The Mean Month
I'm hearing that distant helicopter again. Last night the search light blasted briefly through my undraped windows; it was better than the effect of a disco ball, even if I don't dance. I judged the distance by the muted sound of the chopper. Chopper is slang for helicopter. It is also what the local youth of the street call the fully automatic weaponry--some hybridization or bastardization of the Israeli Uzi or the Russian AK-47--that is so prevalent on their streets. But let's not talk about modern aviation and weaponry.
On Monday, with primitve motive and that relatively primitve butcher's knife, two youngsters, brothers they were, murdered a college student on Fourth and Magazine in the Irish Channel, adjacent to the Garden District. The student had adopted the admirable but bad habit of allowing those in need to come to his door for small monetary handouts. The girlfriend upstairs heard the boyfriend say he didn't have any money to give, she heard a struggle, went down, saw the two brothers carrying the student by his hands and feet, she then ran back upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom and dialed 911. When the police came they found the front door open, the boyfriend dead with two stab wounds in his chest, and apparently a couple of minor items stolen from the house. The girlfriend was noted to be (understandably) hysterical. Ten thousand dollars quickly added to the standard Crimestopper's reward (you can remain anonymous, identified by a file number, and don't have to testify in court) had the brothers dimed out and in jail within 24 hours. A third brother was arrested the next day for accessory after the fact--letting the brothers hide in his crib.
On Wednesday a major drug sting in the Iberville Projects (bordering the French Quarter to the north) culminated with 14 arrests. Police also collected 100 pounds of weed, 1.5 kilos of heroin, a few hundred rocks, 250,000 dollars in cash, and a tractor/trailer. A product of the First (police) District himself, new police chief Eddie Compass III remarks that the drug activity in and around the Iberville projects was directly related to the high murder rate for that area--25 per cent of the First District's 44 murders for the year have occurred in or around the Iberville. He boldly, perhaps too brazenly, stated that we will see a drop in the murder rate in that area. There have been two, possibly three murders near the Iberville in the three days since he said that, but we can still hope for better days.
For his part Chief Compass is determined to do more than just hope. He has enlisted the help of the state police and for a few days now there have been joint operations in the city's high crime areas. I assume the helicopter with the spotlight is part of that.
I am grateful for the efforts of the previous chief, Richard Pennington, who after losing his bid to be mayor, accepted the top job with Atlanta's police department. He did in his years here unquestionably bring improvement to a department nearly crippled with corruption. And he promised to cut the murder rate in half, and he achieved that. What I have lately come to realize though is that that promise was a bit of political snow (blow) job to ease the minds and hearts of the New Orleans citizenry, and which was at least somewhat calculated, I think, to pad the resume of a basically very decent guy with high ambitions. He was playing with a fairly obvious spike in the murder rate graph. The 420 murders that year were statistically very unlikely to recur, with even the slightest intervention from an improved police force. All I'm saying is--at the time it seemed like a remarkable thing to promise and when the promise came to be, we all got blinded by the apparent greatness of the accomplishment. We loved our chief. I don't know jack about statistics but I think what we have been left with here is something that goes by the title--the mean numbers. How appropriately descriptive that is. And I think our beloved chief knew that is what he was promising us.
Bottom line though, Richard Pennington was good for this city at a time when only an outsider could have affected the necessary changes. Now though, with our mean numbers to deal with every year, we are lucky to have a hometown boy in the trenches. I think Eddie Compass will be part of brighter future for this city. He's seen enough. We've all seen enough.
On Thursday, Eric McCormick, a young man I have known for several years, and have referred to by various names, was, while in jail for car theft, booked on one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder for an incident in New Orleans East back in December. His younger brother, Glynn, is one of the core Dumaine kids I used to spend time with each Sunday, and still see ocassionally.
On Sunday in the BW Cooper projects a crowd of nearly 200 people gathered to celebrate the murder of that project's most unfavored son, Alexis "Slam" Williams. While his family wept, word of the killing moved quickly throughout the complex and people came in numbers, kids eating candied apples and snacks, and adults drinking beer, as they gathered around and rejoiced at the sight of Williams' dead body under an oak tree. Suspected of several but charged with only one murder himself, Alexis Williams was a person no one would testify against.
On Monday, the Times Picayune's editorial department ran a scathing indictment against those people who celebrated the William's death.
On Thursday Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald ran a column also lamenting the behavior of the residents of the BW Cooper (aka. Calliope) projects. He yearned for a day when such residents might gain the "intestinal fortitude" to deal with the Slam Williamses of the world by turning to the police before circumstances lead them to behave in such unkindly fashions as murder and celebration thereof.
Several days passed with no murderous crime reported. It is these days which keep the NO murder rate down as an end of year number. Which keeps this city in the top ten per capita murderville every year, but not number one.
