Charging there has been an increase in homicides in the city over the past month, the mayor and the governor of Louisiana are seeking to set a precedent for further use of the military in domestic policing operations. They aim to beef up the powers of local cops and further chip away at constitutional protections against unreasonable search and seizure, and other civil liberties.

“Right after Katrina it was the National Guard that denied us food and water, they have never made this city safer,” said Mike Howells, a member of the organization Concern, Community, and Compassion. He attended a city council meeting June 22 where residents protested the move. “They are simply here to scapegoat young Black men as criminals and as somehow responsible for the crisis we face in housing, health care, and jobs,” he said.

In desert fatigues and matching Humvee personnel carriers, 300 military police from the Louisiana National Guard—all armed with rifles and side arms with live ammunition—joined nearly five times as many city and state cops here in launching the operation.

“They are not here to help us, they want people to be afraid,” hotel worker Simon Gilbert told the Militant, in a June 24 interview downtown across from the National Guard “Command Post” at Loyola and Perdido streets. “Right now, many of us in the 9th Ward try to stay out of trouble by coming back from work and just staying home. Those guns are going to be aimed at us.”

According to the Times-Picayune, the National Guard forces “are patrolling neighborhoods such as Gentilly, the Lower 9th Ward and eastern New Orleans, where the population is sparse.” Meanwhile, city and state police are setting up a “massive physical presence” in the more heavily populated neighborhoods of Central City, Algiers, and parts of Uptown.

New Orleans police spokesman Steve Nicholas told the press that “when deployed, officers will set up a perimeter around a large neighborhood” where residents would be subject to searches and vehicle checks.

More federal cops are also being sent to New Orleans and they are pressing to try more cases under federal charges, which come with longer sentences and less chance of pre-trial release, FBI agent James Bernazzani told the local media.

“The system’s weakest links today,” Bernazzini told the Houston Chronicle, “are judges in state courts who are notoriously lenient in releasing suspects.”

The facts, however, appear to contradict that assertion. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics for 2004, Louisiana led the United States with the highest incarceration rate.

The National Guard had as many as 15,000 soldiers in the city in the weeks after Katrina. The current force is expected to stay until mid-September, the Times-Picayune reported.  
 
 
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