What was it like on Bourbon Street for a New Orleans Policeman Wednesday this week?
Imagine you are a New Orleans cop assigned the overnight shift on Bourbon Street on New Year’s Eve.
You know it’s going to be a long one. You’ll be breaking up fights and doing crowd control. Indeed, you’ll have to deal with unpleasantness from drunk people, but that’s tonight’s job. You’ll let a few things slide that you usually wouldn’t. After all, it is New Year’s in a city known for its party culture. The French Quarter needs its tourists and their dollars. Let the good times roll.
With any luck, you’ll make it to midmorning without too much trouble, and you can pack it in. Call the night a success.
Then, without warning, carnage, chaos, terror. A blur. Bodies in the air. Revelers crying out dragged under tires.
“Stop!” you shout reflexively, holding one hand in the air while placing your other hand on your weapon in anticipation of—what exactly? No time to think. It’s a stampede, a crush, a complete panic.
Then the madman behind the wheel of the murder truck leaps from the cab and starts firing—at you.
You’re trained for this. But are you? No one is ready to take live fire. This isn’t a simulation, an exercise; these are real bullets fired with deadly intent. You hear them whizzing by, ricocheting off French Quarter walls. You never did this at the academy.
You draw your weapon and try to return fire, but the madman is moving quickly. He got the drop on all of you. You have to be careful not to shoot a civilian. You have to aim carefully.
Crack. A flash of pain, a flame in your arm, you’re hit, you’re down, you’re out of the fight. Now, it’s only the shouting as the shooter disappears into the night. Now it’s only the moaning of the wounded, which includes you. It all happened so fast. How long did it take? Was it even a minute from the first scream until the bullet hit you?
“Don’t worry. We’re going to take care of you. You’re going to be all right,” someone says as he bundles you into the back of a patrol car. But he doesn’t know. Nobody ever does. It could go either way.
Many think cops get paid overtime to sit in their cars all day and drink coffee. But not many jobs come with the real possibility of getting shot at every time you go to work. Yours does. You wish people realized how terrifying that can be. You wish that your fellow citizens understood that every time you put on your uniform, never mind your bulletproof vest, your mind goes straight to the possibility of getting killed during your shift.
The fear is ever-present. Every highway traffic stop. Every random interaction on the street with a person asking for directions. Some guy walked up to three New York City cops on New Year’s Eve 2022 and started hacking at them with a machete. Being a cop isn’t a videogame or a movie. It’s life and death every day. You really wish people understood, but most don’t.
Your motto is “To Protect and to Serve,” which means the public, all those who’ve come to the birthplace of jazz, to ring in the New Year with an all-night party, but your goal right now is to survive.
The remarkable thing about Wednesday’s early-morning truck attack in New Orleans was its familiarity. Attacks of this sort have become common. Only a week ago, an alleged Islamic terrorist slaughtered five and injured 235 by plowing through a packed Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany. In 2021, Darrell Brooks killed six and injured dozens when he rammed a Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wis. On the afternoon of Halloween in 2017, Sayfullo Habibullaevic Saipov drove his rented pickup truck for a mile down the sidewalk along Manhattan’s West Side Highway, killing eight.
Those are only the easy ones to remember. There are many others. The worst was in Nice, France, in 2016, where 86 people lost their lives. How quickly we file it all away.
You know the police can do only so much. Cities like New Orleans and New York can harden their sidewalks and public squares against attack with barricades and surveillance, but these killers are nothing if not resourceful. They always come up with some new method of spilling the blood of innocents and spreading fear. In the infamous formulation, the terrorist only has to be lucky once. The bastards.
Someone tells you that 10 people died on Wednesday morning. That’s 10 families wrecked, scarred forever by the actions of a complete lunatic whose motivations are currently unknown but don’t matter anyway. Not to those families. More could die, including you and your colleague, the other New Orleans police officer who didn’t go home to his family this morning.
You remember that it’s New Year’s Day. Half the world is waking up with a hangover. You know that some people will hear the terrible news from your beloved city and reflect on the senseless loss of life. You wonder if thelly’ll think of you. You wonder if they’ll say a prayer for all who protect and serve.
Anti-Israel Protestors Took Over Times Square For New Year’s: Any terrorists among these?
Hundreds, perhaps even thousands, of anti-Israel protesters took over Times Square in New York City on Wednesday evening, just hours after an apparent ISIS radical reportedly murdered more than a dozen people in New Orleans.
The protesters, many of whom wore keffiyehs and face masks, slammed U.S. support for Israel. They carried Palestinian flags and signs that read, “End all U.S. aid to Israel,” “Zionism is cancer,” “Lift the siege on Gaza now!” and “No war on Iran.”
At various times, they also chanted in unison: “Resistance is glorious — we will be victorious,” “We will honor all our martyrs,” and “There is only one solution — intifada revolution.” Intifada, which means “uprising” in Arabic, refers to “the Second Intifada, a period of terror attacks in Israel in the early 2000s marked by suicide bombings,” the Times of Israel reported.
With an American flag as their backdrop, several even knelt on the ground in a Muslim show of worship:
Additionally, the group promised that pro-Palestine demonstrations would continue until they achieved “total liberation” from “Zionism.” “2024 was a year of struggle against the crime of Zionism,” said one speaker. “We will be here every single year for generation after generation until total liberation and return.”
Some of the protesters also engaged in a heated exchange with a handful of pro-Israel counterprotesters. “We’re sending you back to Europe, you white b***hes,” said one particularly foul-mouthed woman in a keffiyeh, according to the New York Post.
“Shut up, you ghetto-a** b***h,” the same woman apparently added to a black counterprotester, according to a video posted to X. She also repeatedly shouted, “Go back to Europe! Go back to Europe!” to others while pledging loyalty to Hamas.
The protest was reportedly orchestrated by the Palestinian Youth Movement, the Party for Socialism and Liberation, and the People’s Forum. Members of anti-Zionist groups like Jewish Voice for Peace and Neturei Karta also attended.
Summary
Whether the NYC protest came in response to the violence in New Orleans is unclear. The Times of Israel did note that since the attacks of October 7, 2023, pro-Hamas activists have taken to the streets on major American holidays such as Thanksgiving, Christmas, and the Fourth of July to draw attention to their cause.
Add to the above terrorist atrocities the Tesla bombing in front of Trump Resort in Las Vegas on the same day. What do you have?
I’m not a terrorism expert nor have access to information other what you have. However, using common sense, it’s relatively easy to draft a narrative with a “likely” explanation: While FBI, state, and local law enforcement experts explore every narrative seeking the “probability” of terrorist ties in these three events, our state and national leaders must quickly find that answer.
We all know there are hundreds of thousands — if not millions — of illegals the Biden Administration has flooded into our nation; we know many have terrorist ties and histories of terrorist acts.
I suggest our law enforcement folks nationwide pursue these more diligently than ever. They need to prepare us for what is likely to be a flood of other terrorist acts.
Are you surprised to hear this? You shouldn’t be. After all, the unified cry of Islamist terrorists from most countries in the World from their “Bible,” the Quaran, is to “Convert the Infidel. If the Infidel refuses to turn to Allah, Kill The Infidel.”
Every human being who is not a Muslim is an Infidel.
