[Post updated, 9/2/10]

A group of like-minded criminal justice reform advocates is soliciting donations to buy a full-page ad in the Times Picayune next week to protest Sheriff Marlin Gusman’s plan to expand the Orleans Parish jail.

Gusman is proposing a new jail that ultimately will housing about 5,800 people, says the group — up from its existing 3,552 beds. The advocates hope to start a citywide conversation about the proposal by soliciting donations of $22.39 — the daily cost the city pays the sheriff for each inmate. The group also is asking donors to consider what else the city could spend the $22.39 on.

“We’re hearing everything from mental health programs, after school programs, to better street lights and fixing the potholes in the French Quarter,” says Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which is headquartering the effort. “I think it really highlights the fiscal tradeoff the city is making when [it decides] to focus on expanding the jail instead of other services.”

The ad will cost $12,000 and is expected to run next week, Kaplan says.

“In just a few days we have had about 250 contributions, and we’ve raised over $5,000 in grass-roots donations,” she says. “I think what we’re seeing is definitely a groundswell of support for reform of Orleans Parish Prison. This is just through email solicitation and word of mouth.

“The donations are coming from all kinds of likely and unlikely allies. We’re seeing contributions from former judges, former city council members, local musicians, average citizens.”

Some private donors have agreed to match the funds raised by the effort. You can make a donate online through  Paypal until the end of today. There’s an anonymous donation button, if you don’t want your name to appear in the ad.

“A jail comfortable for our community needs to be no more than 857 beds,” says Norris Henderson, executive director of Voice of The Ex-Offender (VOTE), which supports the effort. “We’ve been locking people up for convenience.”

According to the group: Currently 3,500 inmates are in the Orleans Parish Prison, 2,700 of whom are “city prisoners.” That represents the highest rate of detention of any urban jail in the country and is three times the national average. There have also been a series of documented civil rights issues with conditions at the jail.

If you are interested in more details, Karen Gadbois at The Lens has been chronicling the city’s efforts to convene a private advisory committee around the jail expansion process.

Sheriff Gusman responded with an emailed statement through his public relations firm, the  Ehrhardt Group. He questioned the statistics cited by  the group, saying “all of the projections from the Juvenile Justice Project and percentages relative to our population are wrong.”

The sheriff wants a smaller, more efficient jail complex, he wrote, pointing out that the pre-Katrina jail complex housed over 7,500 inmates. Although 4,200 beds is still more than the current 3,552 beds.

The statement also focused on the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, writing: “This special interest group’s willingness to allow the current inmate housing situation to continue, while pursuing its own agenda, is short-sighted and a threat to public safety.”

“Demanding an artificially small facility just to satisfy a quest for national comparisons, in other words to wish New Orleans to be safer, is unrealistic and it puts the public’s safety at risk,” Gusman continued.

The full text of the planned ad is pasted, after the jump, along with the text of Gusman’s statement.

Read the rest of this entry »

Sen. Mary Landrieu joined U.S. Rep. Charlie Melancon and other Gulf Coast leaders at the downtown Marriott hotel this afternoon to launch the “Ready 4 Takeoff Coalition,” a broad-based lobbying and public relations effort to attract federal compensation and defense spending to the region in the wake of the oil disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

“We’ve been hit and hit and hit and hit again,” Landrieu said. “By storm after storm, flood after flood, and now the BP oil spill, and also the six-month moratorium on offshore drilling, which may cost us more jobs than the oil spill itself.”

The senator was ushered off to her next appointment without taking questions. The press kit for the event was short on details but said the coalition was “committed to building a better tomorrow for the innumerable families, workers, suppliers, manufacturers, and small and large businesses within the region.”

Its economic development initiatives include securing a $40 billion federal government contract for EADS North America to build a KC-45 Real Tanker (pictured) in Mobile, Ala.

Ready 4 Takeoff — get it?

“There’s going to be a significant amount of money paid to the federal government in the aftermath of the spill,” Landrieu said in prepared remarks. “And our congressional group is claiming that 80 percent of that money be spent in the Gulf of Mexico region. Whether it’s $5 billion or $20 billion, depending on if the courts find BP simply or grossly negligent, we’re going to spend that money from Florida to Texas.

“BP is going to replace every blade of grass, every fish destroyed, every pelican oiled, and we are going to hold BP accountable.”

The other politicians and commerce leaders from Mississippi, Florida and Alabama talked in similarly broad terms about BP being made to pay, but were also short on specifics when it came to defense spending, even though the coalition’s members include Airbus Americas, which is owned by EADS North America and stands to benefit directly from the tanker contract.

In addition to the refueling jet, the initiative seeks to push the federal government to purchase more Gulf Coast seafood for military and school contracts, accelerate revenue sharing from offshore oil and gas development, and acquire federal money for projects like the U.S. High Speed Intercity Passenger Rail Program in Alabama and Mississippi.

The roundabout nature of the rhetoric stood in contrast to the specific request for a $40 billion defense contract.

“We’re talking to each other, building relationships and coalitions,” Mobile Mayor Sam Jackson said after Landrieu had left the building.

“People are scared of what they can’t see, and what they don’t know,”  Melancon said. “It’s important the message gets out to people that the beaches are open and the seafood is safe to eat.”

