Protest Against Police Violence Takes Over French Quarter Police Station

On Thursday, August 14, New Orleans activists held a moment of silence in solidarity with protests in Ferguson, Missouri, at 6:00pm in Lafayette Square. After the silent vigil, hundreds of attendees initiated a spontaneous protest march.



The march grew as it went, as people spontaneously joined and at least 400 people protested in the French Quarter, pausing across from Jackson Square, where speakers included a cousin of Mike Brown, the young man killed by police in Ferguson.



The march then traveled to the NOPD 8th District station, where at least 200 activists occupied the police station and spoke against law enforcement violence.



While news of the takeover of a police station spread across the US on social media, the local media for the most part failed to cover the protests, just as they had ignored the 600 people marching for justice in Palestine two weeks before. This media silence is part of a long history of New Orleans white media companies ignoring struggles led by people of color.






Photos by Abdul Aziz. Videos by Foster Bear Films, So-Called Media, and Jordan Flaherty.

Protests This Week Show Dissent on New Orleans Criminal Justice System

Two upcoming protest marches have revealed divisions among New Orleanians in their views of police and the criminal justice system. Organizers of an LGBT March and Rally Against Hate and Violence, scheduled for this Wednesday at 8:00pm, and Slutwalk New Orleans, scheduled for this Saturday at 10:30am, have both advertised and embraced a police presence as part of their events, bringing criticism from other activists.

The facebook description of the LGBT March announces that the New Orleans police "will be there to escort us and protect us." The full description reads:

Please join us for a rally and a march to show the presence of the LGBT community in the French Quarter. As I am sure many of you know, there have been several recent anti-gay hate crimes in New Orleans and especially in the French Quarter and the Marigny. There have been many robberies as well. It is time that we start to show our connection to our community. We need people to see that we are united in our commitment to each other. We need them to know that if someone in our community has been victimized that we are there to support each other, either by getting people to report crimes that have been committed or by helping them to report the crimes if they feel that cannot do it on their own. During this march, the NOPD will be there to escort us and protect us. This is a great opportunity to get to know your local police. I encourage signage and your presence to show that we can be united and that it is the responsibility of us all to overcome these crimes in our neighborhood. So please join us on a walk through the French Quarter starting at the entrance to Armstrong Park at the corner of N. Rampart and St Ann.

In response, activists - including members of New Orleans Black & Pink, Critical Resistance, and other local organizations - have organized a rally with a more critical view of the police. They have released a statement that notes the harm done by law enforcement.

Our home is the incarceration capital of the world. One in 86 adult Louisiana residents is in prison. Approximately 5,000 African-American men from New Orleans are in state prisons, compared to 400 white men. Our city jail, Orleans Parish Prison, is a site of rape and violence that a Human Rights Watch report called "a nightmare" for LGBTQ individuals. Incarceration has not made us safer as a community— and in fact does not deter crime. When our community members are locked away, it tears at the social fabric that holds our community together. Children grow up without parents at home, lovers long for their partners, and groups miss their members.  

These activists have organized an alternate march and rally, called the LGBTQ March and Rally For Safety In Solidarity, aimed at presenting a different path towards community safety.

Supporting each other in the face of violence does not have to take the form of reporting to police. Community safety comes from solidarity and liberation. It comes from ensuring that all people have access to basic necessities such as food, shelter, employment, and education. We hope that through dialogue we can address concerns of all members of our community and arrive at empowering solutions together.

This division in the LGBTQ community is not new. Writing in the book Captive Genders, Morgan Bassichis, Alexander Lee and Dean Spade discussed the participants in the Stonewall Rebellion, who rioted against police:

Could these groundbreaking and often unsung activists have imagined that only forty years later the "official" gay rights agenda would be largely pro-police, pro-prisons, and pro-war - exactly the forces they worked so hard to resist? Just a few decades later, the most visible and well-funded arms of the "LGBT movement" look much more like a corporate strategizing session than a grassroots social justice movement. There are countless examples of this dramatic shift in priorities. What emerged as a fight against racist, anti-poor, and anti-queer police violence now works hand in hand with local and federal law enforcement agencies, district attorneys are asked to speak at trans rallies, cops march in Gay Pride parades. The agendas of prosecutors - those who lock up our family, friends, and lovers - and many queer and trans organizations are becoming increasingly similar, with sentence- and police-enhancing legislation at the top of the priority list. Hate crimes legislation is tacked onto multi-billion dollar "defense" bills to support US military domination in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, and elsewhere. Despite the rhetoric of an"LGBT community," transgender and gender-non-conforming people are repeatedly abandoned and marginalized in the agendas and priorities of our "lead" organizations.

Saturday's "Slutwalk"is part of an international movement against rape culture. The movement began in Toronto, in response to statements from police officers that placed blame on women, and their their outfits or behavior, for being raped. Despite its goals and history, the movement has often been criticized for using language that excludes women of color. Shortly after the movement began, Canadian organizer Harsha Walia wrote this analysis:

Slutwalk runs the risk of facilitating the dominant discourse of ‘liberated’ women as only those women wearing mini-skirts and high heels in/on their way to professional jobs. In reality, capitalism mediates the feminist façade of choice by creating an entire industry that commodifies women’s sexuality and links a woman’s self-esteem and self-worth to fashion and beauty. Slutwalk itself consistently refuses any connection to feminism and fixates solely around liberal questions of individual choice – the palatable “I can wear what I want” feminism that is intentionally devoid of an analysis of power dynamics.

The history of Slutwalk as a mostly white movement that excludes women of color is also highlighted by the timing and location of this year's march and rally. The rally begins at Congo Square at 10:30am. At the same place and time, an annual event called the Celebration of the African American Child is scheduled for the park, while just a few blocks away and a half hour earlier is an immigrants' rights march, sponsored by the New Orleans Congress Of Day Laborers.

On March 27, the organizer of New Orleans Slutwalk announced that law enforcement would be part of the event.

I am so super, special, extra excited to announce that representatives from several departments of the ‪#‎NOPD‬, and quite possibly other law enforcement agencies, will be joining us prior to the walk to discuss crime prevention and victims assistance in New Orleans!!!! For those of you who know the history of the SlutWalk movement...this is HUGE! HUGE!!!!!

While no counter protest has been planned for Slutwalk, this announcement brought responses similar to those expressed by critics of the LGBT march and rally. One commentator wrote, "the presence of the NOPD is offensive, threatening and problematic... Feminist politics without a racial/class analysis is not in fact feminist." The NOPD has been criticized in the past year for statements that blame women for sexual assault, and NOPD officers have frequently been charged with committing sexual assaults.

