Video of Police Encounter with Teens "Unsettling" But Not Against Policy According to State Police, New Orleans Mayor Disagrees, But What's He Going to Do?
Who's in charge?
An incident at this year's Mardi Gras in New Orleans' French Quarter involving eight plain clothes state troopers pinning down two teenage boys waiting for a parent (who was apparently a local police officer) led to a series of community meetings set up by the mayor, Mitch Landrieu, long on complaints about crime and allegations of racial profiling (the two teenage boys were black) but short on specifics. With the troopers now being cleared by the State Police (whose superintendent said while the video was "unsettling" there were no actual violations of policy on tape), Landrieu's impotence in the matter comes back to center stage. The mayor's re-iterated his belief that the officers acted inappropriately, but doesn't really have anything he could do about it. His own police force, meanwhile, generally recognized as being one of the most corrupt in the country, is supposed to be under federal monitorship, but the city and the Department of Justice still can't agree on who precisely ought to oversee the police force after narrowing it down to just five firms more than a month ago.
Video of the incident, which could easily be mistaken for a mugging, below, starting at about 15 seconds in:
