New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu just gave yet another press conference, this time on crime. He outlined yet another “plan” to tackle the city’s violent crime problem. The “plan” itself is not important. It’s just yet another smoke and mirrors ploy whereby Landrieu could pretend to be tackling the crime problem while not actually doing anything about it.

During the press conference, which did not have his adoring legion of fans from the national media in attendance, he was asked about the NOPD’s manpower problems. Landrieu answered by describing how he was rebuilding the New Orleans Police Department, which was dealing with corruption investigation and was under a consent decree. He was then lamenting that when one problem in the NOPD was dealt with, another problem popped up.

Landrieu said (bold emphasis ours)”Every year, it’s like whack a mole. As soon as you fix one problem in the department, another problem comes up. So we had as you may recall some episodes with the sexual crimes unit. So we had to move police around when you do that, you had to move them from somewhere else. Then you had Ferguson, people stopped signing up. So all these things feed to the next.”

Here’s the video of the Landrieu press conference. The quote is from right around 26:50.

https://www.facebook.com/wdsutv/videos/10154519711716987/?autoplay_reason=all_page_organic_allowed&video_container_type=4&video_creator_product_type=0&app_id=273465416184080&live_video_guests=0

Landrieu said that Ferguson was responsible for the NOPD’s manpower problems with a straight face. It can’t be the image of the NOPD as a fifth-rate police department. It can’t be that the city has problems paying its first responders. Instead, it’s the aftermath of Ferguson. If you believe that, we have a bridge for sale over Lake Ponchatrain.

Mitch Landrieu is once again trying to cover for his own failures as mayor. Since he took down the Confederate monuments, he no longer has anything he can distract from the city’s problems. Therefore he tries his best impression of Captain Queeg. Problem is, there really isn’t anyone who is buying what Landrieu is selling anymore.