Human Decency FIRST will be sending a letter (certified mail) to Chief Warren Riley and Mayor Ray Nagin.

MORE SIGNATURES ARE NEEDED! (Currently at 135)

A meeting to plan circulating flyers and obtaining more signatures will be held:

Saturday, May 30
4 - 6 p.m.
6430 Vicksburg St., New Orleans

Agenda:
     Action plan for letter and follow-up
     Prioritizing future projects
     Fighting citizen apathy in the city

PLEASE RSVP hdfirst@cox.net TO ASSURE ENOUGH CHAIRS ARE AVAILABLE.


Below is the letter to be sent to Riley and Nagin. To indicate a "signature", I need an email to hdfirst@cox.net with your name.  If you are wiling to contribute to having these published, please include that in your email. Anyone can "sign"the letter, resident, former resident, those who just love New Orleans.


Dear Chief Riley, Mayor Nagin and City Council Members:

We the citizens signing below have listened to your statements of declining crime statistics while keeping running totals of our own. As of this date, we cannot justify your continued lack of acknowledgement that the city is in the grips of rapidly increasing violence of an increasingly heinous nature. We are not seeing a decline at all.

We are demanding that you meet this issue head-on instead of continuing to duck it.

We ask that you:

-- Hold a weekly press conference or radio broadcast addressing the violent crimes of that week including information on arrests and motives if available

-- Provide to the news media information on public defenders or prosecutors who continuously cause police officers to appear in court for violent crime cases only to have cases continued due to lack of preparation

-- Provide a reason for the closure of the police sub-station inside the Iberville Housing Development and plans to control rampant activity in the area in the absence of the sub-station

-- Share with the citizens through the press conference or news media information on each specialized unit active within the Police Department (i.e. Narcotics, Gang Relations, etc) so that citizens know that specific types of crime are being acknowledged

If these things are not done, we the citizens will be petitioning the Governor of Louisiana to meet with a representative group in Baton Rouge to discuss the deplorable condition of crime reporting, the response to crime and lack of information sharing on violent crime with the citizens of the city. Press releases regarding this meeting will be circulated to national media and news groups will be invited to attend.

We do not take our demands lightly, just as we do not take our safety lightly. We feel threatened, harassed, insecure and suspicious within our own homes and neighborhoods. This is not the environment we want visitors to come to, nor for our children to grow up knowing.

Please contact Tara Guillot with your response.