Citizen Crime Watch Blog

NOPD to target street-level dealers
Major-case unit’s officers redeployed
Thursday, June 26, 2008
By Laura Maggi

Many officers working drug cases as part of the New Orleans Police Department’s major-case narcotics unit, as well as some working on federal task forces, this week were moved to smaller narcotics task forces operating out of six district offices around the city.

The move is part of a plan to reshape officer deployment that was developed by Deputy Chief Kirk Bouyelas, who became head of the NOPD’s operations bureau earlier this month after a year and a half as commander of the department’s Uptown-based 2nd District.

With a smaller department than before Hurricane Katrina, officers need to focus on street-level deals rather than complex and time-consuming investigations of high-volume drug dealers, Bouyelas said. Bouyelas, who in his new position directs the strategic direction of the department, said his focus will be to help district commanders and their officers reduce crime in their areas. Along with the shifting of narcotics officers, Bouyelas said he expects to roll out more initiatives in the next few months.

“I do not think these guys can work harder. But they can work more efficiently,” said Bouyelas, who joined the force in 1983 and previously served under two operations chiefs. “This is all about more boots on the streets and getting creative in ways to use officers.” …

While this kind of enforcement has been criticized in the past as targeting low-level offenders, who even if convicted in court won’t end up with substantial prison sentences, Bouyelas said that thoughtful street policing can lead to bigger busts.

The strategy succeeded in the 2nd District last year, where a team created by Bouyelas developed solid confidential informants who made “controlled buys” from dealers within drug houses, he said. Police were eventually able to come back with search warrants and arrest multiple people, helping clean up crime hot spots that developed after the storm, he said.

The major case narcotics division, aimed at tackling midlevel and “kingpin” drug dealers, will still operate, but with fewer officers. At some point, when recruitment returns the NOPD to its full strength of about 1,700 officers, the major-case narcotics team will be beefed up again, Bouyelas said.

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Cop’s arrest taints drug cases
DA drops charges in 37 prosecutions
Friday, May 30, 2008
By Laura Maggi
Staff writer
The Times-Picayune

As a member of the New Orleans Police Department’s 4th District task force, officer Joseph Lusk was involved in a plethora of Algiers drug busts, arresting people for dealing or using illegal drugs.

Lusk’s own arrest last month on suspicion of malfeasance in office means 37 of those cases have been dropped so far by the Orleans Parish district attorney’s office — whose prosecutors can’t press forward on cases with an allegedly corrupt cop as a main witness.

Each case needed to be evaluated to determine whether Lusk was an “essential witness,” or whether prosecutors could go forward without his testimony, relying on other NOPD officers, said District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson. Almost all of the cases involve drugs — save for the battery of a police officer charge in which Lusk was the alleged victim, an office spokesman said. “Once an officer is under investigation of any sort, we wouldn’t want to call him to testify for us,” Landrum-Johnson said.

— Arrested April 16 —

Lusk was arrested by his department’s Public Integrity Bureau on April 16 amid allegations he tipped off a woman about a drug location under surveillance on the West Bank.

This female acquaintance, Inger Hurst, allegedly told 4th District officers about the text-messaged tip-off — which Hurst said was meant to help her evade arrest for her drug purchases — when she was picked up the next day on suspicion of crack possession.

Lusk, who resigned from the NOPD the week of Hurst’s arrest, was booked the following week with malfeasance. The DA’s office expects to present his case to a grand jury next month, said Robert White, the assistant district attorney in charge of the office’s public corruption unit.

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Honors go to 4 women for law enforcement work
Saturday, May 10, 2008
By Susan Finch
The Times-Picayune

Four New Orleans women were saluted for their leadership in law enforcement during a Friday luncheon to benefit Grace House, which offers residential substance abuse treatment for women.

The honorees at the 13th annual “Women of Substance” luncheon at the Audubon Tea Room were:

– Acting Orleans Parish District Attorney Keva Landrum-Johnson, who became Louisiana’s first female DA in November when she was named interim head of the office after former DA Eddie Jordan resigned.

– Longtime licensed clinical social worker Cecile Tebo, who heads a New Orleans Police Department unit, unique in the nation, that deals with mentally ill people in crisis.

– Col. Anella Wilson-Joseph, who has been employed for 33 years with the Orleans Criminal Sheriff’s Office, where she is warden of the female division and director of the prison art program.

– Jenny L. Tripkovich, who went to work for the U.S. Customs Service 28 years ago and is now assigned to immigration and customs enforcement with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security in New Orleans. She is a member of U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s anti-terrorism advisory council.

Two men to serve prison time in teen’s heroin death
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Thursday May 01, 2008, 8:24 AM

Two young men charged with providing the heroin that helped kill a Lusher High School student in January are expected to serve prison sentences of up to 15 years after they pleaded guilty Wednesday to a federal charge of conspiring to distribute heroin.

