't held up at gunpoint, however my car did get messed with and set on fire. All in all though, I left New Orleans loving it and with a special place in my heart for it as it used to be, and kind of mourn what used to be, bad as it was! I went there knowing the risks, worked, got my degree, made the best of it and had a blast! I was one of the only Republicans there, and that was fun too...
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