In response to online criticism, the Slutwalk organizer wrote:

I don't need to be "schooled" on feminism or why some might be offended or disturbed by the presence of law enforcement. I am well aware of the distressing behavior and actions of many within the NOPD and other agencies in this city. What I DO know is that as SlutWalk started because law enforcement failed the community, establishing dialogue with the police in this city is a starting point. Do I expect their presence to magically do away with racism, transphobia, sexism, misogyny, or any other issues we have with law enforcement? No. But I do know that without dialogue, none of those issues will ever be addressed.

Solidifying the links between these marches, today the organizer of the Slutwalk march posted a facebook invitation to the LGBT March and Rally Against Hate and Violence.

The conflicts revealed in these demonstrations are not new, but in the context of gentrification and displacement, a culture of police violence and an out of control city jail, they come at a time in our city when these issues evoke particular pain and passion. Organizers of the LGBTQ March and Rally For Safety In Solidarity do not see themselves as protesting the other march, but rather "calling in," to build a safer community without the devastating effects of the prison industrial complex.

Statement From LGBTQ March and Rally For Safety In Solidarity

For more information on the reasons for this statement, see this link.

As members of the LGBTQ community in New Orleans, we support the safety and well-being of our community and of all New Orleanians. We believe that increased police presence and the continuing expansion of the prison-industrial complex is not the way to make our community safer.

The LGBT March and Rally Against Violence to be held Wednesday, April 2 calls for strategies that put our community members at more risk, not less. From Compton's Cafeteria riots and the  Stonewall Rebellion in the 1960s to the work of contemporary groups such as INCITE!: Women, Gender Non-Conforming, and Trans People of Color* Against Violence, Critical Resistance, Women with a Vision, BreakOUT!, and Black & Pink, LGBTQ people have taken stands against police violence and harassment. Increasing police involvement in our community threatens the safety of many of us.  

We ask that the goals of your march be changed to call for real safety for all of us through solidarity, rather than false solutions of policing and jails. We are also calling for dialogue with the march organizers and the wider LGBTQ community.

Policing, surveillance, and imprisonment target specific groups of people: people of color, transgender, genderqueer and gender-nonconforming people, street youth, and sex workers. The state of Louisiana still has a "Crime Against Nature" law on the books, and this law is used against the LGBTQ community, including in Baton Rouge where police were found to be using this law to target gay men. In New Orleans, 82 people have been charged with "Solicitation of a Crime Against Nature" in the last two years, resulting in a felony conviction with required sex offender registration. This law, which unjustly criminalized in large numbers low-income Black women and transgender women of color, was challenged by Women With a Vision and the Center for Constitutional Rights, who won a victory in 2012 that removed approximately 700 individuals from the sex-offender registry.

A 2010 study published in the journal Pediatrics found that in our schools, LGBTQ youth are more likely to be suspended, arrested and imprisoned. The report published by the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, Locked Up & Out: LGBTQ Youth and Louisiana’s Juvenile Justice System, shares the stories of what happened to many of these young people in Louisiana.

A 2012 study by the National Coalition of Anti-Violence Programs found that transgender individuals experience three times as much police violence as non-transgender individuals, and those numbers are even higher for transgender people of color. In New Orleans, organizations such as BreakOUT! and Women With A Vision have documented patterns of discrimination from the NOPD against the LGBTQ community, including rampant police profiling and threats of using condoms as evidence of prostitution, especially against transgender women of color.

Here in New Orleans, the US Department of Justice found that the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) has discriminatory practices against the LGBTQ community and specifically addressed these issues in the Federal Consent Decree. This followed organizing by LGBTQ youth of BreakOUT! in their campaign, “We Deserve Better.” The campaign also resulted in the adoption of Policy 402 on the 44th Anniversary of the Stonewall riots, which prohibits the profiling of people on the basis of gender identity, gender expression, and sexual orientation. These victories only came after years of grassroots organizing by LGBTQ youth, and yet with continued police harassment, much more remains to be done. 

Our home is the incarceration capital of the world. One in 86 adult Louisiana residents is in prison. Approximately 5,000 African-American men from New Orleans are in state prisons, compared to 400 white men. Our city jail, Orleans Parish Prison, is a site of rape and violence that a Human Rights Watch report called "a nightmare" for LGBTQ individuals. Incarceration has not made us safer as a community— and in fact does not deter crime. When our community members are locked away, it tears at the social fabric that holds our community together. Children grow up without parents at home, lovers long for their partners, and groups miss their members.  

Policing and incarceration is also a tool of gentrification and displacement, adding to a hostile environment for working class African-American residents still recovering from Hurricane Katrina. We can look to the examples of the controversies in Chicago's Boys Town neighborhood and New York City's West Village. In Boys Town, perceived increase in violence led to white gay men calling for more police patrols, and in doing so the LGBTQ youth of color who hung out near the community center in the neighborhood were unfairly targeted by the increased police. That effort did not support the unity of the LGBTQ community. A similar situation evolved in the West Village in New York City, where residents, many of whom were white, affluent gay men, responding to incidents of violence, pushed for Quality of Life policies. FIERCE, an LGBTQ youth of color organization, has campaigned against these policies, stating: "To this day, LGBTQ youth who go to the pier have reported sharp increases in police harassment, false arrest and racial and gender profiling - usually for just being in the neighborhood...This emphasis on policing drew massive resources from other social services and education that have the potential to actually address poverty and safety. In fact, under Giuliani and continuing through the years of the Bloomberg administration, the only 'public service' that increased funding was 'criminal justice.'"

Here in New Orleans, we've already begun to see the impact of massive gentrification projects on low-income LGBTQ communities of color. The targeting of transgender women on Tulane Avenue by the NOPD continues to put some of our city's most vulnerable populations at even greater risk for violence and danger. For many LGBTQ communities of color, increased policing and increased use of surveillance equipment means increased risk of harm.

Supporting each other in the face of violence does not have to take the form of reporting to police. Community safety comes from solidarity and liberation. It comes from ensuring that all people have access to basic necessities such as food, shelter, employment, and education. We hope that through dialogue we can address concerns of all members of our community and arrive at empowering solutions together.

Signed:

BreakOUT! 

Women With A Vision 

Critical Resistance - New Orleans 

Black & Pink - New Orleans 

Safe Streets Strong Communities 

Equality Louisiana

Trystereo - New Orleans Harm Reduction Network 

Louisiana Trans Advocates

European Dissent

Queerspiracy
Occupy NOLA

New Orleans Police Department Issues LGBTQ Policy on Anniversary of Historic Stonewall Riots Against Police Brutality

From a press release from BreakOUT!

