Dear reader, it is with great pleasure, and some relief we bring you two fragments from our North American, (deep south, non Paris end), correspondent G.T Beauregard. The first neat little observation is emphatic in what it tells us about the rule of law in new Orleans and it’s neighbours, whilst the second a snapshot of Tourismo’s struggle against the grinding press of “life”. Read and grow with him.
‘It’s been another fascinating week in NOLA.
Coincidentally (having looked at PCBYCP) I wuz robbed! And so have written about it.
William Wayne Justice. On the road.
There was a good man in Texas by name of William Wayne Justice – who was, as it happens, a judge of the Federal District Court for the Eastern District of Texas. For years and years he irritated all good men of the state by running a long case over conditions in its prisons. And finding that they routinely violated the prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment in various vile ways.
Such men (and now women) no longer seem to obtain judicial appointment in these parts.
Then there’s the unusual frequency and length of incarceration. One lucky bloke I was reading about this week stole $650 and attempted to steal $750 more. He had 5 priors for burglary. This time? Life. Another, picked up pissed and sleeping at the wheel of his truck in the middle of an intersection, admittedly his 3rd or 4th such offence: 24 years! No, not out of line with comparable sentences, said the Louisiana Court of Appeals.
It’s all very interesting’.
And then from the diary. (soon to be published by Folio in a leather tooled and deluxe edition rrp. 24.95, for the discerning reader).
7/11/15
Yes folks; “it never rains but it pours in New Orleans’. Tourismo and his articled clerk in search of the missing bicycle.
I am a victim of crime. The Beauregardian conveyance has been stolen from behind the offices where I labour to bring civilisation to the South. Gran Turismo no longer, Beauregard is perforce reduced to perambulation.
Splendid badge gifted to G.T. Real chocolate!!!
The 8th District office of the New Orleans Police Department on Royal Street is an imposing late Victorian building, testament to a time when order commanded public respect and a corresponding budget. One enters an airy lobby across which a counter has been constructed at roughly chin height. To the left a vending machine provides souvenir T-shirts, the sale of which supports Orleans Parish’s finest. There are also souvenir “artwork” and three display cases of mug-shots, handcuffs, billy clubs badges, paybooks and other memorabilia connected with the career of the late NOPD Superintendent Henry Morris.
Supt. Morris was appointed in 1982 when his predecessor resigned in the wake of protests over the fatal shooting by NOPD officers of four young suspects who were apparently unable to assist police further with their enquiries.
The items preserved by the chief include a slim pamphlet, no larger than 5 inches by 4, on the detection of offences. Ah – happy days indeed, when the task of bringing criminals to justice or, perhaps more accurately, reducing the predations of the criminal class was so much simpler than it is today.
Outrageous acts of racial profiling committed by unreformed NOPD. Trial underway in N.T. African American undergoes paperless arrest for being black, short, and poor.
No longer. Interfering do-gooders of the lightly-chilled-white-wine-drinking class have so infested the city with their all-women-are-brothers attitudes and let’s-undo-the-imaginary-sins-of-our-fathers activity that the officers upon whom I would rely spend their days filling out forms to show compliance with a judgment to which the department consented a couple of years ago in the United States Court for the Federal District of East Louisiana. Hard as it is to believe, the Feds had brought suit against the City alleging that officers “routinely use unnecessary and unreasonable force”, that “detentions without reasonable suspicion are routine, and lead to unwarranted searches and arrests without probable cause” and that the force’s methods involved discrimination against certain races, sexual orientations and genders. A supine civil administration threw its finest to the Federal wolves.
The bogus concerns of the federales entirely ignore the interests of those like your correspondent. In an imperfect world of limited resources the law is surely most efficiently enforced protecting depradations upon those such as I who have the most at stake. By contrast, theft and violence amongst the lower orders does not involve any real loss: their trinkets can at best be regarded as on temporary loan until taken under cover of darkness and turned to use by their neighbours; the measure of dignity in their lives is already so limited that nothing done to them can appreciably reduce it.
Mme Beauregard assists in search for stolen Bicycle in upmarket Garden District. She holds Jumbo marker to assist pencil-less G.T.
I expect, at the least, the prompt use of sirens and physical persuasion of the relevant stratum from which the thief obviously comes. Heavy is my heart, then, when the lonely but obliging constable suggests that I make out my own report of the crime. Heavier still when, having sought the use of quill and ink, he apologetically informs me that limits in the law enforcement budget preclude him from sparing his own instrument, and is forced to rummage through desks elsewhere in the building to find one.
G.T’s new bike!!
The grisly details of this egregious violation of my rights is then duly recorded, I am further disappointed by the department’s inability to provide any form of immediate assistance in restoring my property and administering condign punishment to those responsible. Fully one half of the station’s staff have called in sick; only one squad car is operable. Am I to be comforted by his conciliatory but patently empty promise that the affair will be referred to the bureau of criminal investigation?
There was but one remedy. I bought another bicycle.