The other day I posted my feelings about New Orleans, which can be found here. A guy named Jaime from New Orleans took issue with what I had to say and left a comment, more of a post actually, about the situation down there.

I found it to be an eye-opener in many ways. It’s so well executed that I’m posting it here because I think it needs to be read. I’m not going to put it italics as it’s too distracting for a long a piece, but here it is verbatim:

"I would venture a guess that you never left the French Quarter? You are talking a 10 X 10 block area give or take. I lived in Chicago for 3 years. I know all about Downtown and Michigan Ave. but I can’t tell you a thing about Evanston or most of the rest of the area. People from all over the world come here to “party”. It has been a few years now but I have had my own late nights in the French Quarter. I have seen what you are talking about. If you were here for Mardi Gras, Superbowl, Jazz Fest or southern decadence it was most likely a bit worse than normal. For the most part – that is not us…. It’s tourists. They come here and think of the French Quarter as some kind of adult Disneyland – they do things they would never do at home. I used to work in the convention industry and one time I had dinner with a production team from out of town and was walking them back to their hotel. On Bourbon St. there were some girls up on a balcony lifting their shirts for beads and drawing quite a crowd. On of the head honchos said “you people are just crazy down here”. I gave him a look and said “It’s August, those girls are from Michigan or Virginia or some other place like that – they are not from New Orleans.” We made a bet; I asked and won $10 bucks – easy money. The answer was Georgia. It is not fair to look at the quarter and think of us that way. It’s like visiting Graceland and thinking you know all about Memphis.

The other problem with your thinking is that right now we are not an American city. We are a shell of what used to be a city in what is evidently, by many, not actually considered to be part of America (I don’t understand that but it comes off that way too many times). Most of the houses are still unoccupied – many people have never returned and most of the residents that have come back live someplace other than where they were a year ago. We have what amounts to 120 square miles of urban ghost town the likes of which have never been seen before, anywhere. I saw Colin Powell make a speech this month at the dedication of the National WWII museum / awards ceremony for some standout 1st responders. During his keynote he said that he had seen many types of distruction before. He has been through a lot of war zones and has seen several major disaster sites (his last official visit overseas was Indonesia after the tsunami’s). Just like every one else he had closely followed the coverage of Katrina on television. Nothing in his experience had prepared him for what he had just seen while touring the devistation within his own country. That was a few weeks ago, more than 9 months after the levee’s broke. To get back to my point – this is a little different than dealing with crime in an American city for a number of reasons.

You say “we’re not talking about stealing anymore…” but we are. Looting is called burglary again but it is still looting. One of my in-law’s neighbors in Lakeview has been killing himself trying to get his house into shape so his wife and kids could return home once the school year ended. He had finally finished and the day before the move he discovered there was no water. A quick inspection revealed that his entire plumbing system had been stolen for the copper pipes. That’s another deduction from insurance and at least another month without his family and who’s to say it won’t happen again. As fast as people can get appliances delivered they are being stolen. Another big thing is stealing the architectural details that make New Orleans unique. Shutters, pocket doors, mantles, crown molding, decorative ironwork, gingerbread details and other such things are vanishing right before our eyes. You can’t sell the shutters for much but they cost over $300 each to replace. Vultures (many from out of town) are picking us to pieces and it has to stop so we can move on.

There is no one to see suspicious activity and report it so it continues. That takes a lot of patrolling – much more than could ever be done by a police force under normal circumstances. That is what the guard has been called in to do. To help safeguard our personal reconstruction - Thank God!

Now, on to violent crime. Along with the many, many good people that have come back we also have the scum. Some are home grown and some are imports but they are here fighting for turf and power in the ever-popular drug trade. Most of the murders are gang bangers killing each other off for an edge in what basically amounts to an open market. All of the lines that had been drawn between gangs were washed away and the age old game has started from scratch. You are right when you say it is tombstone. No city has ever faced 5 or 10 or maybe even 20 rival gangs all in a rebuilding mode at once. Picture what it would be like if all the mafia bosses had to start their “family buisnesses” again from scratch. It would not mean a hit or two – it would be scores of them. That is what we are going through. The members just need an empty house to set up shop (we have plenty of those) and then they just start fighting. . Our police need to concentrate hard on this so it can be stopped before it gathers more momentum.

You say that things are picking back up. It depends on what corner you are talking about. My in-laws live in their trailer about 50% of the time. There is one other person living on their entire block. Another is there most days working on his house – that’s it. No one lives on the block behind them at all. At my mothers the street is empty as well - it still does not have power. We could not store everything we recovered from her house at our place so we have moved some of it back into the gutted part of the house. I will be glad to have the National Guard in the area. It makes me very nervous that my in-law’s live in a ghost town. If someone showed up and tried to hurt them there would be no one around to hear a thing. I will feel better knowing that the guard will be pass by their house a few times a day as well."

Thanks, Jaime. Very well done and point taken. Hats off to you.