After organizing for over two years, BreakOUT! members enjoyed a victory today in the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD) with the issuing of Policy 402, dealing with the treatment of members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer/questioning (LGBTQ) community. 

The policy includes protocols for stopping and searching transgender individuals and mandates that officers be trained on issues pertaining to the LGBTQ community.  Most importantly, the policy specifically mandates that, Officers shall not use an individual's actual or perceived gender identity, or sexual orientation as reasonable suspicion or probable cause that an individual is or has engaged in any crime.  (NOPD Policy 402.4)

"While BreakOUT! is hopeful for the policy's implementation, we recognize that much more must be done to ensure the safety of queer and trans youth of color on the streets of New Orleans," said BreakOUT!Youth Organizer Derwin Wilright, Jr.

Members and organizers of BreakOUT! were disappointed in the lack of community engagement during the policy's development. While BreakOUT! secured a commitment from the NOPD in October 2012 to meet with members prior to the adoption of any LGBTQ policies after members testified about their experiences with the NOPD in front of City Council, it was not until March 2013 that BreakOUT! was invited to a meeting.  This meeting was only after BreakOUT! sent over 300 emails to Chief Ronal Serpas demanding that the NOPD keep their promise to LGBTQ youth in New Orleans. 

After receiving the first draft of the policy, BreakOUT! called for public meetings for the NOPD to solicit community feedback and engage community members in policing reforms.  BreakOUT! held a rally in front of NOPD headquarters to deliver a statement with signatures from over 15 organizational partners to call attention to racial and gender profiling and Stop & Frisk practices, including Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition. 

Although the NOPD refused BreakOUT!'s request for a public meeting, youth members solicited community feedback on the policy themselves and brought community members, including representatives from the Congress of Day Laborers, to the NOPD meeting with them.

All of this comes as the Department of Justice and City of New Orleans continue to battle over desperately needed federal oversight of the NOPD.  While these policies are a step in the right direction, BreakOUT! members say they are a far cry from the sweeping reforms needed to keep community members safe from  harmful and discriminatory policing practices in New Orleans.

It is notable that the policy was released on the 44th Anniversary of the historic Stonewall Riots, where queer and transgender youth of color and drag queens fought back against police brutality and police raids in Greenwich Village in New York.

"We can see that little has changed in the last four decades and BreakOUT! must continue the tradition of organizing for a safe and just city," said Milan Alexander,BreakOUT! Youth Organizer.  

New Orleans Police Department Blames Victims

The New Orleans Police Department recently released a statement on "women and safety," that has outrage across the city and furthered the perception that this police department does not get it. They are more interested in blaming the victim than preventing assault. With absurd advice like "don't get into an elevator with a stranger," or "dress comfortably so you can move quickly if you have to," the statement is pure victim-blaming. We have pasted the entire release below.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE March 23, 2013 New Orleans Police Department Crime Prevention Unit Women and Safety  Violent crime can happen to any woman, anywhere, in any situation. Victims and attackers come from all economic classes and cultural backgrounds. Often, victims know their attackers. Violent crimes can happen any time of the day.  You can help protect yourself by understanding the risk and learning how to reduce them.  Stay out of isolated areas: Avoid little-used stairwells, parking lots and roads. Don’t get into an empty elevator with a stranger. Trust your instincts. If you sense trouble, get away as soon as possible. Show confidence. Walk at a steady pace. Keep your head up. Avoid carry lots of packages. It can make you look defenseless. Practice street smarts. Plan the safest route before you leave. Dress comfortably, so you can move quickly if you have to. Don’t wear headphones. It’s important to stay alert. Vary your biking and jogging route, and bring a friend. If someone follows you, change course and head toward other people. Stand back from the car when giving motorist directions. Take self defense classes. When using public transportation: Wait at busy, well-lit stops. Sit close to the driver. Speak loudly or yell if you feel threatened. Use caution on dates and in relationships. Beware of alcohol and other drugs. They affect judgment. Watch how much your date uses them, too. Don’t leave your drink alone. And don’t drink anything you didn’t get, open or pour yourself. “Date rape drugs” mixed in drinks can leave you at risk. Make your sexual limits firm and clear. Be independent. Don’t let your date make all the decisions. Provide your own transportation. Avoid secluded places.   Know the warning signs of abuse. Watch for behavior and attitudes in your date, partner or friend that signals trouble. For example, he or she may: Show a lack of respect for your feelings or ideas. Want to make all of the decisions. Frequently display anger, mistrust or jealously. Misuse alcohol or use of other drugs. Responding to an attack Only you can decide how to respond, and no one strategy will work every time. But in   general:  Size up the situation. You have several options. Many women will: Scream for help or yell “Fire!” Run away Fight back If you think resisting would put you in more danger, cooperate. Remember that your survival is most important. Do whatever you think is best. If you have been attacked or sexual assaulted: Act quickly. Get to a safe place. Get in contact with a friend, relative or rape crisis center. Go to the hospital. Don’t shower, brush your teeth, douche, comb or clean any part of your body, or change your clothes. This might destroy medical evidence. Tell the police. Remember, an attack is never your fault. Don’t blame yourself. Sergeant L. J. Smith New Orleans Police Department Commander, Crime Prevention Unit 715 S. Broad Avenue, Office # A- 412 New Orleans, LA 70119 (504) 658-5590 – Office Phone Sylbrown@nola.gov - Email

Mayor Landrieu and Ronal Serpas Wage War Against the City of New Orleans

Mayor Mitch Landrieu ran for office on a promise of reform of the city's police department. He promised a national search for a new police chief as his first major initiative as mayor. Then the members of his search team began quitting, saying the process was rigged. When Landrieu "national search" ended with the choice of his childhood friend, it was clear that our new mayor had a different vision of reform than many in this city.

So it should come as no surprise that the mayor who made a big statement about inviting in the Department of Justice to oversee the NOPD recently ended up taking back his invitation. 

Community members protested Mayor Landrieu's decision to ignore community input and hire Ronal Serpas. They protested his choice from day one; Serpas' inauguration. Landrieu ignored the protests and warnings, and insisted his choice was the right one. And now, three years later, New Orleans still has among the highest murder rates of any city in the world. It still has the highest incarceration rate of any city in the world. It still has one of the most corrupt police forces in the world, and that force continues to kill young Black men, like Justin Sipp and Wendell Allen. They continue to attack Black youth: one recent incident was captured on video, when police (state police and NOPD) rushed at two kids whose only crime was being Black and in the French Quarter.

