Citizen Crime Watch Blog

Coldblooded character sticks up snowball stand
Robbery is first at Hansen’s in years
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
By Brett Anderson
The Times-Picayune

Ashley Hansen has worked in Hansen’s Sno-Bliz, her family’s sno-ball stand, for most of her 34 years. The last customer she served on Friday, however, could end up being the most memorable.

“Friday at 7 o’clock, the last customer in line ordered a sno-ball, and I made him a sno-ball,” Hansen recalled. “Then he put a (handgun) to my stomach and said, ‘Give me all your money.’ ”

A New Orleans police report confirms a robbery at the venerable Tchoupitoulas Street establishment at 7:02 p.m.

A trip to Hansen’s, an iconic sno-ball stand particularly popular with families, is a summertime tradition in New Orleans. The business has been at its current address, 4801 Tchoupitoulas St., since 1944. The business itself dates to the 1930s, when Hansen’s grandfather Ernest Hansen built his first Sno-Bliz sno-ball maker while working at a local machine shop.

“The stand has never been robbed in all the years it’s been open,” Hansen said.

She said the only other employee on duty was taking out the trash during the robbery. No one was hurt.

“After I closed the doors, people were still lingering outside and I said, ‘That guy just robbed me,’ ” Hansen recalled.

Hansen took over the sno-ball stand from her grandparents, Ernest and Mary, who were married 73 years and ran the family sno-ball stand together for more than 60. They died within months of each other following Katrina.

“This place has always been sort of sacred to me,” Hansen said. “Why would you rob a sno-ball stand? It’s like taking candy from a baby.”

Two traffic judges back on Broad St.
But half of the cases still heard in Algiers
Tuesday, July 01, 2008
From staff reports
The Times-Picayune

If you’ve got a date to appear in Orleans Parish Traffic Court, take note: Two of the court’s four judges have resumed hearing cases at their 757 S. Broad St. headquarters, where work to fix damage caused by flooding after Hurricane Katrina is almost complete.

Traffic Court Division A Judge Dennis Dannel, who takes the bench at 8 a.m., and Division C Judge Paul Bonin, who starts hearing cases at noon, are no longer hearing cases at the Old Algiers Courthouse, where Traffic Court set up temporarily after the 2005 storm.

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Homeland Security director announces his retirement
by The Times-Picayune
Tuesday June 10, 2008, 7:24 AM

Col. Terry Ebbert, the city’s director of Homeland Security, has announced his retirement as of June 30.

Ebbert, named to his position in February, 2003, said in a press release issued by the mayor’s office that he has “some family, personal and professional goals that remain unfulfilled.” He said he intends to remain involved in working to restore the city “to its prominent position as one of the strategic and vital cities in America.”

The announcement comes a day after Mayor Ray Nagin’s top political aide, Kenya Smith, announced his resignation. Smith, with Nagin since 2002, was director of intergovernmental relations.

Lt. Col. Jerry Sneed, who led the city’s hurricane preparation efforts in 2007, will continue in his role, according to the press release.

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FBI to end stint in homicide unit
N.O. squad got help from federal agents
Saturday, June 07, 2008
By Brendan McCarthy

The FBI will be ending its one-of-a-kind homicide initiative with the New Orleans Police Department later this month, withdrawing the agents that supplemented the NOPD’s taxed murder squad.

The move draws to a close the 17-month initiative, which put FBI agents from across the country into the NOPD’s homicide unit for several months at a time. The agents assisted local detectives from crime scene to clearance, knocking on doors and helping out in many other facets of the investigations. A group of five detectives was placed in the unit for up to three-month rotations. …

NOPD Capt. Kevin Anderson, commander of the homicide unit, said the departure will mean fewer bodies in the office but said it will not affect the squad’s output.

“We do feel confidently that it will not impact the service and job performance of the homicide division,” Anderson said. “It will not impact our ability to put murderers in jail.”

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N.O. cop won’t see fleeing charge
He still must face DWI, speeding case
Saturday, June 07, 2008
By Laura Maggi

The Orleans Parish district attorney’s office this week decided against prosecuting an off-duty New Orleans Police Department officer for fleeing from a Crescent City Connection squad car, although Officer Charles Richard still faces myriad charges in traffic court, including reckless driving and driving while intoxicated. …

Richard is scheduled to go to trial June 25 in New Orleans traffic court on charges of driving while intoxicated and recklessly operating a vehicle, as well as speeding and running a red light, said Louis Ivon, the court’s administrator.

Richard was heading across the Crescent City Connection at around 1:37 a.m. on March 3 when Sgt. David Kramer with the CCC Police Department clocked his Dodge Charger going 83 mph in a 50 mph speed zone. Kramer followed the car in his cruiser, with his lights on, but Richard didn’t stop for 2.9 miles, according to a brief police report filed at Criminal District Court.

Kramer followed the car off the Gen. DeGaulle Drive exit and continued as the driver turned right onto L.B. Landry Ave. Richard kept going, according to the report, ending up on Shirley Drive, where he failed to stop for a red light at the Gen. Meyer Avenue intersection.

Richard then crashed into the Naval Support Activity building on Gen. Meyer and was ejected from the car, the report said. At that point, Kramer realized the driver was an off-duty New Orleans police officer, the report said.

An EMS unit took Richard to University Hospital, where a blood sample was taken. The report stated that Dr. Frank Minyard, the Orleans Parish coroner, examined the laboratory report from Richard’s blood and found the ethanol level was high enough to “significantly impair Richard’s judgment.”

