HIGH NOON FOR NEW ORLEANS

Perhaps the classic American western is the movie, “High Noon.”

Gary Cooper plays a lawman who, on his wedding day, turns in his badge to move away, but fate intervenes. He learns that someone he sent to prison is coming in on the noon train to get revenge. The town’s citizens all hide while Cooper faces the outlaws alone in order to save the town that wouldn’t stand behind him in a time of crisis.

Down in the “Big Easy,” New Orleanians are facing their own High Noon.

There is no glossing over the fact that crime is surging in the Crescent City. Murders and robberies are reaching epidemic proportions, and if the situation isn’t turned around soon, tourism—the life blood of the modern New Orleans economy—is going to take it hard on the chin.

What is needed in New Orleans isn’t a Gary Cooper standing alone against the mob.

The cure for crime is a resurrection of the thirst for justice that was once a living testimony to the power of a unified people to right wrongs and prevail against power.

From generation to generation, the black community in New Orleans passes down the story of the battle for civil rights and equality—and well they should. Part of it is a story of individuals taking great risks to advance the cause of justice. But the most powerful part of the story comes from the unity of the community in standing up for its rights and forcefully opening the doors that had been closed to them for generations.

It is time for the same powerful social infrastructure within the black community that led the fight for social justice to now lead the effort to reform the criminal justice system.

The black community is the majority, not the minority, in modern-day New Orleans. Because of that fact, both sheriffs, the district attorney, the police chief and the majority of criminal judges—as well as the mayor—are all African Americans.†

Yet, too much of the black community lives in daily fear of crime. When criminals find a community that doesn’t make a priority of constantly harassing and pursuing them—and showing no mercy to them once they are apprehended—they tend to expand in numbers and become more brazen in their pursuits. That is where New Orleans is today.

If leaders in the black community revive the unwavering activism displayed during the hallmark era of the civil rights movement, crime can be solved in the Crescent City.

In years past, marches against City Hall and police headquarters led to fair treatment and equal justice under the law. Today, the same effort is needed to demand a complete reform of the criminal justice system that is broken almost beyond repair.

Beyond that, black neighborhoods need to band together to work with police and prosecutors to get the thugs off the street and prosecute them so successfully and severely that when they do get out of prison, they will have no desire to return to New Orleans.

It is definitely High Noon in New Orleans. It is time for its citizens to stand up and be counted on the question of crime.

They have the power to take the streets back from the criminals, and they have a proven model to get it done. If they choose to do so, High Noon for the “Big Easy” will end much like it did for Gary Cooper, and New Orleans will move up in the eyes of the nation.