Who is watching the watchers?
“We do understand the concern. There were some officers who were not patrolling in their areas assigned. That has clearly been addressed,” Riley said.
Those words were spoken as if it were a minor event, a missed hair appointment or an off schedule RTA bus; not the murder of a French Quarter resident by teenagers out on a crime spree and the lack of patrols in the area in spite of repeated calls for such by residents.
Will a more heavily armed yet absent and leaderless police force make us safer? Somehow I doubt it. Crime has been and continues to dominate the conversation about the rebuilding of New Orleans and our leader in the NOPD has no more than a shrug for our concerns.
When asked to work towards more transparency the rhetoric is that we want to but the reality is not so. Just the other night I received a call from a friend in District B, using the e mail alerts from the police along with docket master they were able to determine that 80 percent of the crime in the area was being committed by the same 2 people. When they took the information public the names on the e mail blast suddenly disappeared. In all sectors when push comes to shove what little public information we have made available to us is retracted when we put it to use.
While we begin the long exhaustive election cycle the most oft repeated phrase I hear from friends as well as those in the media is should I stay ?
“Most basically, calculus is the study of change, in the same way that geometry is the study of space.”
The next year those of us who live here and those of us who migrated here will ask ourselves the same question over and over, “is it worth it”? And the answers will vary from person to person but at this rate the resounding response becomes why stay? Our own personal geometry of re-creation gives way to a calculus of survival.
While we ponder why the police can’t seem to do the jobs assigned them we also have to ponder the sad reality that we have an out of control police department. one that needs reform, it seems simple to me, we need to start at the top in order to gain an understanding and control of what happens on the street. At the rate we are going calculus will win over geometry.
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COMMENTS
I was accosted while waiting for a friend outside his apt on Dauphine last weekend. The cops stopped, frisked me and threated to arrest me for “loitering.” It is appauling how officers treat you like a criminal, how disrespecting law abiding citizens is common place and we wonder why the force is so ineffective? It feels like a police state—I’m more afraid of the police than the muggers.