NEW ORLEANS — City Councilman Oliver Thomas is fed up with litter, loitering and roadside begging in New Orleans East.
This weekend, he posted a video on social media of him confronting two panhandlers on the corner of Crowder Blvd and Interstate 10, near his house.
He collected a mound of trash from them and confiscated a machete and other weapons.
“Ain’t no sugarcane fields in New Orleans East,” Thomas said. “Ain’t no major agriculture fields along Crowder. What’s you doing with a machete? What’s you doing with 5 knives?”
Thomas has now adopted the intersection.
It’s the entrance to his neighborhood.
He claimed the East isn’t getting enough attention from city hall.
“It was an unfortunate incident,” Thomas said. “If the city wasn’t going to do it, the police wasn’t going to do it, I just felt I had to stand up for my neighborhood and my family.”
Musician Troy Lazerus lives off of Crowder.
“I pull out of my neighborhood and that’s the first thing that I see, Lazerus said. “I get his frustration because when I’m at the red light, a lot of times if you don’t have anything, some of them get a little aggressive with you.”
Lazerus applauded Thomas’s actions.
“Even though my heart goes out to people who are dealing with different things, at the same time, I live out here as well,” Lazerus said.
But one commenter on Twitter said the way Thomas handled the situation was counterproductive.
Another called him a bully.
“If somebody wants to say I didn’t care because I was upset about somebody building trash mounds and disrespecting my neighborhood, don’t nobody care more than me,” Thomas said. “But I care about my family. I care about my neighbors.”
Councilman Thomas hopes adopting the intersection of Crowder and I-10 will set an example and encourage others in the community to take ownership of New Orleans East as well.
“That’s the entranceway to one of the most important communities in this city,” Thomas said. Why can’t it be beautified, not slumified?”
Thomas said he and his family cleaned up that same corner three times already.
He claimed the panhandlers refused his offer to help them.
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