Serpas and Landrieu have fiddled while the city burned. Last summer, faced with reports that New Orleans' murder rate had gone up in his first two years, Serpas declared, "I think we're seeing exactly what we wanted to see." Tulane criminologist Peter Scharf responded, "If this is good I don't know what bad would look like...I'd prefer frankly, some serious self introspection and staring at the numbers to figure out what's going on, rather than congratulating yourself."

Landrieu's major anti-crime effort of the past year seemed to rest on a badly-conceived advertising campaign that most people found either confusing or offensive.

Serpas' efforts have been marked by terrible ideas that were launched with big fanfare then quietly shelved, like his idea to release the criminal records of murder victims - the ultimate in blaming the victim from a police chief that was desperate to find anyone to blame but himself for policies gone badly wrong. Then there was his plan to send officers around checking to see if car doors were locked. His department put out a much derided statement on sexual assault that seemed to place blame for sexual assault on the victims, with advice like "Dress comfortably, so you can move quickly if you have to," and, "Don’t get into an empty elevator with a stranger."

In a city that already had the highest incarceration rate in the world, the Landrieu-Serpas team not only sought to increase arrests for petty offenses, they also seemed to have declared war on the culture the city is known for. Prosecutions of alcohol vendors rose 628%. In the city famous for Storyville and sex workers as culture workers, Serpas arrested as many indigent women who were selling sex as he could. Landrieu-Serpas have attacked secondline vendors, musicians, costume-sellers, live-music venues, and seemingly everyone else that creates the culture this city is known for. His traffic cameras have made most of their money by catching people driving what they think is the correct speed limit, not by enforcing public safety.

Overall, there is a feeling in New Orleans that Mayor Landrieu prioritizes the concerns of tourists over the people who actually live here. In response to this tendency, Rosana Cruz, Associate Director of VOTE (Voice Of The Ex-offender), has named Landrieu our "concierge-in-chief." Cruz added:

Please understand, out of town guests, I want you to have a good time! But we also constantly hear local and state officials telling the nation, “Your party is real important to us! New Orleans is a place to come and have a good time!” The unspoken end to that sentence is, “no matter how much pain and suffering is still happening.”

Luna Nola, another local blogger, echoed that theme with a recent post, in which she noted:

The movers and shakers of our city seem hell-bent to attain the desired 13 million annual visitors at any cost. Do you ever get a sinking feeling that those coveted 13 million non-residents seem to matter more than the ~370,000 New Orleanians who, to date, have dug their heels in to rebuild this city? I do… and with ever increasing frequency, as the Landrieu Administration continues to march relentlessly to the beat of its own drummer.

With a serious lack of community trust in the police department, Serpas made things worse through an aggressive policy of harassing and arresting Black youth - in which 93% of those arrested for curfew violations are Black, and a stop-and-frisk policy that has apparently ensnared 70,000 people and is likely racially discriminatory. Meanwhile his department lied and concealed the records for these policies. 

And when evidence came out that New York City police officers were spying on New Orleans residents, Landrieu and Serpas had no reaction.

A recent editorial by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund Lewis lays out the breadth of opposition Landrieu's reign has brought:

After several years of community meetings designed to document NOPD misconduct, several years of investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice and more than a year of negotiations and debate about the proposed NOPD consent decree and efforts on the part of the Landrieu Administration to prevent the inclusion of a civilian oversight panel in the decree, the mayor has decided that the NOPD consent decree is “not necessary.”

You have got to be kidding me.

Mind you, this is also after decades of murder, terrorism, robberies, corruption and unconstitutional policing by New Orleans’ finest, including the murders of Kim Groves, Ronald Madison, James Brissette, Henry Glover, Raymond Robair, Adolph Grimes III, Steven Hawkins, Justin Sipp, Wendell Allen and all the other men, women and children gunned down by the NOPD, tangible evidence of continuing racial profiling in the Mid-City Retail District and French Quarter and the recent attack on two Black teenagers in the French Quarter.

This is the mayor of White Chocolate City who has publicly described his Black critics as dysfunctional and called the cops involved in the shooting of Earl Sipp and the killing of Justin Sipp “heroes.”...

I don’t think this mayor gets how tired people of this city are of him. Even those who detested the mayor’s predecessor and once believed that anyone would be better than what we had after the Great Flood of 2005 are now questioning the wisdom of making such a declaration.

Cab drivers are tired of the mayor and the way he has undermined their ability to earn a decent living.

Minority contractors who continue to be locked out of opportunities to do business with the City of New Orleans are not happy with the mayor.

Civil-service workers who are being undermined by their boss at City Hall while watching him give his inner circle six-figure salaries are certainly tired of the mayor.

NORD referees who the city takes its time to pay are fed up with the mayor.

Residents who pay exorbitant property taxes but see no improvement in the infrastructure, no reduction in neighborhood blight or adequate police protection are sick and tired of this mayor and his shenanigans.

Civil rights groups and leaders who the mayor excluded from taking part in annual events commemorating the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and Juneteenth have certainly had their fill.

Elderly residents on fixed incomes who have been forced to pay more in Sewerage & Water Board bills and will likely be similarly fleeced by Entergy are sick of him.

Mothers whose sons have been racially profiled by the NOPD have had enough of this mayor.

For decades, New Orleans has had one of the most corrupt and violent police forces in the world. Mayor Landrieu promised to change that, but he and his police chief have fought against change, and every step they have taken seems to have made things worse. New Orleans deserves better.

Mayor and Police Chief Still Silent in Response to NYPD spying in New Orleans

This article originally appeared in Louisiana Weekly.

Editor’s Note: Documents recently uncovered by Associated Press reveal that the New York City Police Department traveled to New Orleans in 2008 to conduct surveillance operations.

In a Pulitzer prize-winning series of investigations over the past year, the Associated Press revealed that the New York City Police Department was conducting spying operations on U.S. citizens across several states, including as far away as here in New Orleans. However, the difference in how cities have responded to the revelations highlights much of what is wrong with our local political system, criminal justice system, and even media.

Compare New Orleans to Ne­wark, New Jersey. When evidence of New York City spying activities was uncovered, it became a major story across New Jersey print and TV. Here in New Orleans, The Louisiana Weekly was the only outlet to cover the story (although the Times-Picayune did reprint the Associated Press story).

In New Jersey, politicians from across the political spectrum were quick to condemn the spying program. New Jersey’s Republican governor, Chris Christie, told reporters that he was angered by the spying. “I don’t know if this NYPD action was born out of arrogance, or out of paranoia, or out of both,” he declared at a press conference. On the Democrat side, Newark mayor Cory Booker called the spying program “offensive,” and his police chief Samuel DeMaio assured residents that “this type of activity is not what the Newark PD would ever do.”

