"A neighbor's complaint"

So often these incidents start with the convenient anonymous "neighbor's complaint"

As seven New Orleans police cars converged on the corner of Second and Dryades streets on Mardi Gras night, Big Chief James Harris of the Seminole Warriors grabbed for the five youngest members of his Mardi Gras Indian tribe, all of them younger than 6. Holding up his feathered purple, green and yellow wing, Harris tried to slow the cars, but they kept moving through the thick crowd of parading Indians and spectators, sirens blaring and tires squealing Harris said he barely was able to pull the children to the sidewalk. “They were scared,” he said. “One ran this way and the other ran that way.”

Starting about 6 p.m., the police cars raced for at least 15 minutes, according to cell-phone video accounts, and officers insulted bystanders, spectators said.

The episode, which a police commander characterized as a routine effort to clear streets sparked by a neighbor’s complaint of Indians with guns, has stirred memories of the events of St. Joseph’s Night 2005, when officers sped through crowds and told Indian chiefs to remove their extravagant suits or go to jail

I know a lot of cops really hate Mardi Gras. They work long hours. People are assholes to them. I get it. But it's part of the job and when they start taking their frustrations out on people like this,

“It was manic,” said Patrick Keen, a barber from nearby Brimmer’s Barbershop. When he asked an officer why they were circling the block, Keen said, the officer called him a crude name and complained that the Indians “are messing up my night.”

Two other men said they were treated unpleasantly by the same officer, said Keen, who said he walked up to Sgt. David Liang and asked to file a complaint. He said Liang ran a criminal check on Keen, finding nothing, before getting on his radio and describing the complaint, which Bardy said is being investigated.

well... you don't get to do that. And maybe these officers wouldn't feel like they did get to do that if there was anything like quality leadership in the department but then... well we know what that's like right now.