New Orleans Police Department

On Sunday night I had a lovely dinner at Dante’s Kitchen (great restaurant – amaaaaazing food, and comic waiters) with a friend. After dinner, perhaps fueled by a glass of wine and chocolate high, we took a wrong turn and found ourselves in the less than desirable neighborhood of Holly Grove. Picture shanty shacks and broken street lights; and if that doesn’t help – Lil Wayne claims to be from this area because it enhances his bad ass persona.

We drove past what looked like a hang out joint, with cars carelessly parked around, and people hanging out on the street swigging from bottles. “Lock your door,” my friend advised, “I’m sorry, I think I’ve driven us into the wrong part of town.”
“No worries,” I assured her, “It’s just a mini-adventure.” – my typical, perhaps in this case unwise, attitude to wrong turns.

A few blocks further and we passed four police cars blocking off a street with their lights flashing. “We could ask them for directions, but the NOPD aren’t the most reliable people.” My friend joked. I think perhaps they overheard her because as we drove past they jumped into their cars and two vehicles followed us, lights flashing, and pulled us over. The vehicle immediately behind us was unmarked. “How do we know they’re really police and not con artists trying to rape us?” My friend (the New Orleans resident) asked me.

“Because they’ll be wearing uniforms?” I proffered. But alas they were not. An officer approached each side of the car and rapped on the window. All I could see was the gun clearly displayed at the officers hip. It took me more than a few seconds to react, perhaps encouraging their suspicions. We left our doors locked and rolled down the windows only far enough to exchange words.

“Do you have any id on you?” We were asked. While both silently considering asking the same of these men we placidly handed over our identification, figuring if they were police it was better to do as they ask, and if they weren’t they could keep the ids for all we cared right now. If they had asked us to step out of the car however – we would have dealt with that rather differently.

“What are you doing in this neighborhood?” They questioned.
“We had dinner at Dante’s Kitchen and then got lost.” I blurted out.
“This is a bad neighborhood,” the officer on the driver’s side announced (as though we couldn’t see that), “you girls shouldn’t be driving around here. We were just called out on a robbery down the road.”

It seemed they were considering running our licenses, until the officer checking my British id decided he believed us. “I think they just got lost.” Our ids were returned and we were permitted to drive on – without directions they sent us back into the maze of dark streets.

My first run in with the law and naturally in Louisiana it was race related – had we been two black girls driving around we probably would have gone unchecked. Two white girls driving around Holly Grove on a Sunday night – they probably suspected we were cruising for drugs. Why they deemed us so dangerous as to send two vehicles away from a crime scene to chase us down, Im not sure. And why four white cops believed they were undercover wearing tracksuits and driving an unmarked car is also beyond reason. The NOPD hardly improved my opinion of them – although they were not threatening or violent to us, they were certainly intimidating, and not at all helpful. They typically thought they are "the law" and pulled us over with no probable cause, then sent us back off into the neighborhood they had deemed dangerous without directions on how to get out.