The morality police and their scribes

It's good that we all got out this weekend and marched against fascism again.   From the looks of things, though, we're gonna need to keep at it.  Our local officials don't seem to have gotten the message.

A waitress at Rick's who asked to remain anonymous said in a statement provided by Rutherford that during the raid, officers potentially put employees at risk by reading out their full names in front of customers as the workers provided their identification.

Also, the group of officers involved in the operation included only one woman, meaning male officers stood guard in the dressing room as the women changed, despite loud protests from the women, the waitress said.

Drug-sniffing dogs were brought along during the operation, and officers made several derogatory references suggesting all the dancers were drug users, the waitress said. She said two women were arrested at the club, one for having an outstanding warrant and another on an allegation of disturbing the peace.

The investigation is the largest of its type in New Orleans since Operation: Trick or Treat, which shut down a half-dozen clubs accused of allowing drug sales and prostitution in 2015. Some of those clubs reopened after signing agreements with the ATC requiring them to install surveillance cameras, hire outside security firms and make other changes.

This round of raids is one of a series of items enumerated in the mayor's French Quarter "security" plan. Some of these include the bollards recently installed on Bourbon Street, a recent feint at closing down the bars at 3 AM, and, of course, the "surveillance ordinance" currently under consideration by City Council.   Reading through the security plan one quickly comes to see it as more of a tourism marketing document about amenities and "branding" strategies. The crack down on the strip clubs emanates from language like this.

The City Planning Commission will undertake a study of how to improve the character and use of the buildings in the French Quarter to limit illegal uses and activities. In the near term, the City will seek to limit issuances of adult use occupational licenses, enhance requirements for live entertainment venues, and revise the Vieux Carré Commission design guidelines to enhance safety and security measures. Overall, this action will lead to a rebranding of the French Quarter and Bourbon Street’s image as a cultural destination.

It also emanates from a dubious media campaign orchestrated last year by the Times-Picayune with heavy push from the fanatics who run the New Orleans Covenant House.

(Covenant House Director Jim) Kelly’s targeting of the strip clubs is just part of the national Covenant House’s longstanding fight against sex work, from internet advertisements today to street prostitution in the 1970s. Covenant House founder Father Bruce Ritter saw his work as getting youth off the streets and out of the sex trade, at first by getting them into his apartment. Ritter was later forced out of the organization when several men he had taken off the streets said he had paid them for sex, reports which an internal review confirmed had long been known to the organization. Kelly himself has been with Covenant House since the 1980s, and founded the New Orleans branch of the agency. As the issue of sex trafficking has gained in national prominence (in part due to the national Covenant House’s campaigning), Kelly and Covenant House New Orleans have re-positioned themselves as trafficking experts. Covenant House New Orleans touts its role in serving people they say have been trafficked or forced into the sex trade, and who are “turning [their] life around.”

Kelly's agitation and propaganda campaign is funded by a $900,000 Department of Justice grant and he works in "partnership" various local and federal law enforcement arms. So that's a lot of official money and police power behind an agit-prop campaign directed by a religious crusader with the help of... one of the many many Landrieus afoot.

“We ended up looking at whether we could do something we thought was really simple,” Landrieu told In Justice Today. “Raise the age of those who can dance in strip clubs to 21.” Landrieu, dean of the Loyola University law school and sister of former New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu, said working with Covenant House was her introduction to the issue of trafficking. “These women don’t even initially recognize sometimes what they were involved in,” Landrieu said. She admitted that “every woman who goes and works in a strip club is not trafficked,” but claimed that the clubs are “a gateway or a pathway [to trafficking] for women.”

That's Madeleine Landrieu, by the way. The article doesn't include her first name which is an unfortunate mistake given the way that clan proliferates.  It also refers to "former New Orleans mayor" Mitch which is only sort of true at the moment. RIP copy editors. But in a media landscape where the T-P is running full features and a month of editorials in support of these kooks then why even bother to sweat the small stuff anymore?