Then tropical storm Isidore came through and dropped 25 inches of rain. The Wednesday before landfall the heaviest rains hit and I watched from my windows and front porch as Iberville Street, and half of my block of Rochebalve Street, flooded mildly. Three or four inches of standing water in my back and side yard were all there was at Rocheblave. I was at Dumaine today (Friday, long enough to realize the A: drive wouldn't accept my movie reviews, so nothing for the dmtree, but did not ask any of the ten or twelve teenagers residing therein how high the waters got. I did remind Glynn that his St. Louis Rams have lost eight in a row, but Glynn remained hopeful and loyal, which is a thing I greatly admire about him. He did not think my suggestion that perhaps Kurt Warner's contract with the devil having expired was a theory worth considering. It did not hold water, in his opinion.), and I could see the ruts in the grass of the neutral ground on Broad Street which prove the water got high enough to scare people to park their cars up there, a six inch advantage which often is all the difference between dry car and flooded, stinky carpeted car.
In the Wednesday-Thursday twenty-four hour period during which Isidore was all the worry, there did occur six murders. I have done the per capita comparison to a large city like New York before; in this case it would calculate out at 120-140 murders in a single day. Which I think would be world news. (Would link in nicely with the assassination style murder madness in DC/Maryland occurring a few days after this. I can't help hearing Barbara Walters reporting "tonight on 20-20, Madness in America, what is weely going on?")
One of the NO dead was a 7-year old kid named Ishmael, who while trying to protect his mother from being beaten by her 49-year old boyfriend was chased from the house by boyfriend and then repeatedly stabbed in the chest until dead, in broad daylight while stunned church-goers watched.
And the only reason the murder count wasn't 7 in a 24-hour period is because the gun jammed when the alleged gunman, 19-year old Bryan Nelson, fired at Amy Briede as she lay on the floor of her home in Fabourg St. John (near the Bayou St. John and the Fairgrounds), next to her husband Christopher, who had just been executed with a gunshot to the chest. Amy had been carjacked to the nearest ATM on Broad Street and was then brought back to the house where the gunman's accomplice(s) held hostage her husband. The click of the gun was her salvation, and she lives.
The hurricane Lili produced a frightening lot of wind. Between the two storms the most notable violence was the surviving of a man on N. Villere, in Treme, who was shot twenty-five times.
Invariably, those artists and celebrities of the cinema that come here from elsewhere, and are famous enough to be quoted, say the same thing when speaking about the unspeakable allure of New Orleans. They, each and every one, use the word "Ghosts" to describe what they most notice about this place. And they got that right. In many cases the blood is barely yet dried when they walk around that corner where reside the spirits they talking about.
I feel bad for Brandon the guy shot in the head over his car in the Iberville Projects
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I'm hearing that distant helicopter again. Last night the search light blasted briefly through my undraped windows; it was better than the effect of a disco ball, even if I don't dance. I judged the distance by the muted sound of the chopper. Chopper is slang for helicopter. It is also what the local youth of the street call the fully automatic weaponry--some hybridization or bastardization of the Israeli Uzi or the Russian AK-47--that is so prevalent on their streets. But let's not talk about modern aviation and weaponry.
On Monday, with primitve motive and that relatively primitve butcher's knife, two youngsters, brothers they were, murdered a college student on Fourth and Magazine in the Irish Channel, adjacent to the Garden District. The student had adopted the admirable but bad habit of allowing those in need to come to his door for small monetary handouts. The girlfriend upstairs heard the boyfriend say he didn't have any money to give, she heard a struggle, went down, saw the two brothers carrying the student by his hands and feet, she then ran back upstairs and locked herself in the bathroom and dialed 911. When the police came they found the front door open, the boyfriend dead with two stab wounds in his chest, and apparently a couple of minor items stolen from the house. The girlfriend was noted to be (understandably) hysterical. Ten thousand dollars quickly added to the standard Crimestopper's reward (you can remain anonymous, identified by a file number, and don't have to testify in court) had the brothers dimed out and in jail within 24 hours. A third brother was arrested the next day for accessory after the fact--letting the brothers hide in his crib.
On Wednesday a major drug sting in the Iberville Projects (bordering the French Quarter to the north) culminated with 14 arrests. Police also collected 100 pounds of weed, 1.5 kilos of heroin, a few hundred rocks, 250,000 dollars in cash, and a tractor/trailer. A product of the First (police) District himself, new police chief Eddie Compass III remarks that the drug activity in and around the Iberville projects was directly related to the high murder rate for that area--25 per cent of the First District's 44 murders for the year have occurred in or around the Iberville. He boldly, perhaps too brazenly, stated that we will see a drop in the murder rate in that area. There have been two, possibly three murders near the Iberville in the three days since he said that, but we can still hope for better days.
For his part Chief Compass is determined to do more than just hope. He has enlisted the help of the state police and for a few days now there have been joint operations in the city's high crime areas. I assume the helicopter with the spotlight is part of that.
I am grateful for the efforts of the previous chief, Richard Pennington, who after losing his bid to be mayor, accepted the top job with Atlanta's police department. He did in his years here unquestionably bring improvement to a department nearly crippled with corruption. And he promised to cut the murder rate in half, and he achieved that. What I have lately come to realize though is that that promise was a bit of political snow (blow) job to ease the minds and hearts of the New Orleans citizenry, and which was at least somewhat calculated, I think, to pad the resume of a basically very decent guy with high ambitions. He was playing with a fairly obvious spike in the murder rate graph. The 420 murders that year were statistically very unlikely to recur, with even the slightest intervention from an improved police force. All I'm saying is--at the time it seemed like a remarkable thing to promise and when the promise came to be, we all got blinded by the apparent greatness of the accomplishment. We loved our chief. I don't know jack about statistics but I think what we have been left with here is something that goes by the title--the mean numbers. How appropriately descriptive that is. And I think our beloved chief knew that is what he was promising us.