When Mayor Landrieu and Superintendent Serpas were asked for their comment on the actions of the NYPD, both appeared to be completely in the dark, and displayed little curiosity. “To be honest with you, I think that’s the first I’m ever hearing that,” said Serpas when asked at a recent press conference. “So I don’t know anything about it one way or another. I might have to catch up.”

“I hadn’t heard about it,” agreed Mayor Landrieu, speaking at the same press event. When asked if he approved of the NYPD actions, Landrieu commented, “I don’t like getting spied on,” but had no further comment.

Ryan Berni, the mayor’s director of communications, refused all follow-up requests for comment. When asked if the mayor’s office has any comment or opinion on the story, he gave this three-word answer: “We do not.”

In response to follow-up inquiries, NOPD spokesperson Frank Robertson told me, “we have researched this incident and in no way is it documented in our records.” When pressed, via email, for any opinion on the appropriateness of another city’s police department conducting surveillance activities in New Orleans, Robertson added this cryptic phrase: “Surveillance is the epicenter on crime fighting initiatives.”

This cavalier attitude is cause for concern. Mayor Landrieu has made police reform a centerpiece of his administration’s focus. When our mayor and police chief show that they don’t care about their citizens’ civil rights, and when our media and politicians treat these violations less seriously than it would be treated in other cities, it adds to New Orleans’ status as a “second-class” city, and gives all of us, as residents, second-class rights. Until we have a mayor and police chief take these issues seriously, reform of our criminal justice system will remain stunted.

Seven Years After Katrina, A Divided City, By Jordan Flaherty

A version of this article originally appeared on TruthOut.org.
 

Seven years after Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans has become a national laboratory for government reforms. But the process through which those experiments have been carried out rarely has been transparent or democratic. The results have been divisive, pitting new residents against those who grew up here, rich against poor, and white against Black.

Education, housing, criminal justice, health care, urban planning, even our media; systemic changes have touched every aspect life in New Orleans, often creating a template used in other cities. A few examples:

- In the weeks after Hurricane Katrina, more than 7,500 employees in city’s public school system were fired, despite the protection of union membership and a contract. Thousands of young teachers, many affiliated with programs like Teach For America, filled the empty slots. As charters took over from traditional public schools, the city became what then-superintendent Paul Vallas called the first 100% free market public school system in the US. A judge recently found that the mass firings were illegal, but any resolution will likely be tied up in appeals for years.

- Every public housing development has either been partially or entirely torn down. The housing authority now administers more than 17,000 vouchers – nearly double the pre-Katrina amount –a massive privatization of a formerly public system. During this period, rents have risen dramatically across the city.

- The US Department of Justice has spent three years in negotiations with city government over reform of the police department. The historic consent decree that came out of these negotiations mandates vast changes in nearly every aspect of the NOPD and some aspects could serve as a model for departments across the US. But organizations that deal with police violence, as well as the city’s independent police monitor, have filed legal challenges to the agreement, stating that they were left out of the negotiations and that as a result, the final document lacks community oversight.

- As the city loses its daily paper, an influx of funding has arrived to support various online media projects – including $880,000 from George Soros to one website. In a city that is still majority African-American, the staff of these new media ventures is almost entirely white, and often politically conservative. These funders – many of whom consider themselves progressive - have mostly ignored the city’s Black media, which have a proud history of centuries of local resistance to the dominant narrative. Publications like Louisiana Weekly covered police violence and institutional racism when the daily paper was not interested. Wealthy liberals are apparently still not interested.

There is wide agreement that most of our government services have long deep, systemic problems. But in rebuilding New Orleans, the key question is not only how much change is needed, but more crucially, who should dictate that change.

New Orleans has become a destination for a new class of residents drawn by the allure of being able to conduct these experiments. For a while, they self-identified as YURPs (Young Urban Rebuilding Professionals).  Now they are frequently known as “social entrepreneurs,” and they have wealthy and powerful allies. Warren Buffet has invested in the redevelopment of public housing. Oprah Winfrey and the Walton family have donated to the charter schools. Attorney General Holder came to town to announce police department reforms. President Obama has visited several times, despite the fact that this state is not remotely in play for Democrats.

Many residents – especially in the Black community – have felt disenfranchised in the new New Orleans. They see the influx of college graduates who have come to start nonprofits and run our schools and redesign our neighborhoods as disaster profiteers, not saviors. You can hear it every day on WBOK, the city’s only Black-owned talk radio station, and read about it in the Louisiana Weekly, Data News, and New Orleans Tribune, the city’s Black newspapers. This new rebuilding class is seen as working in alliance with white elites to disenfranchise a shrinking Black majority. Callers and guests on WBOK point to the rapid change in political representation: Among the political offices that have shifted to white after a generation in Black hands are the mayor, police chief, district attorney, and majorities on the school board and city council.

In a recent cover story in the Tribune, journalist Lovell Beaulieu compares the new rebuilding class to the genocide of Native Americans. “520 years after the Indians discovered Columbus, a similar story is unfolding,” writes Beaulieu. “New arrivals from around the United States and the world are landing here to get a piece of the action that is lucrative post-Katrina New Orleans…Black people are merely pawns in a game with little clout and few voices. Their primary role is to be the ones who get pushed out, disregarded and forgotten.”

People hear the term “blank slate,” a term often used to describe post-Katrina New Orleans – as a way of erasing the city’s long history of Black-led resistance to white supremacy. As New Orleans poet and educator Kalamu Ya Salaam has said, “it wasn’t a blank slate, it was a cemetery.” Where some new arrivals see opportunity, many residents see grave robbers.  In response, those who find anything to praise in the old ways are often accused of being stuck in the past or embracing corruption.

Hurricane Isaac has demonstrated that New Orleans is still at risk from storms – although the flood protection system around the city seems to be more reliable than it was before the levees failed and eighty percent of New Orleans was underwater. But have the systemic problems that were displayed to the world seven years ago been fixed by the radical changes the city has seen? Is reform possible without the consent of those most affected by those changes? These are polarizing questions in the new New Orleans.

Warning NOPD: Not My Sons! by Tracie Washington

My friends Richard and Hilda McCline needed a couple of guys to help them move boxes from the American Can to storage. So on Thursday, Jacob picked-up Donald (his friend) and they worked from a little after 11am until 2pm. On the way home, they stopped at the light at Carrollton and Tulane alongside a marked NOPD vehicle. When the light changed, both cars proceeded through the intersection and, immediately thereafter the police officers turned on their sirens. Jacob pulled over.

