Tag: crime

What Louisiana Loves: How to Get Rich in the Bayou State

I’ve decided on a new career that I know will make me rich. I’m going to be a chicken plucking, film making, sports team owning, wood pulping for export, drug testing entrepreneur! Yes, that’s the key.

Since it’s increasingly obvious the state doesn’t care for its arts, music, environment, mental health or safety, I figured I’d put my thinking cap on and ponder: What does the state really support? And, voila, I got the answer!

We’re spending $114 million buying the friendship of the movie industry, we’re putting up $50 million for a chicken plant near the Arkansas border and $20 million for a chicken freezer next to the French Quarter, we’re annually handing professional sports teams dozens of millions, we’re giving tens of millions to speed up the cutting of our mixed hardwood forests for things like wood pellets to be burned for fuel in Europe and landscape mulch, and we might put our money where the piss is by drug testing 20,000 welfare recipients.

Those are the businesses in Louisiana’s future!

On the other hand, we’re doing nothing to support music, cutting the arts, still don’t fully understand how to restore our environment, are closing and cutting mental health facilities and even have a bill ready for the upcoming session that allows guns on campuses… Hey wait, I just thought of something: bulletproof vests for teachers and students!

Hell, I almost missed a big one that could pay for my second Hummer. Yeah, it’s a great time to be in Louisiana, no foolin’…IF you know what you’re doing.

Sheriff all but admits guilt in killing of Cayne Miceli

Today’s Times-Picayune reports that the ACLU is looking into deaths at Orleans Parish Prison. Near the end of the article it reads: Gusman emphasized that Miceli, who stopped breathing less than five hours after she was put into the restraints, didn’t die at the jail but at University Hospital. She was taken by ambulance to the hospital after she was resuscitated by jail medical staff.

“She was revived,” Gusman said. “She didn’t die here.”

It’s just as I noted in my original post, hardly anyone “officially” dies in jail. Except this time, the facts are even more horrible. Cayne Miceli, a severe asthmatic for years, was restrained flat on her back with a heavy strap across her torso FOR MORE THAN FOUR HOURS! Sheriff Gusman said it himself.

Orleans Parish Prison is a torture chamber. It violates basic human rights and international laws regarding detainees. It must be held accountable. Nobody is safe. Going to jail for a municipal charge, without arraignment, can result in a death sentence with no judge, no jury, no indictment and no mercy.

I am ashamed of my city right now.

Here is a link to a press release from the ACLU.

The family is holding a Catholic Mass in remembrance of Cayne on Saturday, Jan 24 at 10AM at Our Lady of the Gulf in Gulf Shores, AL where Cayne spent her childhood. Friends are planning other events and memorials as well. Information can be found first at the Yahoo group dedicated to Cayne.

Cayne Miceli @ NO Jazz Fest 2008 photo by Kim Uddo (Links to slideshow)
Cayne Miceli @ NO Jazz Fest 2008 photo by Kim Uddo (Links to slideshow)

The Weekly Hades Report?

Yesterday I learned that while my partner Grasshopper lay in bed reading, while Maj. Elder of the 3rd Dist NOPD addressed our neighborhood association, while I sat in Israeilite Baptist Church helping with a presentation for the AgCenter (and a funeral for a murdered 18 year old took place mere feet away), one of our neighbors, a petite 80+ year old woman, was brutalized when from a moving car, thieves snatched her purse, dragging her screaming to the ground for at least 10 feet and injuring her severely. Her husband, a WWll vet, witnessed the event. In his own state of shock, he put her in his car and drove to his son’s house in Metairie and then they took her–with 2 broken legs and internal bleeding–to East Jefferson Hospital. As of today, I don’t know if she’s going to live. This happened on the side of my house at 11AM Saturday morning on a short, narrow street that only runs for 2 blocks between Trafalgar and Castiglione by the Fairgrounds, where construction workers are on the job 7 days a week rebuilding Langston Hughes Elementary.

The Wades are a beautiful couple. They are gentle souls who, like our friend Cayne Miceli, didn’t deserve to have their lives ruined–or the hands of death visit–like this.

Of course this week has also been marred by a son who stabbed and killed his 72 year old mother for drug money.

Did someone change the signs on the edge of town to Hell?

I am numb.