|
I'd long heard stories about folks taking matters into their own hands during the chaotic aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. I know folks who went home days after Katrina's landfall, armed to the teeth, to protect their property from looters.
As a transplant to Louisiana, I'm sadly familiar with the state of race relations in this beautiful state. Suffice it to say that folks of both races are suspicious of the other race. There are exceptions, but in general, neither side really wants anything to do with the other. And it's sad, because until the working folks of Louisiana realize that they need to pull together, nothing is going to get better. Louisiana will continue to rank near the bottom of lists you really don't want to rank near the bottom of.
But this Nation article simply blows my mind. I mean, did Algiers Point move back to the Jim Crow South in the aftermath of Katrina (or perhaps, did they never even leave?), where white folks could hunt down black men, assault them, shoot them, and in some cases, kill them, and simply get away with it?
The only victims to tell their story thus far were interviewed by the reporter for The Nation:
The sudden eruption of gunfire horrified [Donnell] Herrington's companions--his cousin Marcel Alexander, then 17, and friend Chris Collins, then 18, who are also black. "I looked at Donnell and he had this big old hole in his neck," Alexander recalls. "I tried to help him up, and they started shooting again." Herrington says he was staggering to his feet when a second shotgun blast struck him from behind; the spray of lead pellets also caught Collins and Alexander. The buckshot peppered Alexander's back, arm and buttocks.
Herrington shouted at the other men to run and turned to face his attackers: three armed white males. Herrington says he hadn't even seen the men or their weapons before the shooting began. As Alexander and Collins fled, Herrington ran in the opposite direction, his hand pressed to the bleeding wound on his throat. Behind him, he says, the gunmen yelled, "Get him! Get that nigger!"
Not surprisingly, they were not the only victims:
[Charles] Thomas, the surgeon who treated Herrington, staffed one of the few functioning trauma centers in the area, located just outside the New Orleans city line, not far from Algiers Point, for a full month after the hurricane hit. "We saw a bunch of gunshot wounds," he tells me. "There were a lot of gunshot wounds that went unreported during that time." Though Thomas couldn't get into the specifics of the shooting incidents because of medical privacy laws, he says, "We saw a couple of other shotgun wounds, some handgun shootings and somebody who was shot with a high-velocity missile [an assault-rifle round]." The surgeon remembers handling "five or six nonfatal gunshot wounds" as well as three lethal gunshot cases.
In addition, state death records show that at least four people died in and around Algiers Point, a suspicious number, given that most Katrina fatalities were the result of drowning, and that the community never flooded. Neighborhood residents, black and white, remember seeing corpses lying out in the open that appeared to have been shot.
Here's the response of white folks in the Algiers Point militia:
[Wayne Janak] is equally blunt in Welcome to New Orleans, an hourlong documentary produced by the Danish video team, who captured Janak, beer in hand, gloating about hunting humans. Surrounded by a crowd of sunburned white Algiers Point locals at a barbeque held not long after the hurricane, he smiles and tells the camera, "It was great! It was like pheasant season in South Dakota. If it moved, you shot it." A native of Chicago, Janak also boasts of becoming a true Southerner, saying, "I am no longer a Yankee. I earned my wings." A white woman standing next to him adds, "He understands the N-word now." In this neighborhood, she continues, "we take care of our own."
Janak, who says he'd been armed with two .38s and a shotgun, brags about keeping the bloody shirt worn by a shooting victim as a trophy. When "looters" showed up in the neighborhood, "they left full of buckshot," he brags, adding, "You know what? Algiers Point is not a pussy community."
What's been the response of the law enforcement community in New Orleans? Distressing, to say the least:
Under oath [Orleans Parish coroner Frank] Minyard proceeded to say something stunning. The NOPD, he testified, was only investigating three gunshot cases, all of them high-profile--the Danziger Bridge incident, in which police killed two civilians, and the shooting of Danny Brumfield, who was slain by a cop in front of the Convention Center. Minyard's statement buttressed information I'd gotten from NOPD sources who said the force has done little to prosecute people for assaults or murders committed in the wake of the storm.
I contacted the police department repeatedly over many months, providing the NOPD with specific questions about each incident discussed in this story. The department, through spokesman Robert Young, declined to comment on whether officers had investigated any of these crimes and would not discuss any other issues raised by this article.
I don't think we can count on the New Orleans Police Department to do anything about this, to be honest. They've struggling to keep the city safe, and Mayor Nagin just froze their ability to hire more police officers, due to the fiscal crisis the city is currently experiencing.
No, I think this ball is in the new District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro's court. He has the power to convene a special grand jury ... for 18 months, and let them investigate. And have them start with the incidents in Algiers Point. Hopefully, those 12 citizens, if such a grand jury is ever created, will prove to the good, upstanding citizens on Algiers Point that the law is blind when it comes to race ...
The witness shows me a home video he recorded shortly after the storm. On the tape, three white Algiers Point men discuss the incident. One says it might be a bad idea to talk candidly about the crime. Another dismisses the notion, claiming, "No jury would convict."
... just to show that fool that nobody is above the law.
|
