New Orleans Returns to Eviction as Usual

I went to court Feb 23rd on Littering charges for filming this.

The
citation was heard in Traffic Court. During the run up to the pleaing
process the only person to instruct those about to plea was the DA. She
repeatedly "informed" the defendants that with this many cases, a plea
of Not Guilty would mean staying there till 4 or 5 (it was 10am at the
latest). She also "informed" everyone a couple of times that the day
before she had won all the cases anyway and that many people "think'
they have a valid reason for their actions but that they aren't "legal"
reasons. The message was clear don't plead not guilty unless you want
to waste your day for nothing and end up paying more.

At one
point she returned from the hall with the news that a couple of people
had threatened to report her for the intimidation session, to which she
laughed and made fun of them. This was followed by an extra 15 minute
lecture about why what she was saying wasn't intimidation. However,
during this lecture she made sure to reiterate the same statements as
to the fruitfulness of pleading not guilty. During this time most in
the court were wishing she'd just shut up and get on with it.

After
pleading not guilty and realizing that I would be going to trail this
very afternoon, I pulled her aside in the hall during a lull to inquire
about the possibility of getting a contiuance. I said that I had
thought today's session was going to be a plea and then we set a date
for the hearing unless they dropped the charge. I asked about getting a
continuance, because had I know that we would be going to trial TODAY,
I would have been represented by the ACLU.

At the mention of the
ACLU, she did a literal and figurtative 180; walking back into the
courtroom in a continuous "No. No. no. no. no. NO. nO. No. nO. no. NO.
No..." I chased after her asking: "What does that mean? NO, NO, NO, NO,
No...?" She eventually turned and said "No continuance for the ACLU".

Later, in my absence, a little bird heard the following conversion between the DA and the Citing officer:

"I'm dieing to prosecute this, I hope they don't get a continuance. They said they were going to bring the ACLU into this."

"If
they were going to demonstarte, fine; just don't dump garbage. They
should've rung the doorbell and talked with her (the governor). She
probably would've let them in ..... until they dumped all this crap."

Her
reference to the the evicted tenats property as GARBAGE and CRAP is
indicative of the larger problem of disconnecting from reality that
must take place for otherwise sensible compassionate people to to do a
job that requires they not look at the human cost of their actions.

... but. "that's a cute little sofa".

There's
also something a little disturbing about a system that allows it's
subjects to go into a court hearing armed only with the advice of the
person whose job it is to convict them.

To be Continuanced... April 13th

NO TV