It's Time for Eddie Jordan to Resign

Eddie Jordan is a disaster. He needs to resign. He has done the unthinkable -- almost managing to make us forget how incompetent he is at his job, i.e., at prosecuting criminals. His incompetence as a District Attorney has largely been overshadowed this week by the need for taxpayers to pay for his racist employment practices and by his apparent harboring of a fugitive cop killer. We all need to jam the phone lines at the District Attorney's office with calls for his resignation, tell all of our other elected officials they need to publicly call for his resignation, tell our state senators and state house members to impeach him, flood local talk radio with complaints about him, and do anything else you can think of to force him out of office. The Eddie Jordan Should Resign bumper sticker is available here.

Quentin Brown for City Council

Just kidding with the post title. I'm not really endorsing him, but I thought I'd share my experience with local character and perennial City Council candidate Quentin Brown, who is now running for the at large slot that is open after Oliver Thomas' guilty plea and resignation.

During the run-up to the last City Council election, I was outside edging my lawn when Quentin walked by and introduced himself as a candidate for the spot that Stacy Head ultimately won. He was funny. Since I was tending to my lawn, he also offered his lawn care services to me. He gave me two business cards, one for the lawn care and odd jobs business, and for some reason, he gave me a second business card with a business name of "Cash Money, Inc." or something along those lines. I looked it up in the Louisiana Secretary of State corporations database, and it wasn't listed there, so if he really has such a company, it must be registered in another state or offshore.

My lawn guy hadn't returned after Katrina at the time, so I called Quentin for an estimate and ended up using him for months. Many yard men come and go whenever they want, and you never know when they may show up, making it difficult to open locked gates, arrange payment, etc. Quentin was different. He came promptly every two weeks and always called in advance to confirm to make sure he was paid on time.

He was also serious about campaigning, saying that he took three days a week away from his businesses to campaign. His handwritten campaign flyers and signs were classic. His signature catch phrase was "No More B.S." On some signs, he wrote out the word "bull" and abbreviated the "s." On other signs, though, he abbreviated the "b" but spelled out the "s" word. If you're going to abbreviate one of the two words in b.s., who would abbreviate the first word but not the second?

I ended up parting ways with Quentin and his lawn service for two reasons. My pre-Katrina yard man returned to the area, and I wanted to support him since he flooded. Also, Quentin pushed his car detailing business as an add-on service he could provide, and I had him detail one of my cars. When he and his assistant were done, the loose change in my console was missing.

Weak Field Running for City Council At-Large

So far, a weak field of candidates has signed up to run in the October 20 special election to replace criminal Oliver Thomas. Diana Bajoie, Jackie Clarkson, Cynthis Willard-Lewis, Gail Masters Reimonenq (a cousin of Stan Pampy Barre) and Dyan French have entered the race, and Tommie Vassel is expected to declare today. This is not a stellar group, and none of these candidates seems likely to change anything for the better. We need to do better than this.

Wall Street Journal Editorial on New Orleans Property Taxes

It's entitled Property Tax Flood: The Real Battle of New Orleans.

To stop local governments from collecting tax windfalls when property values spike, the state requires local governments to roll back property tax rates in hot housing markets. But this being New Orleans, the city has followed the law in the past by cutting property tax rates only to immediately raise them again. Mayor Ray Nagin refuses to rule out playing the same game this year. His office wouldn't answer our questions on the issue, referring us instead to the city's tax assessors.

Notwithstanding Mr. Nagin, there is an opportunity for leadership here. The biggest threat facing New Orleans beyond another hurricane is that too few people will return to the city. The city's population is about 60% of what it was pre-Katrina, and many former residents still seem to prefer living in FEMA trailers to returning home. High property taxes don't help. Or as former Governor Huey Long once quipped, "one day the people of Louisiana are going to get good government--and they aren't going to like it."

The City Council will likely cut property taxes and Council President Arnie Fielkow is taking the lead in meeting with homeowners to discuss the issue. What the Council must now decide is whether to give homeowners a strong reason not to flee the city before their property tax bills come due later this year.

Will One of the Cynthias with a Hyphenated Last Name be Next to Plead Guilty?

Dambala thinks so.

Magazine Street Reopens After More Than Two Years

After a disgraceful two years plus being closed, Magazine Street has finally reopened. What a failure of leadership. In any other city, you would never have even the most obscure cul de sac street closed for that long, much less a major retail, restaurant and commuting thoroughfare.

Oliver Thomas' Guilty Plea

Here is a link to the court documents in the Oliver Thomas case, including the bill of information and the factual basis for the plea. He stipulated to the factual basis on July 18, 2007, so he and the government kept this quiet for a while. He admits to taking $19,000. I hope he's happy that he threw away his career, reputation and freedom for a lousy $19,000.

