Build the dang fence

We need to do something to stem the tide of out of control Jefferson Parish Sheriff's deputies from pouring over the border into New Orleans and committing these acts of heinous violence.

Should Jefferson Parish deputies have opened fire at an escapee at the new hospital in New Orleans? Investigators aim to answer that question.

Police say a Jefferson Parish inmate being treated for heroine ingestion escaped from University Medical Center in New Orleans and was arrested after trying to get inside a woman's car.

New Orleans police spokesman Tyler Gamble says Jefferson Parish deputies shot at 26-year-old Domonique Battle as they chased him down a stairwell and down the street outside University Hospital. But they didn't hit anyone.

This is the second such incident in as many months.

An officer-involved shooting that began as a car chase on the West Bank of Jefferson Parish and ended on the East Bank of Orleans Parish has led to a war of words between officials in the New Orleans Police Department and those who support the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office in the wake of the deadly shooting that claimed the life of 22-year-old Eric Harris and spawned a U.S. Department of Justice investigation.

Nola.com reported that NOPD Public Integrity Bureau chief Arlinda Westbrook angered law enforcement officials when she told members of the Harris family on March 8 that NOPD officers “would have been arrested on the spot” if they — and not JPSO deputies — had been responsible for the shots that claimed the life of Eric Harris.

Westbrook made the controversial comments at a community forum exactly a month after the Feb. 8 shooting of Eric Harris in Central City.

Her remarks incensed Donovan Liccari, president of the local chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, who the following day called her comments “reckless, inflammatory and unnecessary” and said should resign.

Liccari may be "incensed" about those remarks but we have to wonder if they go far enough.  Clearly there is a problem with these JPSO animals coming over into our parish unchecked. Maybe we need to build some sort of big beautiful wall to slow the onslaught. We may even get them to pay for it.  After all, once upon a time, it was their idea in the first place. 

Mr. Lee prompted outrage by suggesting that his deputies could randomly question young black men in high-crime areas. He later abandoned the plan but made no apologies for it.

Earlier in his career, he put up barricades between mostly black New Orleans and mostly white Jefferson Parish. Later, after a rash of robberies in white neighborhoods, he ordered his deputies to arbitrarily stop "young blacks in rinky-dink cars" driving in white neighborhoods. Both times, he quickly backed off.