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Home Front Economy
National Guard to re-occupy New Orleans?
2006-06-19
NEW ORLEANS (AP) - Mayor Ray Nagin asked the governor Monday to send National Guard troops and state police to patrol his city after a violent weekend in which five teenagers were shot to death.
Lottsa luck, Ray. She'll have to set up a commission to study the problem
City leaders convened a special meeting to voice outrage after the killings Saturday in an area near the central business district.
Quagmire!
``If we don't have wind knocking us down, we have shooters knocking us down, and that's unacceptable,'' said City Council President Oliver Thomas.
Why? Didn't seem to bother you guys much before Katrina.
Saturday's shootings - plus the fatal stabbing Sunday night in an argument over beer - brought this year's murder toll to 53, raising fears that violence was back on the rise in a city that was plagued by violent crime before Hurricane Katrina drove residents away last year.
The crooks must be returning home
Crime has been creeping in the city: 17 killings in the first three months of 2006, and 36 since the start of April. The shootings Saturday of five teenagers who had been in an SUV together created one of the bloodiest attacks in this city's turbulent history; the last killing with that many victims was in 1995.

Nagin asked the governor to send up to 300 National Guard troops and 60 state police officers to patrol the city. The City Council said it also would consider increasing overtime for police to put more officers on the street and it called for a "crime summit" within two weeks. "We have to deal with it now," Councilman Arnold Fielkow said. "If we don't make people feel safe in their homes, nothing will happen. Let's make this priority Number One."
A 'crime summit' will make the bigs feel like they're doing something important without actually doing anything. How about hiring a hardnosed police chief and giving him power to clean house?
Cynthia Willard-Lewis, who represents predominantly black eastern New Orleans, said a big part of the solution will be getting young people off the streets and into caring environments such as schools.
More midnight basketball, yeah that's the ticket!
She suggested opening schools after hours but didn't say how that could have prevented Saturday's 4 a.m. shooting, which police have said apparently was either prompted by drugs or revenge.

"We're looking forward to the day when ... this city returns to being one of the safest cities in America," Nagin said.
And that was when, Ray?
Posted by:Steve

#12  Great idea! The National Guard drives through the hood kicking off crates of 9mm ball at each streetcorner. Let'm shoot it out be done with it. Chocolate on Chocolate.... more ammo please.
Posted by: Besoeker   2006-06-19 15:27  

#11  First, a few true stories here "in da ATL" (Atlanta). There's already been several murders, and other "softer" crimes (not that the ATL was all that innocent to begin with, but N.O. was far worse per capita) here tied to N.O. evacuees. A few rapes too (as well as your standard thefts, corruption & bilking FEMA for thousands of $). So, those should actually count toward N.O. in my book TT7510.

Second, I met a family (who happened to be black) when we were helping them out here in Atlanta (getting settled in here). He was a sherriff in the next parish over and they lived in Kenner. Besides getting 8 feet of water in his home, he went into N.O. for security detail and told me he saw first hand the N.O.P.D. kicking people out of the French Quarter, only to turn around themselves (the cops) and rob the place. He mentioned he was an eyewitness to one of the cops taking out a duffel bag (from a jewelry store downtown) and he said it had been so heavy, it took 2 of them to take off with it. Just passing on eyewitness accounts, who were black themselves.

And,what did this gentleman do with his family. He didn't claim victim status. He got them here to suburban Atlanta, and he did electrical work on the side (of his sherriff's job), so his electrical company had an office in ATL where he started over. His wife got a job at the local JoAnn's store and his teenage daughter even switched schools and had a job too. I welcome them ALL to Atlanta...that's the way you do it. In fact, he was thinking about going back as an electrical contractor for 6 months or so (they were offering $3,000/week down there). What a true American dream story.
Posted by: BA   2006-06-19 19:05  

#10  Mayor Chocolate should be using those ghost payroll cops to come back to the city in their stolen Caddy SUV's and straighten out this problem!
Posted by: Inspector Clueso   2006-06-19 17:41  

#9  Crime has been creeping in the city: 17 killings in the first three months of 2006, and 36 since the start of April.

I wonder if the FBI would consider some of the kills in Houston to be accredited to New Orleans. You know, sort of like the visiting team's on-the-road record.
Posted by: Throlump Thromoth7510   2006-06-19 17:31  

#8  No, really. When was that, Ray?

Probably about a month after Hurricane Katrina, after they'd finally finished evacuating everyone.
Posted by: Abdominal Snowman   2006-06-19 16:06  

#7  Reminds me of the old joke about a New Orleans Bar that' so rough that they check EVERYONE for a gun or knife.
If you don't have one, they'll loan you one.
Posted by: Redneck Jim   2006-06-19 15:47  

#6  
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Posted by: Besoeker   2006-06-19 15:27  

#5  I don't know.... I think we should pull out and reorganize on the borders and be ready to go in.Also need a TIME LINE to exit!!!
Posted by: ARMYGUY   2006-06-19 15:00  

#4  New Orleans - How NOT to rebuild a city.
Posted by: DathVader   2006-06-19 14:44  

#3  DU poster reveals the truth. well, sort of:

"the kellogg, root and brown goons, as well as the blackwater mercenaries, are Halliburton paid mercenaries to look after the interest of supremacists and others who are trying to prevent THE PEOPLE from returning to NEW ORLEANS, or from returning to certain neighborhoods in NEW ORLEANS.

as such, if the national guard are still there to protect the people and their rights, then a confrontation between the national guard and the mercenaries could very easily ensue...and call it what you want but that, in short, would be a civil war."

"So what's to keep the Guard out of Detroit, Chicago, Methville LA, etc? I just see this as the thin edge of a very large wedge. They are taking up positions along the Border as we type.

I am by no means minimizing the desperate plight of your city. I just do not like what is happening. And it is happening at a very rapid rate."
Posted by: Steve   2006-06-19 14:38  

#2  Not in my lifetime. Prolly some time before 1967 if I had to take a wild guess.
Posted by: bigjim-ky   2006-06-19 13:31  

#1  No, really. When was that, Ray?
Posted by: tu3031   2006-06-19 13:06  

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