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Crimestoppers offering extra rewards for gun tips
by Michelle Hunter, The Times-Picayune
Friday June 06, 2008, 3:19 PM

Crimestoppers Inc. tipsters now have a new way to make money and take guns off the streets.

Local law enforcement agencies have banded with Crimestoppers to offer an additional reward for information that leads to a firearm used in a crime.

Tipsters usually earn as much as $2,500 for information that results in the indictment of a suspect in a homicide or non-fatal shooting. Now they can pick up an additional $1,000 for the firearm, for a maximum total of $3,500, said Darlene Cusanza, executive director for the New Orleans area’s Crimestoppers organization.

She launched the campaign this afternoon at a news conference with local law enforcement and government officials from the New Orleans area.

Cusanza said Crimestoppers also is offering individual $1,000 rewards for callers who provide the location of a convicted felon who has a gun. As per Crimestoppers guidelines, callers do not have to identify themselves by namne to receive a reward.

In addition to television commercials, billboards and posters, Crimestoppers is advertising the program on public buses in Jefferson and Orleans parishes.

Cusanza stressed that the program is not a gun buy-back initiative. Law enforcement must first connect the gun to the crime specified by the caller before a reward is issued, she said.

To report information on a criminal suspect or a firearm used in a crime, call Crimestoppers at (504) 822-1111 or toll-free at (877) 903-7867.

Witness killer gets life term
Victim was to testify about N.O. drug ring
Friday, June 06, 2008
By Susan Finch

A New Orleans man will spend the rest of his life in prison for killing a federal witness five years ago to keep her from testifying in a trial involving a large-scale cocaine trafficking ring, one of whose members ordered the hit and supplied the gun to carry it out.

U.S. District Judge Martin L.C. Feldman imposed the mandatory sentence on Donald “Big” Sylvester for his conviction by a jury last fall on charges of conspiring with Terrance “Breeze” Lash, 34, to distribute 5 kilograms of cocaine and, at Lash’s behest, murdering the witness, Demetra “Deedy Bird” Norse, on a street corner near her home with a .45-caliber handgun he got from Lash.

Prosecutors said Norse, who was in her 30s, was killed in retaliation for telling a federal grand jury and a law enforcement officer about Lash’s drug dealing, as well as to stop her from taking the stand in the federal trial of another of the drug conspirators.

Lash, already in federal prison after being convicted in 2006 on the same charges as Sylvester, was described by prosecutors as a “big-time drug dealer” who distributed 100- to 150-pound shipments of cocaine that another man brought from Houston every week.

U.S. Attorney Jim Letten said Norse was targeted after she made the mistake of telling “thugs” involved in the drug dealing that she had been called by the grand jury; such information is normally kept secret and federal witnesses are advised to be discreet, prosecutors said.

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‘K-Ville’ detectives got nothin’ on judge
He defuses threatening situation
Friday, June 06, 2008
By Katy Reckdahl

On his way to work Wednesday, Judge Arthur Hunter disarmed an agitated man brandishing a broken bottle in front of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court at Tulane Avenue and Broad Street.

About 10 a.m. that day, New Orleans police officers blockaded Tulane Avenue and surrounded a tall, rail-thin man who threatened to cut his throat with the jagged-edged beer bottle and waved it toward anyone who approached.

Hunter, who was driving to work, got caught in the traffic and pulled over. He parked and took off on foot to the courthouse, where he is the chief judge and presides over a weekly mental health court for mentally ill people charged with nonviolent, felony-level offenses.

As Hunter neared the courthouse, he saw a profusion of NOPD squad cars and an ambulance. He worried that someone had been shot, he said.

Then he saw the lanky man, loudly cursing the NOPD officers surrounding him.

“It was tense,” Hunter said.

The ranking officer briefed Hunter about the situation. But at that point, officers didn’t know anything about the man, who glared at the judge and said, “Who the f - - - are you?”

Hunter introduced himself, and the man relaxed and said, “Oh you’re one of the good judges.” He then told Hunter his name — Edmund Barnes — and told him he was thirsty.

Cecile Tebo, director of NOPD’s crisis unit, fetched Barnes a glass of water. He, the judge and Tebo continued to speak. Not long afterward, Barnes dropped the bottle and got into the crisis unit van. He was taken to University Hospital and committed, Hunter said.

Earlier that morning, Hunter had spent nearly four hours in Lakeview to sign commitment papers for Eric Minshew, the armed man who holed up in a destroyed Lakeview house Tuesday afternoon and was shot by police officers after a 10-hour standoff.

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Officer’s killer deemed insane
Appeals judges uphold lower court ruling
Saturday, May 31, 2008
By Laura Maggi
Staff writer

The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals this week upheld a lower federal court decision overturning the life sentence of a Texas man who killed a New Orleans police officer in 1996, concluding that Salvador Perez was insane at the time of the shooting and should not have been found guilty of first-degree murder.

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Warrant issued for jailed teen
Red-faced NOPD rescinds arrest order
Saturday, May 31, 2008
By Laura Maggi

Eighth District police last week issued a warrant for the arrest of a 15-year-old boy on a charge of aggravated burglary — apparently without realizing he has been locked up in a juvenile facility since before the crime.

Police issued a news release Thursday that said Byron Laird broke into a Marigny home with four other juveniles and robbed two men at gunpoint, on May 17.

But Judge David Bell, the chief judge at the city’s juvenile court, on Friday morning questioned how the teenager could have been involved in any burglary, since he has been in the custody of the state Office of Youth Development since early March, serving a six-month sentence.

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