Jacob and Donald sat perfectly still (as they have been cautioned OVER AND OVER again), as they watched these officers, clad in those Black swat uniforms, jump out of their vehicle, jerk open the driver’s side and passenger car doors, and begin really gruff interrogations.

License and Registration

Where’s your I.D.? (Jacob hands over his driver’s license.)

Why don’t you have identification? Jacob just picked me up and I knew I would be driving so I didn’t think I needed to bring my license.

Is this your car? Yes, I mean, it’s owned by my mom, but it’s my car to drive.

What are you doing? We were doing a job for one of my mom’s friends.

Where are you coming from? The American Can.

What kind of job were you doing for these friends? This professor is moving to Georgia and so he and his wife needed help moving boxes to storage.

You boys in school? Yes, I attend Grinnell College. Yes, I attend Millsaps College. (each pointing to their gym shorts with the school names and logos on them; serendipity that they were wearing their college shorts that morning)

The officers look through the backseat of the car, walk to the back of the car, and then walk to their patrol car, wait about 30 seconds and return with this “warning” -- Just make sure you always wear your seatbelts.

Jacob and Donald had been wearing their seatbelts!

Everyone in the City of New Orleans knows, these NOPD Special Ops Jump Out Boys spend their days harassing young black men, hoping to pull over someone, open the doors to see if the smell marijuana, and then “justify” an illegal search under the guise that they smelled marijuana.

News Flash NOPD – You illegally stopped the wrong 19 year old. And because you don’t know whose son you may be stopping illegally, why not just end the illegal stops. ‘Cause see, when I'm done with these particular jokers, they will wish they had chosen a different profession. Sarah Palin could take lessons from this mamma-Grizzly. Orange is not on my color wheel, but I will wear it proudly if NOPD thugs harm my son. I’m just sayin’ ….. I’m scared every time my son is home from college. Not because of the New Orleans streets; Jacob knows how to avoid our “normal” thugs. I’m scared because I can’t tell him to avoid the “badge-wearing” thugs and in New Orleans they harass and kill Black men with impunity, and often without repercussions.

Jacob returns to Grinnell the day after my dad, Dr. Louis X. Washington, Sr., turns 75. I suppose I should find some comfort in the fact that my dad has survived 75 years of New Orleans. I don't.

I’ll sleep well again beginning August 11, 2012.

Danziger Sentences Bring Closure, With Controversy, By Jordan Flaherty

This article originally appeared on the New Orleans Tribune/TribuneTalk website.

On Wednesday, five officers were sentenced for firing on unarmed civilians on Danziger Bridge on September 4, 2005, and conspiring to cover-up their crime. The sentences bring some degree of closure to a case that has transformed the official narrative of what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. But Judge Engelhardt, who presided over the trial, brought more controversy in a lengthy speech that lambasted the Justice Department’s handling of the case.

Nearly seven years ago, officers killed 17-year-old James Brisette and 40-year-old Ronald Madison and wounded four others in a hail of gunfire on Danziger Bridge. Minutes later, they arrested two of the victims and charged them with firing at officers.

It almost worked. For years, as supervising officers conspired to plant evidence, invent witnesses, and rewrite the reports of what happened that day on the bridge, the truth was hidden. It was not until early 2009, when the Justice Department took an active role in the case, that new evidence was uncovered, witnesses were interviewed, and the conspiracy came apart. Five officers agreed to testify for the state in exchange for the opportunity to plead to lesser charges. Last summer, a jury found the five remaining officers guilty on all 25 counts (on two counts, the jury found the men guilty but with partial disagreements on the nature of the crime).

One other accused conspirator, Sergeant Gerard Dugue, was given a separate trial, which ended in a mistrial in January. Prosecutors have said they intend to retry him.

Before sentencing, the judge heard statements from family members of the victims, including Lance Madison, Ronald's brother, and Sherrel Johnson, the mother of James Brisette. Lawyers for Jose Holmes and Lesha Bartholomew, who were also wounded on the bridge, read their statements for them.

Federal public defender Robin Schulberg, who was not involved in the trial, spoke on behalf of Sergeant Kenneth Bowen, telling the judge that the officers were victims in this situation. "These people are the expendables," she said, referring to the Danziger officers. "A big institution chewed them up and spit them out."

The judge also heard from a number of family members, friends, and coworkers of the officers, and indicated that he had carefully read the large number of other written statements he had received on their behalf. The judge and defense attorneys listed the names of those who had sent statements, and among them were a large number of current and former officers. Among the notable names were Captains Harry Mendoza and Joseph Waguespack, each of whom have figured in previous NOPD controversies.

As a packed courtroom waited to hear his sentencing decision, Judge Engelhardt, who had frequently and forcefully challenged DOJ prosecutor Bobbi Bernstein during the trial, expressed frustration with the government’s handling of the case. Over the next two hours, the judge voiced his opinions at length.

The judge spoke of the 1973 killing of NOPD officers by Mark Essex from the roof of the downtown Howard Johnson as a defining moment in his life that taught him the dangers police officers faced. He read at length from a letter written by Anthony Villavaso, Sr, the father of one of the convicted officers, saying it was “one of finest letters I’ve ever received on behalf of a defendant.”

While praising the job of officers, the judge had little to say about the victims of police violence. He referred to Ronald Madison as the “most sympathetic” person involved, while James Brisette and the others went mostly unmentioned.

Engelhardt’s main complaint was the lenient sentences given to the officers who agreed to testify for the government. “Using liars lying is no way to pursue justice,” he declared. In contrast, he pointed to the mandatory minimums the convicted officers faced, which the judge said had robbed him of his judicial discretion. To drive the point home, the Judge spent nearly an hour reading verbatim from a sentencing commission report critical of mandatory minimum sentences.

Engelhardt singled out each of the officers who testified for the prosecution, saying they should have received longer sentences. Officer Michael Hunter, who fired the first shots on the bridge and as a cooperating witness was sentenced to 8 years in prison, represented “the sparks in the tinderbox without which this incident may not have happened.” Former Lieutenant Lohman “was the ringleader…the buck started and stopped with him.” When the DOJ gave Lohman a charge that sent him to jail for 4 years, they “rewarded so generously the one person in command who could have stopped this.”

Officer Robert Barrios, said Engelhardt, was “the biggest winner of the plea bargain sweepstakes.” Engelhardt said that Barrios had killed James Brisette, a conclusion that varies sharply from the case presented by prosecution, which points towards Faulcon as the one who fired the fatal shots. The jury, in finding the other officers guilty in Brisette’s killing, apparently agreed with prosecutors.