Bottom line though, Richard Pennington was good for this city at a time when only an outsider could have affected the necessary changes. Now though, with our mean numbers to deal with every year, we are lucky to have a hometown boy in the trenches. I think Eddie Compass will be part of brighter future for this city. He's seen enough. We've all seen enough.
On Thursday, Eric McCormick, a young man I have known for several years, and have referred to by various names, was, while in jail for car theft, booked on one count of murder and two counts of attempted murder for an incident in New Orleans East back in December. His younger brother, Glynn, is one of the core Dumaine kids I used to spend time with each Sunday, and still see ocassionally.
On Sunday in the BW Cooper projects a crowd of nearly 200 people gathered to celebrate the murder of that project's most unfavored son, Alexis "Slam" Williams. While his family wept, word of the killing moved quickly throughout the complex and people came in numbers, kids eating candied apples and snacks, and adults drinking beer, as they gathered around and rejoiced at the sight of Williams' dead body under an oak tree. Suspected of several but charged with only one murder himself, Alexis Williams was a person no one would testify against.
On Monday, the Times Picayune's editorial department ran a scathing indictment against those people who celebrated the William's death.
On Thursday Leonard Pitts of the Miami Herald ran a column also lamenting the behavior of the residents of the BW Cooper (aka. Calliope) projects. He yearned for a day when such residents might gain the "intestinal fortitude" to deal with the Slam Williamses of the world by turning to the police before circumstances lead them to behave in such unkindly fashions as murder and celebration thereof.
Several days passed with no murderous crime reported. It is these days which keep the NO murder rate down as an end of year number. Which keeps this city in the top ten per capita murderville every year, but not number one.
Then tropical storm Isidore came through and dropped 25 inches of rain. The Wednesday before landfall the heaviest rains hit and I watched from my windows and front porch as Iberville Street, and half of my block of Rochebalve Street, flooded mildly. Three or four inches of standing water in my back and side yard were all there was at Rocheblave. I was at Dumaine today (Friday, long enough to realize the A: drive wouldn't accept my movie reviews, so nothing for the dmtree, but did not ask any of the ten or twelve teenagers residing therein how high the waters got. I did remind Glynn that his St. Louis Rams have lost eight in a row, but Glynn remained hopeful and loyal, which is a thing I greatly admire about him. He did not think my suggestion that perhaps Kurt Warner's contract with the devil having expired was a theory worth considering. It did not hold water, in his opinion.), and I could see the ruts in the grass of the neutral ground on Broad Street which prove the water got high enough to scare people to park their cars up there, a six inch advantage which often is all the difference between dry car and flooded, stinky carpeted car.
In the Wednesday-Thursday twenty-four hour period during which Isidore was all the worry, there did occur six murders. I have done the per capita comparison to a large city like New York before; in this case it would calculate out at 120-140 murders in a single day. Which I think would be world news. (Would link in nicely with the assassination style murder madness in DC/Maryland occurring a few days after this. I can't help hearing Barbara Walters reporting "tonight on 20-20, Madness in America, what is weely going on?")
One of the NO dead was a 7-year old kid named Ishmael, who while trying to protect his mother from being beaten by her 49-year old boyfriend was chased from the house by boyfriend and then repeatedly stabbed in the chest until dead, in broad daylight while stunned church-goers watched.
And the only reason the murder count wasn't 7 in a 24-hour period is because the gun jammed when the alleged gunman, 19-year old Bryan Nelson, fired at Amy Briede as she lay on the floor of her home in Fabourg St. John (near the Bayou St. John and the Fairgrounds), next to her husband Christopher, who had just been executed with a gunshot to the chest. Amy had been carjacked to the nearest ATM on Broad Street and was then brought back to the house where the gunman's accomplice(s) held hostage her husband. The click of the gun was her salvation, and she lives.
The hurricane Lili produced a frightening lot of wind. Between the two storms the most notable violence was the surviving of a man on N. Villere, in Treme, who was shot twenty-five times.
Invariably, those artists and celebrities of the cinema that come here from elsewhere, and are famous enough to be quoted, say the same thing when speaking about the unspeakable allure of New Orleans. They, each and every one, use the word "Ghosts" to describe what they most notice about this place. And they got that right. In many cases the blood is barely yet dried when they walk around that corner where reside the spirits they talking about.
- jimlouis 10-05-2002 8:24 pm
I feel bad for Brandon the guy shot in the head over his car in the Iberville Projects
- anonymous (guest) 7-07-2004 12:10 pm [2 comments]
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- CharlesTon (guest) 2-19-2021 1:41 pm [ comments]
Tinder keep the Greatest Hits coming.....
- Skinny 2-19-2021 1:50 pm [ comments]