Hopefully Pampy Barre and now Oliver Thomas will continue to rat out others who plundered our taxpayer money during the Morial administration and heads will continue to roll. Marc Morial is probably having a little trouble sleeping these days as he waits out the statute of limitations for his crimes in exile in New York.

I shouldn't have to say this, but folks, please don't vote for Thomas for Mayor in 2010 if for some reason he is legally able to run and does run. It shouldn't be necessary to recommend that people not vote for criminals (or incompetents), but the left's track record on this isn't very good.

Oliver Thomas Resigns and Pleads Guilty

Oliver Thomas has resigned from the City Council and pled guilty to demanding illegal payments from a parking lot operator with a City contract. Stan "Pampy" Barre rolled over on Thomas in an attempt to lessen his own sentence for a fraudulent energy savings contract signed by Marc Morial. Who will Barre turn on next? Lefties had big hopes for Thomas to become Mayor in 2010.

Magazine Street Still Closed

Unbelievably, the 1300 block of Magazine Street is still closed. It has been blocked for more than two years. What a failure of leadership. It is unacceptable for even the most minor street to be closed for that long, let alone a major street for commuters, shoppers and diners.

Gabrielle Restaurant Gives Up

Greg and Mary Sonnier have given up their effort to open Gabrielle Restaurant, their acclaimed Mid-City restaurant, Uptown on Henry Clay. Everyone has a different version of what transpired, with various players blaming the Sonniers, Shelley Midura, Eddie Sapir, Clancy's, Monkey Hill and Jay Batt. The Sonniers fault Shelley Midura and Eddie Sapir. Ashley blames the Sonniers, rips Jay Batt and defends Shelley Midura. Ernie, who lives right next to the Uptowner/Gabrielle, has the best coverage, and make sure to read the comments to his post also.

WINO Approved

Wine Institute New Orleans, or WINO, received City Council approval for a zoning change allowing it to remain open.

Cynthia Hedge-Morrell: "Do You Know Who I Am?"

City Councilman Cynthia Hedge-Morrell yells "Do you know who I am?" at a state trooper who pulls her over for going 100 MPH on the shoulder of I-10. If you have to ask someone if they know who you are, you're not that big of a deal.

City Council Approves Trump Tower

I still don't think it will ever come to fruition, but Donald Trump has City Council approval to build his 70 story tower at Poydras and Camp.

Riley, Jordan Agree to Drug Field-Tests

Riley said the district attorney's office will now accept the results of police field-testing kits, used to confirm suspected drugs are the real thing, with one caveat: that police turn over a lab report within 24 days. It's just one example of a compromise in the often testy relationship between the two departments. The issue over the use of the kits, which have been relied upon more in the absence of a fully functioning crime lab, came to a head in February during a City Council subcommittee hearing. During the hearing, council members demanded answers and less finger-pointing from Jordan and Riley.

E-Mail from Shelly Midura about Crime

Dear District A Resident,

The level of violent crime currently plaguing New Orleans is intolerable. I know you are all angry, impatient, and looking towards your city's elected officials for leadership and an appropriate response. I share your anger and impatience. Our stakes are no less than the recovery of the great American city of New Orleans. We need a smarter, more effective criminal-justice system. Without functional, evidence based, accountable and effective public safety there is no recovery. As an elected official, I get that. We have no higher priority than the safety of New Orleans. But reform means doing things differently if we want a different result.

New Orleans, you deserve accountability from your government. We have a responsibility to deliver. While it takes money to solve some of our crime problems, money alone will never be the answer. The city has allocated close to 1/3 of our general fund to the criminal-justice system. We were averaging over 100,000 arrests per year before Katrina in a city of 460,000 people. We had the nation's 4th largest city jail and the world's highest incarceration rate. We currently have more law enforcement patrolling our streets in New Orleans than we have ever had before in our city's history. Yet despite all the millions of dollars, record numbers of law enforcement patrols, massive incarceration, and hundreds of thousands of arrests, the bottom line is that these traditional policies have still failed to make us safer.

We have heard from countless citizens about the impact of crime on their everyday lives. Whether it's the murder count, whether it's the recent armed mugging in the parking lot of Gulfstream on St. Charles, the attempted break-in in broad daylight on the 1400 block of State Street, or the various other incidents of crime in District A or elsewhere in the City. We are on it. Public safety is our number one priority.