In closing Engelhardt said that he was constrained by the mandatory minimums, but he indicated that otherwise he would have given the officers much more reduced sentences. “The government’s plea bargaining in this case has already undercut any message” that harsher sentences would send, said Engelhardt.

Officers Bowen, Gisevius, and Villavaso, who all faced mandatory minimums of 35 years, received sentences totaling 38 to 40 years, far less than prosecutors had asked for. Officer Faulcon, received 65 years, the mandatory minimum he faced. Officer Kaufman, convicted of masterminding the cover-up, was the only officer not facing mandatory minimums. He received 6 years, a fraction of the 20 years prosecutors had recommended. Unlike the other officers, Kaufmann has been free for the entire trial, and remains free. The judge ordered that he turn himself in to begin his sentence on May 23.

Family members of the victims, and DOJ representatives, expressed their disagreement with the judge’s assessment.

“We were able to transform a case that was a cold case, to put it charitably,” said Thomas Perez, Assistant Attorney General, in a press conference after the sentencing. “We didn’t have a case back in 2008 when we inherited it.” Perez and US Attorney Letten said that they could not have won convictions without the testimony of other officers, which came because of the plea bargains. “I don’t know how you make a case if you don’t have some ability to bargain,” agreed Mary Howell, an attorney for the Madison family.

“We respectfully disagree with some of the comments made in court today,” said Romell Madison, brother of Ronald Madison. “But at least we got to the truth.”

Victim Impact Statement of Lance Madison

The following statement was read by Lance Madison during the sentencing of the officers involved in the killings on Danziger Bridge
Good Morning. My name is Lance Madison. I am here today on behalf of myself, my mother, my brothers and sisters and especially my brother Ronald.

On September 4, 2005 my brother Ronald was gunned down and killed, without mercy, on the Danziger Bridge. I was arrested and falsely charged with 8 counts of attempted murder of police officers.

What has become known as the massacre on the Danziger bridge has left my family and me with a deep sorrow and a void that can never be filled. It has also left me with permanent physical and emotional scars. As I stand here today, I still struggle with depression, anxiety and pain. The stress of the past six and a half years on my family has been enormous. My mother has suffered a heart attack. My sister had a life-threatening brain aneurysm. My brother is dead. On September 4, 2005, I had worked for Federal Express for almost 25 years. I was in good physical condition. I used to work out regularly and loved physical competition. But I think I ran faster that day than ever before. I still think of that run as the biggest race of my life. And I know that God must have put a shield around me during that run, protecting me from the shots these officers fired. There is no other way to explain how I escaped getting hit as NOPD officers fired multiple bullets on that bridge and at Ronald and me. It felt like we were in a horror movie, but when I saw the blood from Ronald’s shoulder, I knew it was real.

Although Ronald had the mental capacity of a six-year old child, he knew that he was badly wounded. I had to leave Ronald to go for help. If I had known that Officer Faulcon was going to come after him and shoot him again, in the back, I would never have left him alone. To my dying day I will regret that I didn’t stay with Ronald even though I know that I would have also been killed if I had stayed. I can only think that God wanted me to live so that I could testify and tell the truth about what happened. Other than that, I truly do not know why I am alive today or why I was not seriously wounded myself.

Ronald was like my own child. We were more than just brothers. He loved me and I loved him back. I was his role-model and mentor. We were also each others friend.

Ronald was basically a home-body, but he always wanted to go places with me. I would take Ronald to the park and riding around in my R.V. We would go shopping. We rode bikes together. I would take him to the video store. Ronald loved Michael Jackson. He would play Michael Jackson videos and CDs over and over, dancing to the music.

Ronald always wanted to help me do chores like washing the car and cutting the grass. The minute I would walk in the door at my mother’s house, Ronald would have a big smile on his face and announce that he was the man of the house. He would have my mail in his hand, waiting to greet me. He was always trying to help me, offering me things to eat, asking me if I needed anything. In a funny kind of way, as much as I took care of Ronald, he always took care of me too.

Ronald loved life, loved his family, and we loved him. He was a happy person and brought joy and laughter to all of us who were blessed to know him. He had a long and happy life ahead of him until that terrible day.

These officers shot Ronald down like an animal, and I had to make the awful decision to leave my injured brother’s side to try to find help. When I finally found who I thought was the National Guard, can you imagine how it felt to hear voices shout to arrest me? Can you imagine how it felt when I finally realized that the people who were trying to kill us were in fact police officers?

People all over the world have gotten some perspective into how I felt at that moment, because of the photograph that has come to represent this case. That photo of me, handcuffed and on my knees, surrounded by officers, has been republished hundreds of times. That photo still makes me sick, forcing me to remember the worst day of my life. The officers who I was accused of shooting at, knew that I was innocent. They were the ones who had fired at innocent people. That photograph shows a world turned upside-down.

I was afraid for my life the whole time I was in the custody of these officers. I didn’t know if Ronald, who was shot and bleeding, was still alive. These officers should have been doing everything in their power to make sure their victims received help and to figure out what went wrong on the bridge. Instead, they were busy framing me and covering up their crimes.

The 25 days I spent at Hunt’s prison felt like years. I was sick every day, filled with anxiety. I thought I’d spend the rest of my life in prison. I couldn’t breathe, and was certain I’d lose my mind. The only thing that kept me strong was prayer, and the thought that I might be reunited with my family, and especially with Ronald. I still relive those days I spent in prison. I still feel like I’m in prison, because I am still here, with these same officers, still struggling daily to put this nightmare behind me.

Kenneth Bowen, Robert Gisevius, Robert Faulcon, Anthony Villavaso and Arthur Kaufman. You are each responsible for this nightmare that has devastated my family. Instead of immediately acknowledging your wrongdoing, you lied for years, continuing to cover up your crimes and trying to paint your victims...including Ronald and me...as criminals. Because of your years of lying, my family, the Bartholomew family and the families of James Brissette and Jose Holmes, as well as your own families, have suffered and continue to suffer.

Mr. Bowen, to this day, I am still stunned by your cowardly acts of shooting innocent, unarmed people. You shot down a whole family and I will always believe that you kicked my brother as he lay dying on the ground. In the years since you devastated my family and so many others, I wonder if you have ever thought about how you would feel if someone committed these same crimes against your own family. I hope you have asked yourself how you could have done these terrible acts, and I hope you will someday find a way to be honest about what you have done.

Mr. Gisevius, You and the rest of these officers are the reason that I can no longer trust law enforcement. I cannot call the police when I fear for my safety, or for the safety of people around me. I hope you will reflect on your actions, and that someday you will take responsibility for the heartbreak and trauma you have caused.

