NEW ORLEANS — At least four scenes played out on New Orleans city streets Sunday which city leaders call dangerous and illegal. Crowds block traffic as cars do donuts and burnouts, mostly at intersections. They’ve happened in New Orleans before, but Sunday was different.
“There’s no way in hell we should be allowing anyone to come in our city and rule our city,” said NOPD chief Shaun Ferguson.
City leaders say out of town groups came to New Orleans with a mission.
“They titled this the takeover. They were on social media talking about they were going to take over our city,” said District E Councilman Oliver Thomas.
Traffic was blocked, cars did burnouts, and people pulled out guns as spectators crowded around. Social media posts point to groups from Baton Rouge, where the police chief there says there’s a zero-tolerance policy and a special police unit in place to address it.
“Are we pushing them out to other areas because of our enforcement actions, I don’t know,” said chief Murphy Paul.
Paul says his department is working with the NOPD on enforcement actions. New Orleans police are looking for the owners of four particular cars and anyone else who helped organize or take part.
“For those individuals who think this is funny, who think this is ok. They don’t realize the public safety issue that they present,” said Paul.
One video shows a man on the hood of a car fall off, then get hit. Another shows two men jump on the hood of a police cruiser as others kick it. Police released photos of those two men and are trying to track them down.
“He [the officer] was under attack. He did what he could do,” said Ferguson. “The best thing that he could possibly do at that time was to try to disperse the crowd as best as he could and get out of the way.”
Both chiefs want penalties enhanced at local and state levels, including seizure of vehicles involved. Instead of reckless operation, Ferguson vowed to arrest offenders for aggravated obstruction of a highway, which is a felony.
“We will be bolder, we will be more brazen in our response,” said Ferguson.