By Jeff Thomas
Gun violence is an every-weekend kinda’ thing in NOLA. But last weekend’s violence was a cause célèbre.
Headlines should have read, “NOPD and State Police combine, shoot five innocent bystanders at bus stop on Canal St.” Although this was not a repeat of the Danziger Bridge tragedy, when rogue NOPD officers shot six people just after Katrina, the similarities are strikingly similar. Far worse than the Danziger shootings, where police were blood-thirsty criminals intentionally firing on unarmed citizens, the Canal Street bus stop shootings are the result of dreadful police policy which endangers and kills instead of protecting and serving.
Chief Sean Ferguson said officers returned fire on the now-dead perpetrator, “causing a gunfire exchange between the two parties. Five individual, innocent bystanders were struck during this gunfire exchange.”
Even if the dead gang member from Houston, who acted recklessly and without regard for human life around him, did open fire when he saw a police officer exit a police car like police say, the question remains whether NOPD actions were proper. Also, is this evidence of NOPD’s need for broad latitude in the notion of ‘To protect and serve’ the innocent citizens of our great city?
’Cause the police might have shot five innocent bystanders in this “gunfire exchange.” Are we to believe that this violent felon with a gun just started shooting randomly on Canal Street? Or did the officers’ decision to approach and apprehend a suspicious subject create the violence? This suspicious subject turned out to be a really bad guy. The kind of guy whose freedom puts us all at risk.
The complexity of police work is exemplified in this event. Police work is dangerous, and only special people should be allowed to roam the streets looking to curtail illegal activity. Internally, police departments must constantly monitor officers’ actions, lest chaos erupt. And chaotic events when officers kill a bad man – but injure five innocent bystanders – are and always should be against standard NOPD protocol.
Officers do not engage in high-speed chases on city streets in order to protect the lives of the innocent. Similarly, these officers should have chosen better circumstances to take down this suspect. Precisely because the guy they suspected might just start shooting when engaged by police is the reason this should never have happened the way it did.
Many now speculate about whose bullets injured the innocent bystanders. This is irrelevant. Those bullets would have never been fired if the NOPD had just continued to follow the gangster. Plainclothes officers were in close proximity and could have continued to follow.
If the same bad guy was at the Zulu parade, would the officers have acted the same way?
This is an opportunity for Mayor Cantrell and Chief Ferguson to gain the public’s trust. After Danziger, the NOPD engaged in an elaborate cover-up: Public service was swiftly supplanted by self-aggrandizement. No matter whose bullets pierced the bodies of those people at the bus stop last week, police actions caused them to go airborne.
For healing and to more effectively move forward, the NOPD must first clear the air. Then, apologize for the lapse in judgement. Next, reiterate to officers that public safety is job No. 1. Anything less is more Danziger.
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of Executive Appraisers Louisiana, an MBE-certified real estate appraisal firm, and EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
Publisher — Black Source Media
Jeff Thomas
Publisher • Opinion Columnist • Licensed General Contractor • Real Estate Appraiser • New Orleans
Jeff Thomas is the publisher of Black Source Media and one of New Orleans’ most direct voices on civic affairs, economic justice, and Louisiana politics. He writes from the intersection of experience and accountability — as a licensed general contractor,a tech company founder and executive with over 30 years experience, and a businessman who has worked across the city’s civic, media, and construction ecosystems for decades.
His Sunday column covers Louisiana legislative politics, insurance discrimination, housing policy, and the forces shaping Black community life in New Orleans and across the state. Thomas writes in the tradition of Black journalists who hold power accountable without apology — building arguments from data, delivering verdicts from evidence, and speaking to Black New Orleans with the directness the moment demands.
He is also the principal of Executive Appraisers Louisiana, an MBE-certified real estate appraisal firm, and EA Inspection Services, LLC, a government inspection services company. Black Source Media is his platform for the civic conversation New Orleans has needed and too rarely had.
Selected Articles by Jeff Thomas
Black Neighborhoods Pay the Highest Insurance Rates in Louisiana. Here’s What They Don’t Want You to Know.
They Didn’t Yell the N-Word. They Went to Law School, Bided Their Time, and Rewrote the Constitution Instead.
Vappie vs. Morrell: Why Does Justice Look Different in New Orleans?
The State Has the Money. New Orleans East Just Needs Them to Use It.
The Failure of Mitch Landrieu
After all these people who go against the police is troubling to say the lease.
Children or just trying to have a good time. And the police or trying to protect them not
hurt any one. Let the police do their job, some times a accident will happen God forbid .
Calvin White, to say the least, first of all. And the next thing is, accidents should not happen. There should be no “God forbid”. These people were standing at the bus stop minding their own business. If the police wanted a shootout, they should’ve gone to target practice that day. Your comments are a testimony to who you are as a man, as a person and to me are cowardly!
Wow Jeff! You were there? I mean you must have been to know who shot who. Get any pics?
Wow, if I was President Trump, I’d definitely call your headline, “FAKE NEWS!!!”
for 50 years,,,, Canal St, Bourbon St, and many more, Shooting Gallery’s and target practice lanes from Claiborne to the River and spreads out to a 5 mile radius.
The Super Den of Iniquity, where the false gods, idols of iniquity, and devils of lust, greed, envy, drunkenness, debauchery, prostitution, hedonism, adultery, fornication, sorcery, witchcraft, perversions, lewdness, thievery, pedophiles, frauds, pick pockets, and every type of human graven image of mans false worship of his own human guile is exalted.
IF YOU GO HERE,,, you stand and walk among the heathens, pagans, and devils who congregate now within their territory, this is their wicked “church areas”, and which puts your life in danger as you finance and sanction these conditions by any associations inside their borders and thus makes all people an accessory and your pacification and capitulation does make you at enmity with all that is Holy and Righteous.
IF YOU sit with dogs, you get fleas. IF YOU cavort and party and pleasure your brains and flesh where evil has been for 300 years, YOU could get shot! After that is the JUDGEMENT and accountability, and ALL will face what they rejected and mocked and ridiculed and disdained !
Blessed are the people who “do not” hang out or walk with or seek counsel from the ungodly sinners and wicked, nor “stand” in the doors or streets or sidewalks, or listen to the scornful people of Hedonism who hate Virtue and Morality and Goodness.
{}{} — DO not fornicate with this world that is perishing minute by minute, renew you mind, Come out from its practices, Call out for the King of Kings, to give you wisdom from “above”.
* TOUCH NOT what is a snare, “guile” to your soul and your mind.
* YOU do not get a 2nd chance, YOU cannot pay the bail to get out.
* BUT there is a way, But YOU must renew a corrupt and brainwashed way of error and wrong thinking. Come to the Master & Hear His voice, Know Him.
WORSE IS COMING whos side will you be on ?
Very Good Article! This is an author who thinks critically, so rare!
” Fools exploit fools while the wise seeks to educate all in vain!”
Hotep aka Peace Out…
When city officials allowed them klansmen with the State Trooper to roam this city freely, I said they will MURDER somebody, and it’s manifest itself with this incident and similar cases involving these killers!!! All avenues traveled with this incident was VIOLATIVE, at best!!! Even though shooting was involved, nobody’s life was in danger – why? No officer was injured, which meant the shooter couldn’t shoot!!! The mayor & police chief was so busy trying to justify the shooting, they forgot to show compassion and simply APOLOGIZE!!! Which demonstrates that neither cared!!!