Mr. Faulcon, when I look at you my pain becomes unbearable. It feels like I have been stabbed in my heart. When you shot down my brother, Ronald, you took the life of an angel and basically ripped my heart out. I still have nightmares about my brother being killed and myself running to get help, to no avail. If you had one ounce of compassion or a heart, you would not have fired that fatal shot that killed my brother Ronald. You treated us like animals and showed no mercy and no regrets.

Can you put yourself in my family’s shoes for just one moment? Have you ever tried to imagine the suffering you caused my family? Have you ever tried to imagine how you would feel if your own brother was shot down, and you were unable to save him? I truly do not understand how you were able to sleep at night for all these years while you continued to lie about what happened. I hope someday you will come to understand the devastation you have brought upon me and my family.

Mr. Villavaso, I am especially disappointed that you never came forward to tell the truth. That’s all you had to do. Tell the truth. Instead of protecting and serving my brother and me and the other victims on the bridge, you, along with the other officers, conspired together to protect only yourselves. You lied and you continued to lie for years. You should have told the truth from day one. You could have been honest, and you would have been in a better situation than you are today. You were given every opportunity to do the right thing. Instead, you decided to keep company with some of the worst role models you could have found in the department. I hope that in the years ahead, you will reflect on the bad choices you’ve made, and that you will someday find a way to be honest about your actions.

Mr. Kaufman, I have to be frank and say that when I think of you, what I feel is disgust. While you weren’t there during the shootings, none of these lies and the cover-up could have happened without you. You helped create the lies and did so in a cold and despicable way. You tried to frame me, a man who you knew was innocent, and send me to prison for the rest of my life. You tried to protect these officers, who you knew had shot and killed innocent people.

I will never forget when you took the witness stand in state court and lied and told the judge that I had a gun on the bridge. I can barely explain what my feelings were at that moment. Even today I remain horrified at your actions. I was in shock that a high-ranking supervisor with the NOPD would go into court and lie so openly.

When people talk about the bad reputation of the NOPD, you come immediately to mind. As a supervisor you had power and influence and you used it for evil purposes. How can you live with yourself? And you have still never been to jail for what you did. I have not seen a single sign of remorse or regret from you during all these long years. I sincerely don’t know that there is any hope for you or that you will ever fully realize the horrors that you created.

I am trying every day to find it in my heart to forgive all of you for what you have done. You took two lives, and destroyed many others. I hope that one day I can let go of my bitterness and hurt, and think of you all with genuine forgiveness in my heart. But that forgiveness will be extremely difficult, if not impossible, as long as you all continue to lie . You all have been lying for so long, I wonder if you even know the truth anymore. Until you become honest and tell the truth, how can we forgive you?

This has been a long and painful six and a half years. Without the federal government, the truth of what happened to us would have never been known. I am truly grateful for the love of God, and for my family, who have stood by my side with unconditional love and support. If not for my belief in a higher power and for my family, I would not have survived.

The people of New Orleans and my family are ready for justice. We are asking this Court to impose the maximum sentences on these defendants and to send a strong message that the terrible crimes committed by these police officers will not be tolerated or excused.

Thank you.

Jena Six activists and other local organizers among targets of NYPD spying

This article was originally published in the April 2, 2012 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.

In 2008, officers from the New York City Police Department took a trip to New Orleans to spy on the people of this city. The occasion was the People’s Summit, a grassroots response to a New Orleans meeting between the presidents of the U.S., Mexico and Canada to expand “security cooperation” as part of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA). Activists from across the hemisphere came together to present an alternative vision of globalization, one that empowered communities rather than corporations. Among the local organizations that participated were the Peoples Institute for Survival and Beyond, The New Orleans Workers Center for Racial Justice, and the local chapter of the Malcolm X Grassroots Movement.

The gathering consisted mostly of panels, workshops and discussions. There was street theatre from local day laborers, testimony from Mexican and Canadian workers, and links drawn between corporate profiteering after Hurricane Katrina and the corporate exploitation that was encouraged by NAFTA. Local antiracist activists led story circles – a method for communities to come together through their stories that was developed during the civil rights movement by participants in the Free Southern Theatre.

Although there were some street protests, there were no arrests, not even of the symbolic kind. There was certainly no physical threat to anyone in power – other than the threat of ideas.

And yet, in this time that we are told that municipalities must cut back, that there is no funding for public sector workers and teachers’ unions are under attack, the city of New York sent spies to New Orleans to observe this gathering and write it up in a report. Among the local organizations specifically mentioned in the report are members of the local chapter of Critical Resistance, and what the report calls the “Jena Coalition,” referring to activists who had organized around the Jena Six case.

This is far from the first time the NYPD has been caught spying far outside of New York. In a recent series of reports, the Associated Press has documented a wide array of excesses the department has engaged in under the guise of safety. An undercover officer took a whitewater rafting trip with Muslim college students and the department aggressively monitored and infiltrated mosques and Muslim businesses. The NYPD operates in at least 9 foreign countries, and apparently has no hesitation about traveling anywhere in the world they may find useful information.

Recent revelations about NYPD abuses go beyond spying. The notorious stop-and-frisk program, which has led to the criminalization of virtually an entire generation of young men of color in the city, is one example. The New York Civil Liberties Union reported that more than four million stops and interrogations from 2004 through 2011 led to no evidence of any wrongdoing – about 90 percent of all stops. Other recent revelations about NYPD abuses have included arrest quotas, sexual assaults, and the harassment and arrest of an officer who had turned whistleblower.

Here in New Orleans, public outrage has been mounting over the abuses carried out by our own city’s police department. The recent killings of Wendell Allen and Justin Sipp have produced sustained outrage. Allen’s killer remains free, just as Trayvon Martin’s killer has not been charged.

The racist treatment of the people of New Orleans in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the charges against the Jena Six, the execution of Troy Davis, and now the shooting of Trayvon Martin. All of these cases have created public outrage, a promise of a national conversation on race, and a desire for systemic change. Revelations of NYPD spying and the daily harassment known as Stop-and-Frisk show that police show a daily disrespect for the rights of the public.

Among the most recent discoveries, we have learned that one of the officers who participated in the killing of Justin Sipp wrote racist comments about Trayvon Martin on a news website.

The US Department of Justice is more engaged in oversight of local departments than they have been in at least a generation. But, at least here in New Orleans, the presence of DOJ investigators seems to have not changed the department. The question becomes: what will it take to bring real change in the nation’s criminal justice system?

Image above: From protests as part of the 2008 People's Summit.