<http://schema.org/articleBody>
"FacebookPinterest\n\nLieutenant Joe Valiente picks me up just after 7a.m. on Mardi Gras morning. His is the fourth squad car I've been in since my plane touched down, barely 15 hours earlier, at Louis Armstrong airport. I put on my seatbelt, and we shoot down St. Charles Avenue. The radio is quiet, the day's parades still hours off, and yet the street's median, the eventual viewing gallery, is already peopled with bleary-eyed revelers. Some of them have been here all night, camping out for a spot.\n\nI wanted to spend the day in jail. That was the original idea. Instead, I'm riding shotgun with the cops, with the New Orleans Police Department, perhaps the only people in or around Big Easy who could do without Mardi Gras. Take it or leave it. Actually, leave it. They're like the Grinches of Carnival\u2014not because they hate fun and breasts; they're just so damn overworked, deep-fried oyster shells, husks.\n\nStanding over six feet tall, with a neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper mustache (OK, mostly salt) and a full helmet of hair to match, Valiente heads NOPD's three-man special-events unit. At 55, he's a year from retirement. Less than a year\u2014\"the day after next Mardi Gras.\" But Valiente isn't checking out just yet. For every event that comes through town, he and his team put together what's known as an \"incident plan,\" a tightly scripted logistical blueprint for how things should go down, which is disseminated throughout the department. There is intense pressure to avoid fuck-ups or oversights. This is only the second Mardi Gras for reformist New Orleans mayor Mitch Landrieu and his police superintendant, Ronal Serpas, and the official Mardi Gras season, at least from NOPD's perspective, stretches almost two weeks before Fat Tuesday, featuring dozens of parades, large and small, during that time.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nWhich is to say nothing of Bourbon Street.\n\nFor Mardi Gras, Valiente's incident plan fills out an inches' thick three-ring binder. In these waning days, the local police are operating on little more than caffeine and instinct, officially clocking 12-hour shifts, but in reality logging anywhere from 12 to 16 job-related hours. Valiente refers to this grueling schedule as \"Mardi Gras mode.\" You can spot the street cops by their Mountain Dew-colored vests, a recent implementation, which Valiente tells me \"are great\u2014they're working, man.\" The cops patrol on foot and on Segways, on motorcycles and horseback. They move parades and safeguard the French Quarter. Trapped inside squad cars, officers nip at water bottles\u2014swallowing just enough to stave off dehydration, but not so much that nature calls (during Mardi Gras, it isn't just the drunken tourists who suffer from a lack of loos).\n\nPut on by glorified social clubs, known as krewes, the parades are chief Mardi Gras attractions. As of this morning, there are still two major processions left to march: Zulu and Rex. Both will be departing from within a few blocks of each other, on Claiborne Avenue, which is where Valiente now parks his vehicle. He leads me into the Krewe of Rex's den, an enormous warehouse space, at the corner of Third, where they have all their floats stashed. James Carville is onsite, glad-handing with Rex royalty and faux-flashing passing motorists. Dude is positively set to cut loose. \"People come here to vent,\" says Valiente. \"It's a weird town.\" I duck into an adjoining room, a changing area stuffed with racks of silk and sparkles, bins of masks and feathers\u2014a Liberace wet dream. Outside, the temperature is quickly gaining momentum. Mercury rising. It's not yet 9 a.m., and some folks already have booze-weary complexions. They're not going to make it. I've been separated from Valiente, though soon we reconnect. I'll be riding in Rex, he tells me. In the command van that leads the way.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\n\"We have got to do something about these vests!\"\n\nOfficer Ross Bourgeois, one-third of Lieutenant Valiente's special-events unit, steps back into the van, out of the humidity, and tears at the Velcro of his police vest. \"They're not meant to be worn all day long,\" he moans.\n\nCaptain Mike Pfeiffer, commander of NOPD's crime lab, doesn't disagree. \"I feel like I'm shrink wrapped,\" he says, tugging uncomfortably at his uniform.\n\n\"It's all cuz the people like it,\" chimes in Lieutenant Anthony \"Buddy\" Micheu, taking a break from the radio, where he's communicating with his motorcycle men. \"They say, \u2018I like to see the police.' \"\n\n\"That's a double-edged sword,\" Bourgeois sighs. \"When you have plenty of police, it's great. When you don't, it's just as obvious. We're down a hundred policemen from what we had last year. Lost a hundred, hired zero. Well, just hired thirty.