One of the defendants, David “Bird” Battenberg, also pleaded guilty to a second charge of selling heroin to a person younger than 21. Battenberg, 27, and his co-defendant, Diego Perez, 18, are scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 6 by U.S. District Judge Carl Barbier. …

Had Battenberg’s and Perez’s participation in the drug trade not been linked to a fatal overdose, the two would be facing far shorter sentences. But in their plea agreements, both stipulated that their conduct “led directly to the overdose death of 16-year-old Madeleine Prevost,” according to U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office.

Another defendant in the case, Henry Deeb Gabriel, 23, who was charged along with Perez and Battenberg, has not come to an agreement with authorities and is expected to go to trial. Gabriel is accused of buying the heroin — through Perez and Battenberg — that Prevost ingested on the night before she died.

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Death struck many in N.O. heroin users circle
by Gordon Russell and Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
Saturday April 12, 2008, 10:26 PM

In just four weeks this year, three people in University of New Orleans freshman Ian Painter’s extended circle of friends died from heroin-related overdoses.

First came Madeleine Prevost, a promising 16-year-old student at Lusher High School whom Painter had met a few days earlier. She died Jan. 6.

Two weeks later, it was Louisiana State University student Pierce Sharai, 19, who had been Painter’s lab partner at Ben Franklin High School and a pal since childhood.

And two weeks after that, a similar fate befell 21-year-old Destrehan High School graduate Zac Moser, a former Loyola student and waiter at Emeril’s Delmonico, with whom Painter shared a mutual friend.

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Text messages reveal teen drug culture
by Gordon Russell, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday March 12, 2008, 2:03 PM

Offering a rare peek behind the curtain of the city’s teenage drug culture, an FBI affidavit filed in court Tuesday reveals a series of text messages sent in the hours leading up to the heroin-related death of a Lusher Charter School student, and the panic that followed.

Most chillingly, the messages and other information detailed in the document suggest that Madeleine Prevost’s boyfriend, Henry Deeb Gabriel III, was making efforts to cover up what had happened even before the 16-year-old was pronounced dead on Jan. 6. He was arrested Tuesday.

In a closed detention hearing Tuesday, U.S. Magistrate Judge Louis Moore ordered that Gabriel be imprisoned based on the affidavit and testimony.

Gabriel, 23, who worked at Lusher until December, is the fourth person to be arrested or charged in connection with the death of Prevost, a junior at Lusher whose mother is a social worker at the school.

The affidavit supporting his arrest, filed by FBI Special Agent James Hurley, says that Gabriel and Prevost had “an intimate emotional relationship,” and that they were together the afternoon and evening of Jan. 5, when she snorted the drugs that eventually killed her.

The affidavit says Gabriel got the drugs — heroin and cocaine — through a Lusher student, Diego Perez, 18, who in turn purchased them from David Battenberg, 27. Battenberg and Perez, like Gabriel, have been arrested on the basis of criminal complaints. None has been indicted.

A fourth person, Clinton “South” Rodriguez, has been indicted on a related charge of heroin possession. Rodriguez allegedly was the source of the drugs Battenberg sold to Gabriel and were eventually ingested by Prevost on the fatal night.

The FBI affidavit, bolstered by interviews with Gabriel and Perez as well as a series of text messages among the various parties, paints that night in vivid detail.

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[related]

N.O. man indicted in drug ring case
Saturday, March 08, 2008
From staff reports

A federal grand jury on Thursday indicted a New Orleans man allegedly involved in a drug ring that sold heroin to a 16-year-old girl who died this year from an overdose.

Clinton “South” Rodriguez, 30, was charged with one count of possession of heroin with the intent to distribute the drug, a week after he was arrested by federal agents. Cooperating witnesses said Rodriguez is a heroin supplier in the Carrollton area, according to a news release by U.S. Attorney Jim Letten’s office.

The local Federal Bureau of Investigation recently made several arrests related to the overdose death of Madeleine Prevost, a junior at Lusher High School who died in January after using heroin and cocaine.

Last month, Diego A. Perez, 18, and David C. Battenberg, 27, were charged in a criminal complaint with conspiracy to distribute and possess heroin and other drugs.

Over in neighboring Jefferson Parish, an elderly woman was brutally murdered during a purse snatching.

Officials quickly arrested three defendants in the case. A caution to those who would ever consider trying meth was posted in the NOLA.com comments below the story:

Everybody,
take a good look at meth addicts look like. As a social worker since the late 80s, I can tell you that this is what meth does to you; on top of eating holes in your brain, literally, it ages one severly. Hayden, who is younger than Coe, looks like a 75 y.o. with a wig; with that collapsed mouth, no doubt she has lost all if not most of her teeth, extremely common amongst those that use crank. So, so sad and pathetic.

Parents, print this out and show your kids: this is tweakers look like. Meth is a one way street and you, often very soon after a single use, will end up looking like these cats, and spend the rest of your days circling the drain.