Fast Johnny's thoughts on Crime

Some thoughts from an old friend of mine. His nickname, is "Fast Johnny," but every calls him "Johnny at the Track," because he's such a regular at the Fair Grounds. I ran into Johnny at a coffee shop on Esplanade Avenue yesterday, and he had some thoughts on crime. I asked him to put them down and e-mail them to me for this entry. I've added some links as well. My friend YatPundit and I were talking yesterday, and, like everyone else in the city, we started talking about our out of control crime problem. I had some thoughts that he thought others might want to read. Let me introduce myself, first. Everybody calls me "Fast Johnny," because the "fast" part is a play on my last name. I'm what you call an entrepeneur, but I've been semi-retired for a while now, so I can relax and watch the races. That's where I met Yat, in fact, at Da Track. We've got to get a handle on violent crime in the city. In the past week, there have been 11 robberies, one assault, and one rape. This isn't the first time the city has had a problem dealing with street crime, so I say, let's go back to giving the cops some leeway on the street. Back in the 1970s, NOPD had a unit, the Felony Action Squad, that had shoot-to-kill orders. Scared the crap outta a lot of folks, and street crime dropped. Sure they ruffled some feathers, but they got results. I don't think the death penalty makes much sense the way they do it up at Angola. By the time they stick that needle in a guy's arm, he's an older and changed person. You've done what you set out to do, getting the guy off the street, killing him is just extra for the families at that point. Thing is, it costs a lot of money to do it this way. Besides, these Assistant DAs have a lot of pressure on them to get convictions. If they re-started the FAS or the Urban Squad, NOPD could go back to doing street executions. I remember one, back in the 1980s, where the cops shot down these two guys on Gentilly Road. Oh, the shit hit the fan, f'sure--there were protests and marches, and there was this great smackdown where some of the women that live in the St. Bernard said they were glad those guys got shot. For all the noise, though, things settled down. You didn't see people protesting that the cops do something, that's a fact. I understand the whole thing about how some people don't cooperate with the cops. Some guys I know have some friends who know some people that are big believers in this. But even they have their ways of handling street crime. NOPD used to have a deal with the DA's office, where there was some leeway in how some arrests were made. The whole "Algiers 7" thing in 1980 messed that deal up, when the Feds got involved and some cops went to jail. Of course, that's when Connick was DA. See, if the street thugs know that the cops are gonna beat the crap outta them, then shoot them down, you don't have to pressure people into testifying. I don't blame these young kids for running like the devil when the cops are on them. I sure as hell wouldn't want to be somebody's bitch on a farm at Angola. But that's the problem, they shoot too much at the cops. They think that, if they fire a few shots, they'll get the time they need to get away. It doesn't work that way--all the bullets do is piss the cops off! That's then the system breaks down, though. These kids get out on bail, or the cases don't go anywhere because there are no witnesses. Let the cops track these kids down and put them down like they do horses. New Orleans isn't a place to try to rehabilitate criminals. We're trying to rebuild, here. It's not fair to ship the criminals to another town, where they'll just go after other folks. Just shoot them down and be done with it.