We Will Need to Go to War in NOLA
By Jeff Thomas 
Politicians must make difficult decisions, sometimes funding necessary projects at the expense of other necessary projects. And governments have limited resources to solve problems. Mitch Landrieu has conflated these two notions and the result is outrageous crime in New Orleans. Mitch Landrieu’s poor decisions are as responsible for the robberies and murder as the state police are responsible for the recent death of a child after a high speed chase.
While the state police did not cause the driver to speed away, their dangerous chase through crowded city streets created the scenario for a toddler to be ejected from a car seat and die. Public safety should be the overriding factor in every decision the state police make and every decision the mayor makes. Neither should endanger innocent citizens when other choices result in equally satisfactory results that leave citizens unharmed.
THIS MEANS WAR!
What ever happened to protect and serve? Without evidence of any felony and based solely on a hunch because of tinted windows, the state police chose to chase a car, the most risky, life threatening activity short of firing his/her weapon that an officer can choose. In this case an innocent child is dead. Afterward, state police cited illegal weapons and an expired driver’s license as justification for their actions. Likewise, Landrieu’s no reward but high risk decisions have resulted in similarly dire consequences – increased crime and shootings.
In New Orleans, the primary cause of crime is poverty. Approaching the problem of poverty by focusing on hiring more police is akin to Southern plantation owners attempting to resolve the runaway slave problem by hiring and arming vicious slave catchers to roam the roads between plantations and stop and frisk every African American they encountered. Seemingly, suggesting today to many Southern whites that to solve the crime problem we need to eliminate poverty is like suggesting to slave owners that the best way to solve the runaway slave problem is to eliminate slavery. Ironically, it will take another war to stop crime. A war on poverty.
During his entire tenure, Landrieu has focused on hiring more police to solve the poverty problem in New Orleans. With minimal accomplishable gains, in a testament to his ineptness, Landrieu has completely bungled fortifying the NOPD from day one. From an initial hiring freeze to Ronal Serpas to being unable to attract more officers with hefty pay raises, Landrieu’s NOPD has been a force in disarray. And even though using the police to solve the poverty problem is like putting a Band-Aid on a bleeding cancerous lesion, under Landrieu’s watch the blood loss is palpable.
Our next mayor must approach the poverty problem with the same new tactics that the country is using for the opioid epidemic. In the past, incarceration and mandatory minimums was the preferred course of action. The resulting prison overcrowding and busted budgets have caused even the ultraconservative Louisiana politicians to enact sentencing reform and treatment as the new course of action for our drug problem.
Politicians also get to make some easy decisions. In New Orleans, we clearly need a different perspective. Starting with a shift on the value of black lives, police should not endanger our lives over minor traffic offenses. And the city should attack the root causes of poverty. Overcoming our implicit biases and irrational fears is the first step. Poverty not race is the source of the crime problem. Landrieu’s and the state police’s decisions are based on a prejudgment like plantation owners who could not conceive of treating enslaved people as worthy equals. Seemingly the Civil War was merely a battle in the long fight for equity and fairness in New Orleans and America.
Our next mayor and city council must transform these New Orleans streets. This means war!
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