Fox 8 in New Orleans had a story last night about the District Attorney’s office in New Orleans’ continuing failure to do anything about hooligans turning that place into a carnival of criminality.

This latest bit is more flamboyantly lawless than it is violent. It’s so in-your-face that it’s notable. Any district attorney who cared about doing his job would be making an example out of people who do burnouts and donuts on city streets in front of cops and do street racing like life is a Fast and Furious movie, but that’s obviously not who Jason Williams is…

After several incidents of illegal stunt driving on New Orleans’ roads last year led to law enforcement and public officials speaking out and vowing to enforce laws against the dangerous trend, NOPD had arrested two men for allegedly stunt driving in Treme in November 2022.

But court records show Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams refused all the charges against the two men in February this year.

FOX 8 reported NOPD was looking for one of the suspects, 29-year-old Devin Curley, while another, 33-year-old Jermaine Turner, had turned himself in to police.

Curley was later arrested as well, and the two were booked on charges like obstruction of a highway and in Turner’s case, reckless operation of a vehicle and driving with a suspended license.

About four months after their arrests, Williams refused to move forward with charges.

“It just does not set a good example at all,” said Blake Arcuri, an attorney and former Orleans Parish prosecutor. “It’s clear that these people are looking for a place to do it, and they know there’s a place where they can do it without repercussion.”

Indeed, stunt driving continues to trend in New Orleans, with drivers executing burnouts, donuts and other illegal stunts in the middle of Elysian Fields Avenue as recently as this weekend.

There’s an obvious implication here, though nobody has made a specific allegation to this effect, which is that Williams’ office or people in it could be on the take to tank prosecutions for offenses like this.

And there is also an implication that we’ve seen here and there on social media, which is that because the perpetrators of all of this are black, you have the news media making a big deal about it.

But New Orleans is a majority-black city, and this garbage is happening in the black parts of town. In other words, it’s black people who don’t want this in their neighborhoods, and black politicians responding to their constituents who are demanding something be done.

After all, the mostly-black city council last year passed an ordinance specifically aimed at putting a stop to street racing, which has a 30-day jail sentence for a first offense and a minimum 90-day jail sentence for a second offense. The people of that city – black and white – want this nipped in the bud; it’s dangerous and it’s trashy, and it’s so flagrantly lawless that it’s bad for morale.

This was what led to the new law…

And yet Williams and his prosecutors don’t care.

Maybe because they’re bought off, or maybe because they really don’t care. For all of our horror at the former possibility, it might actually be better than the latter.