Again, no mention of the military jets being safe to refuel. But you can sign the petition online, if you’re interested.

Seems like every day now we hear about the Second Coming of bedbugs. DDT wiped ‘em out after World War II, but the new breed, like something out of a horror movie, has mutated and is taking over hotel and motel rooms one bite at a time. If they’re not infesting an AMC theater in Times Square (oh God), they’re invading file cabinets in offices (oh God oh God) or luxury car dealerships. And on last night’s Daily Show, Jon Stewart featured this absolutely horrifying, David Lynch-meets-children’s-television PSA about bedbugs (starring Isabella Rossellini!):

The first I’d heard of it was a friend from New Orleans who had moved to Cincinnati with his wife; they’ve found bedbugs in their house twice now and are on the verge of a mutual nervous bedbug-breakdown. So it wasn’t surprising when the list of “America’s Top 10 Bedbug-Infested Cities” came out today and Cincinnati was #1. Just try to read this paragraph without itching:

David Ralph Hoffman, owner of Merlin’s Pest Control, says if you don’t know someone who has had a bedbug problem, you don’t live in Cincinnati. At Merlin’s they rate their horror stories on a scale of 1 to 10. The worst was an apartment occupied by someone who bragged about the last time he’d had a bath (not recently). The apartment was also occupied by about 100,000 bedbugs, Hoffman says, kept in checked only by an equal number of German cockroaches. “The one we had that we call our 9.5, the gentleman was a World War II vet and pale, sick, dying, grumpy as hell—and we found over 50 bedbugs in the hat he was wearing.”

The good news: For once, New Orleans isn’t at the top of one of these horrible lists that no one wants to top — it doesn’t appear in the Top 10. The good/bad news: If you’re traveling, you can check the site Bedbug Registry to see if anyone’s reported blood-sucking creatures between the sheets of your luxury hotel or flophouse (bedbugs respect no class or income level).

Have you had any experience or warning about bedbugs when you traveled this summer? Just in case you don’t know what they look like …

This Saturday, Aug. 28 brings the 5th annual Rising Tide, the lively day-long discussion put together after the storm by New Orleans bloggers at home and away …

After the flood that followed Hurricane Katrina’s landfall, the internet became a vital connection among dispersed New Orleanians, former New Orleanians, friends of the city and of the Gulf Coast region. A surge of new blogs erupted and, combined with those that were already online, a community of bloggers with a shared interest in New Orleans and the Gulf Coast developed. In the summer of 2006, after the success of the first Geek Dinner, and to mark the anniversary of the flood, the newly formed NOLA Bloggers organized the first Rising Tide Conference, taking their shared interest in technology, the internet and social media and turning advocacy for the city into action.

This year’s event (held at the Howlin’ Wolf) has a great lineup of speakers, starting with the keynoter: Mac McClelland of Mother Jones, who has been doing a spectacular, skeptical kickass job reporting on the oil disaster. Other panelists include NOPD Superintendent Ronal Serpas; Gambit’s Clancy DuBos (if you want your chance to hear Clancy use his full vocabulary, this is it); The Times-Picayune’s excellent columnist Stephanie Grace and equally excellent TV Ranger Dave Walker; Tulane criminologist Peter Scharf; and many more. Topics include public safety, politics, the environment, HBO’s Treme and “Why Can’t We Get Some Dam Safety in New Orleans?”.

Gambit is pleased to sponsor the event. Tickets are only $25 and can be purchased in advance here.

At NOPD headquarters this morning, Superintendent Ronal Serpas introduced a 65-point plan to reform the troubled department and allow citizens to track its progress. You can download your own copy of the report here, but here are a few items of interest.

An outreach program to the growing number of Spanish-speaking residents who settled in New Orleans after the storm:

39. The NOPD in the First Quarter of 2011 will establish an El Protector Program to engage its Hispanic/Latino community. The El Protector Program originated in the California Highway Patrol and was initiated in the Washington State Patrol in 2002, and the Nashville Police Department in 2005. Nashville’s El Protector Program, in February 2009, received national recognition from the Vera Institute of Justice as a “best practice” in reaching across the language divide. El Protector-type programs will enhance the NOPD’s ability to serve the ever changing diversity of our community. The NOPD will also analyze the need for this or a similar program in our Vietnamese community, as well as others that may have language differences.

More cops on bikes, in all districts:

41. The NOPD in 2011 will field Bicycle Units and an expanded Mounted Officer program in the eight Districts. It is well established in Community Policing literature that programs such as these serve to put officers closer to the communities they assist, thus creating better relationships, communication and information sharing.

And — as Serpas told his officers at the meeting this morning — “If you lie, you die”:

44. The NOPD on September 1, 2010 will implement a revised Honesty and Truthfulness policy that will call for presumptive termination, without progressive discipline, for any employee who makes a materially false statement with the intent to deceive. IN PLACE

45. The NOPD on September 1, 2010 will implement a revised False or Inaccurate Reports policy that will call for presumptive termination, without progressive discipline, when an employee knowingly makes, allows or causes to be made, a false or inaccurate oral or written report of an official nature. IN PLACE

There’s more (including a prohibition on cops accepting cash payments for paid details). Get your copy here — and chime in with what you think about it below.