NEW ORLEANS — New Orleans Police swept down Bourbon Street declaring that Mardi Gras 2022 was over at midnight Wednesday.
Mayor LaToya Cantrell joined NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson and State Police along with a few dozen officers in walking down the street, sirens blaring.
"It was a successful Carnival season for the city of New Orleans," declared Mayor LaToya Cantrell.
There were two known incidents on parade routes, a shooting on St. Charles during the Muses parade and a shooting on the NOMTOC parade route in Algiers either near the end or shortly after the event.
Two tourists, a 15-year-old girl from Houston and a tourist from South Carolina, were shot and killed while in town for Carnival, though neither of those incidents were along the parade route. Both victims were believed to be innocent bystanders when shots intended for someone else rang out nearby.
The city of New Orleans shortened parade routes to try to keep the streets sufficiently manned despite a shortage of police that has been well documented.
The shortened routes, which were met with displeasure by several krewes, but especially the Krewe of Thoth, which had its route past Children's Hospital shortened to eliminate that part of the route, an important part of the krewe's mission to bring Carnival to those who can't otherwise make it to the traditional routes.
NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said the shortened route "worked," but did not say if it was expected to become a regular occurrence.
"Will we expand or do we stay where we are," he said at the midnight event.
With crime surging, COVID still present and local and state police staffing issues, there were obviously concerns about hundreds of thousands of people, many of them from out of town, flooding the streets.
"This has been a very successful Carnival season, 2022," said Ferguson. "After not having done this in two years, we had to knock the rust off."