Serpas Signal

My goodness it has been a busy week in NOLA law enforcement circles. Where does one even begin?  Today we were treated to competing press events starring the Mayor and Sheriff Gusman.

In the morning, the Mayor told us the federal consent decree designed to bring Orleans Parish Prison up to an operational standard we could consider.. constitutional was unnecessary and shame on the Sheriff for signing on to such a plan.  The Mayor also told us the Sheriff is running a really crappy non-constitutionally sound prison.

After all, the problems at the OPSO are deeply rooted. Since 2005, 40 deaths in the prison; last year, at least 9 escapes and numerous reports of callous, unmanaged deputies deserting their posts, beating up inmates, ignoring violence and even ignoring rape.

To change the OPSO a fly by night approach will not work. After all, I can’t in good conscious ask the tax payers of New Orleans for more of their hard earned money without assurances that the money will be well spent.

So, to sum up Mitch's point,  the Sheriff has done a terrible job and the conditions at OPP are deplorable. Therefore the federal consent decree requiring that we pay to fix those problems is clearly unnecessary.

In the afternoon, Sheriff Gusman responded.

Gusman repeatedly stressed the necessity of the consent decree but refused to concede that OPP is currently being run unconstitutionally, which is precisely the federal government's justification for imposing the consent decree, as well as the question before the court next week.

Naturally.

This was actually the second time this week the Mayor became involved in dueling public events focused on criminal justice.  Monday night, he and the local NAACP office acted out a familiar sit-com cliche scenario where two characters who should be working together on something end up engaged in a competition between two simultaneous, similar activities.

The dustup between Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the local NAACP, culminating in simultaneous but separate community meetings on Monday evening, came down to this: whether it's more important for New Orleans to be talking about alleged racial profiling by police officers or how to halt the violence that claims so many of the city's young black men every year. 

The profiling conversation spilled over into a subsequent City Council meeting which featured 100% more Jackie.

Public comment on the profiling issue became very contentious. At one point Council Vice President Jackie Clarkson told speaker Randolph Scott to "hush" after he criticized her. The audience booed in response. Clarkson [for some reason] decided to escalate, calling on a police officer to "quiet down" the crowd, which in fact had the opposite effect. Finally, District A Councilwoman Susan Guidry calmly said she wanted to "move on," and the meeting moved on.

The profiling issue has been a particularly thorny point of contention ever since a video of plain clothes officers accosting two black teens in the French Quarter garnered attention during Mardi Gras. This week, the Times-Picayune published a report showing that 93 percent of curfew arrestees in Orleans Parish are black.

New Orleans officials this week released data that show almost 93 percent of the 7,748 children stopped for curfew violations in the city between 2009 and 2012 were African-American. The release came a few days after New Orleans police acknowledged they had misspoken in October when they told NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune that they did not track the demographics of curfew violators.

Not that NOPD would ever "misspeak" about anything. Like say this bit that came out at the Council meeting.

During public comments, NAACP New Orleans president Danatus King said he was skeptical of the department's commitment to change.

"The proof is in the pudding. There's comments that have been made that things are improving, things are getting better, but the proof belies those claims." King mentioned a recent WVUE report, in which the station obtained an email from 4th District Lt. John Deshotel telling his sergeants to "pinpoint bicycles," saying "hood neighborhoods can probably be beneficial."*

"When an officer talks about 'hood' neighborhoods, that is racial profiling. That is racial profiling," King said.

*Serpas, later in the meeting: "It's regrettable that the Lieutenant spoke in shorthand, in a police jargon." 

Guidry: "In police parlance, what does 'hood' mean?"

Serpas: "it means a neighborhood and it might mean a neighborhood in need of help."

Audience: 10-15 seconds of laughing.

"Hood" is a "police jargon" term. To help expand your technical criminal justice vocabulary, here is more "police jargon" from New York City where the term of art in play this week was "the right people."

This week, the court heard a troubling recording secretly made last month by Officer Pedro Serrano, of the 40th Precinct, in the South Bronx. Mr. Serrano is one of a handful of officers who began tape-recording conversations with their colleagues or superiors to document what they saw as wrongdoing. 

In the recording, Deputy Inspector Christopher McCormack is heard urging Mr. Serrano to stop, question and, if necessary, frisk “the right people at the right time, the right location.” When Mr. Serrano asked for clarification about who the “right people” were, the inspector replied: “The problem was, what, male blacks.” He continued, “And I told you at roll call, and I have no problem telling you this, male blacks 14 to 20, 21.”

So, if I'm reading this correctly, since I'm not "the right people" it's probably okay for me to ride my bicycle this weekend without being "pinpointed" by Ronal Serpas' people. Just to be sure, though, I'll try to avoid the "hood" areas.

In any case, I'm sure as heck gonna try and avoid driving anywhere since... well...

The New Orleans Police Department’s Traffic Division will conduct a sobriety checkpoint on Thursday, March 28, 2013, in Orleans Parish. The check point will begin at approximately 9:00 P.M. and will conclude at about 5:00 A.M.