WWL posts an executive summary of the IG's crime camera report (which was completed back in December, but not publicly released because, presumably, a federal agency wanted to review and/or investigate the details of the report.) :
The City of New Orleans Office of Inspector General (OIG) conducted a review of a project to deploy a city-wide system of neighborhood surveillance cameras to help the police in their battle against crime. The project originated in 2003 when Mayor C. Ray Nagin announced a plan to install up to 1,000 video surveillance cameras as part of a crime fighting initiative. The OIG review determined that the Mayor's Office of Technology (MOT), which was charged with implementing the project, did not conduct an orderly planning process, comply with prudent procurement practices, or exercise effective contract oversight at any stage of the project.
Then, providentially, WWL also has a story about the N.O. SANITATION director turning over City Council emails to a lawyer (which are apparently not burdening the City's servers as much as the Mayor's emails).
The New Orleans sanitation director turned over files that contained City Council member e-mails to a lawyer, according to a letter sent from the New Orleans city attorney to lawyers of some of the members of the council.
Lawyer Tracie Washington allegedly asked Veronica White, the city's sanitation director, in a public-relations request last December for the e-mails, even though the city attorney’s office usually handles those types of requests.
...
Last month, WWL-TV filed a lawsuit after the mayor's office failed to provide the mayor's e-mails from 2008. Nagin has said that those e-mails were lost after the city's server was "getting ready to crash." He said the city had to decide what e-mails to keep and what not to keep.
Eyewitness News reporter Lee Zurik will have more on this during the 5 p.m. newscast.
Get on your political Hazmat suits unless you want a silkwood body scrub, because chain reactions from these and other stories could lead to... a jaw-dropping meltdown.
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Update: Clancy Dubos writes: "Most important of all, the [OIG] report contains a letter sent to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten, stating the belief of auditors that federal laws may have been broken.
Full report here.
Labels: City Council, crime, Nagin
12 Comments:
"Get on your political Hazmat suits..."
I'll believe it when I see it.
Good! I cannot rebut prudent skepticism at this time, and would encourage everyone to think twice before buying into my wild-sounding prognostications.
Silkwood body scrub? Karen Silkwood? Please explain the old man speak.
If it were just the OIG report, this wouldn't be that racially divisive. Throw Veronica White into the mix and all hell breaks loose.
I hate to say this, but we all know Letten's going to get CANNED by Obummer.
Which means we'll probably see Eddie Jordan get his job, and somehow, the "mail room" at the US Attorney's Office there in the 'Nolia will then somehow "crash", losing said letter forever...
Clay: here's the "Old man reference" you feisty whippersnapper, you.
GO: since you think it's "probable" that Obama will replace Letten with Jordan, would you like to make a friendly wager on that? I'll give you odds of 2:1 that your "probable" scenario doesn't occur.
I tease.
But hey, I walk outside and I see a working crime camera! 3 shootings in 18 months and the camera was broken for all of them. Now, the target has moved out of the building and the camera works!
Check the TP story on Washington's request, and download her letter. Notice how she only requests the email of the 4 white council members. Gee, Tracie, why didn't you ask for emails from Hedgehog, Windy-Lewis, and Carter? I guess it's because those three have never done anything wrong, right?
Ms. Washington got some 'splainin' to do.
oyster,
The Eddie Jordan thing was a joke. Though I'm sure he'll replace him with some "non-cowardly" African American that will execute the duties of his office with extreme effing prejudice...
What delicious irony...Some black woman looking for "racism" getting caught red-handed asking for-and receiving-emails for ONLY THE HONKEYS that will bring about the downfall of the Nagin Administration and all of the dank, dimly lit bulbs he's got dead-heading on the payroll at City Hall...
What sweet, delicious irony...
GO, I have no idea what your opinion was, but most white people, aside from a few die hard Edwards supporters, thought the world of Eddie Jordan when he first became D.A.
As a New Orleanian who's concerned about ongoing corruption that could ruin the Katrina recovery, I'm starting to lose patience with Letten. I wouldn't mind seeing him replaced with somebody who isn't so stuck in the past. Of course Morial administration corruption needs to be prosecuted, if only as a deterrent to future corruption, but, other than Oliver Thomas, I can't think of a single case of his office going after somebody who was actually in office or still doing business with the city. If I remember correctly, Thomas went down because of pre-Katrina dealings with the Morial admin.
If Nagin got some kind of immunity deal for giving Letten access to City Hall records when he first took office, Letten could at least have the decency to leak that information. That's a not a totally far-fetched idea (it's just an occasional thought of mine, not a theory), Nagin did have business dealings with Morial (or members of his crowd) before becoming mayor. We've seen the DOJ offer stupider immunity deals -- think Sherman Copelin.
If it's just that Letten's focused on the Morial investigation, he should think about who's actually in a position to award hundreds of millions of dollars worth of city contracts.
Don't forget that Letten took down several sitting judges in JP. He also got Ellenesse Brooks-Simms, who, while no longer a school board member, certainly deserved to be prosecuted.
I suspect he's probably got some ongoing investigations into the current administration as well, but these things dont move very fast (unfortunately).
Letten's doing a helluva job. It would be a shame if he gets bumped out for political reasons, though obviously not surprising if 50+ years of history is any guide.
Letten has major staffing issue. The New Orleans office only has 40 attorneys and because it was given a high crime designation a certain number of those attorneys are assigned to only violent street crime cases. The real answer is that we need another 100 U.S. Attorneys in New Orleans to handle the backlog of cases that are currently in the system.
Of course Letten's office does have a few office deadbeats but that's a civil service issue. The US Attorneys office needs immediate help.
bayoustjohn...I'm not sure what world you were speaking of when you say that you thought the world of Jordan, but surely, it can't be ours...
You DO remember Cleo Fields taking that big wad of sweaty money from Edwin Edwards that the Feds got on tape, don't you?
Do you ever wonder why he never got prosecuted?
Seriously...How does some guy take a massive cash money payoff from a guy who ends up in the Federal Hokey, while he's smack dab in the middle of a Federal Investigation of the biggest Political Figure of the past half century in the most politically corrupt state in US History?
I wonder if it had anything to do with Eddie Jordan?
Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm...
