Serpas' policy for the last year has been to issue a press release detailing the rap sheet of any homicide victim who had one. The aim, Serpas says, is to give the public "a broader perspective of events."
A broader perspective means understanding that it's your own damn fault if you get shot around here. Respectable citizens run little risk of a violent end.
It is true that the chances of dying in a hail of bullets are somewhat higher for a Ninth Ward drug dealer than, say, for a CPA in Lakeview. And it turns out that 64 percent of victims do have a record. This is evidently supposed to reassure honest burghers, who can attend to their business while young black men are gunning one another down out of earshot.
It would take a callous spirit, however, to blow off the dire stats because the underclass bears the brunt. And to imply that a victim had it coming, as Serpas' policy appears to do, is a sentiment more appropriate to a mafia don than a police chief.
Serpas' (and also Landrieu's) increasingly callous PR strategy of slandering victims and going on TV to pretend a street thug they've arrested is the equivalent of some sort of evil genius would be no less insulting to basic human dignity even if it were at all effective in reducing the still skyrocketing murder rate.
But it's also worth noting that such buffoonery is not anything new. Gill's column reminded me that Serpas isn't the first public hero to try and tell us that bad things only happen to bad people. In 2007 Ray Nagin told a meeting of cruise ship executive much the same thing.
Echoing Letten's comments, Nagin described the city's violent crime as concentrated and unlikely to affect visitors who frequent tourist destinations.
"You don't have anything to worry about," Nagin said. "I'm looking at this audience and you all don't look like young African-American males who are involved in drug activity."
There were 199 murders in the City of New Orleans in 2011. What your leaders want you to know about that, though, is as long as your little head is pretty enough, you shouldn't have to worry it too much about that.
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