We are facing a crisis that threatens the survival of our great city and this crisis requires an immediate triage in response as well as a plan for the longer term. Short term steps are under way to address the crisis - increased police visibility, foot patrols, increased street lighting, and after-dark checkpoints around the city. In the longer term the Council has been actively engaged in mapping a reform process with the goal of increasing the effectiveness of all our city's multiple criminal justice agencies. We need our police and district attorneys to work more closely together to ensure quality investigations and better prosecution of violent criminals. We need a higher functioning system that works with all its parts more seamlessly and efficiently. We need greater accountability, increased transparency, and reforms derived from data, research, and evidence. As a member of the Council, I commit to you that I will be vigilant in oversight of our struggling criminal justice system. But in order to for us to truly survive this crisis we must do even more, we must rise to the challenge and begin to think altogether differently about crime.

My office has been actively engaged on the issue and has worked especially closely with Councilmember Head and Councilmember Carter who have provided great leadership by reaching out to best practitioners around the country to help New Orleans solve our crime problem and by working to hold our system accountable. As we've researched successful models around the country we've discovered how different our system is in New Orleans compared to others and we've found some lessons learned and basic principles to guide us as we rebuild our city's criminal justice system. The Boston model has taught us the importance of options for judges, for programs and a strong social services support infrastructure that New Orleans currently lacks. New York teaches us the importance of data in driving policy solutions and the allocation of resources whether it's the deployment strategy of police through compstat or whether it's the detention policy determining who belongs in jail and who does not. Efficiency has got to be one of our principles when we are already spending close to 1/3 of our general fund on police and detention and our city is strapped for funds with so many other existing financial responsibilities.

We've also learned the importance of professionalism versus politics. Just as I believe it makes good sense for levee boards to be managed by engineers instead of politicos, I also believe that we must minimize the influence of political power in our criminal justice system so that it does not compete with the interests of public safety. We must insist upon increased professional standards from police who are charged not only with making arrests, but also with conducting complex investigations, writing quality police reports, and engaging neighborhoods and soliciting witness and community participation in the crime fighting process. When only 2% of a police force has a college education it may adversely affect the quality of investigations and the strength of a criminal case. If Chief Riley requests it, I would fully support measures and funding incentives to aid him in recruiting and retaining more qualified police officers.

In November this council addressed the pay issue for police by increasing their salaries, along with other city workers, by 10%. The Council went even further with the District Attorney's office by increasing the salaries of prosecutors by 30% to raise the average starting salary from $35k to $50k. Our job is to equip these agencies with the tools they need to do their jobs and then to provide oversight to ensure they are administrating effectively. The crime committee council meeting on Monday at 1:30 is open to the public and is a function of our responsibility to provide oversight and hold departments accountable.

I am more than seriously concerned by Thursday's Times Picayune report that states that there has only been one conviction out of the 162 murders from 2006. No reasonable citizen can find that kind of performance by our criminal justice system acceptable. It is, in fact, outrageous. We have an across the board breakdown in multiple agencies. We need a closer working relationship between police and prosecutors to ensure investigations and cases are as strong as possible to hold violent criminals accountable. We need a detention system that reduces recidivism. We need courts that prioritize cases involving violent criminals who pose a serious public safety threat.

Crime is not the cause of a city dying. Crime is the symptom of a city dying. Crime is the sound of a city dying. If we truly want a final solution for public safety, we will need a much stronger public education system and we will need to expand our city's middle class by offering our poorer and working class citizens economic mobility with better paying job opportunities. And while the recent civic activism around the issue demonstrates how engaged you all are as citizens, I encourage you to remain organized and vigilant. I am reminded of the great success and reforms brought on by active citizens in reforming our system for levees and assessors by demanding they be managed by professionals rather than by politics. We need those same principles, public passion, and organization to reform our criminal justice and public education systems. Our city's recovery and long term future depend on it.

City Council Grills Jordan and Riley

Monday's session seems fairly unproductive.

Both New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley and District Attorney Eddie Jordan said they are eager to work together to quash surging city crime. But the meeting ended with a fair share of finger-pointing and few resolutions.

The pair's fractured working relationship was on full display as council members pressed the two men on the state of their departments and the high rate of release and the low rate of conviction of arrested individuals, tying those problems to a lack of cooperation between their offices.

Eddie Jordan and Warren Riley Called to City Council Meeting

The City Council has asked District Attorney Eddie Jordan and Police Superintendent Warren Riley to appear at a meeting tomorrow. Here is a list of the twelve issues to be addressed at the meeting. The most significant is the high number of 701 releases. 701 refers to the release of a suspect if charges are not brought by the DA within 60 days of the arrest.

City Council Says Endymion Should Roll in Mid-City

The City Council has backed Endymion's return to Mid-City.

City Council Skeptical of Trash Deal

The City Council questions Mayor Nagin's trash contract. I do not think the robotic trash collection will work in certain areas of the city given the congestion, on-street parking, trees, etc.