\"\n\nThe command van, a 1995 model with only 27,000 miles, is on loan from Louisiana State Police, and there are a dozen of us bouncing around the 35-foot vehicle, moving between the platters of fried chicken and coconut shrimp in back and the driver's cabin, where Sergeant Jerry Smith, from LSP, is rolling along slowly, at about 2 MPH, stepping on the brakes every fifty feet or so. Cedric Palmisano, EMS planning coordinator, is also on board, sucking at an electric cigarette and detailing all the various bumps and bruises that are turning up along the parade route.\n\n\"Lots of lacerated eyebrows and ice packs as a result of thrown beads,\" he says.\n\nWhich reminds another passenger, an organizational member from one of yesterday's parades, about an incident. \"Someone got hurt,\" he admits.\n\n\"Doesn't the law protect you?\" asks Bourgeois.\n\n\"You gotta prove negligence.\"\n\nBourgeois nods. \"That's hard to prove.\"\n\nSome of the most common Mardi Gras injuries, according to Palmisano, come as a result of falling drunks, the aforementioned beads, and kids toppling off of ladders, where they've been perched for a better view. But that's never the extent of it. \"We've already had one cardiac arrest today,\" he says. And over the weekend, after the Zulu ball, some guy \"was having the big one, passed out in the driveway.\" He coded on the way to the hospital, but they got him back. \n\nIt's sort of a given that folks don't have their own safety in mind during Mardi Gras. Just last Saturday, Smith tells me, some drunk climbed the back ladder of the command van, to surf on the moving vehicle. Now the ladder is boarded up, and that idiot is facing charges of criminal mischief and public drunkenness.\n\nPalmisano's radio crackles. A kid just got hit in the head, it seems, with a coconut\u2014\"an infant,\" he clarifies\u2014which sparks a debate over whether Zulu, the krewe known for tossing coconuts, will be able to keep its insurance. \"They've got to get rid of them coconuts,\" Bourgeois insists.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThe van reaches the end of its route down Napoleon and turns left, onto St. Charles, the parade's main drag. We enter a locus of humanity, a tipsy but civil-looking crowd\u2014we're still uptown; far from the French Quarter\u2014and a few of us decide to get out and walk. Suddenly everything is surround-sound. Trash and beads litter the street, which smells like a mix of dreg-beer and horseshit. It isn't long before someone runs up, an older guy in a fleece vest and sunglasses, toting a Michelob Ultra. \"Need a painkiller?\" he offers.\n\nI'm between Pfeiffer and Palmisano. No thanks.\n\n\"There are a lot of characters in this town. You learn who's harmless and not\u2014body posture, eye contact. You see who's going to show and not show,\" says Pfeiffer. \"The whole idea is don't escalate anything.\"\n\n\"I've only been in a handful of 10-55s,\" says Palmisano.\n\nPfeiffer explains that there are \"two signals police use when they need help fast. One's a 10-55. The worst one is a 108\u2014that means an officer's life is in danger. You get that and people start coming out of the woodwork.\" On cue, Pfeiffer's radio comes alive. Not a 108, it's a 94. \"Ninety-four is a shot,\" he says. Gunfire, I ask? Yes, though it turns out to be the burners from someone's gas grill, and I feel weirdly disappointed. The officers probably do not.\n\nThe NOPD, after all, is perhaps the most scrutinized police department in the country. When you type \"NOPD\" into Google (and then hit space bar), the first search suggestion is \"NOPD corruption.\" Last year, a 10-month federal investigation into the department revealed that officers partook in \"unconstitutional conduct,\" including excessive use of force, unwarranted stops, searches, and arrests, and discriminatory practices. Like any police force, NOPD occasionally fails its citizens, but when it does, it tends to be in a high profile, headline-earning manner. Whether they've been under too high-powered a microscope since Katrina, as some honest Crescent City cops may feel, is beside the point on Mardi Gras\u2014as Valiente puts it, \"We've got some bad apples, but show me an institution that doesn't\"\u2014because NOPD has always had a single saving grace: its reputation as the \"masters of crowd control.\"\n\nAccording to Bourgeois, the secret to the department's success is simple: \"We're tolerant,\" he says, \"and that comes from experience.\" Pfeiffer is even more specific: \"The first rule is don't over-police. People are out here to have a good time, use that to your advantage. The troublemakers, you go in and, like a swat team, you hit them. With flashing, you suppress it in family areas. In adult areas?\" He covers his eyes, miming tunnel vision. \"Once you're off the route for something like that, you're not there for safety issues.\"\n\nBack in the van, we go by one family who practically has a full bar set up\u2014they're passing around handles of Grey Goose and Bacardi. Bourgeois nudges me, points out the window. \"We were talking about tolerance? No city in the world would allow that. And if we went and confronted them, it would start a riot.\"\n\nSoon the Rex parade is entering Lee Circle, and as planned, has merged with Zulu. Things are picking up inside the command van, as well.\n\n\"We're right behind Zulu's ass,\" I hear Micheu say.\n\nPalmisano gets a call. \"Another seizure?\"\n\n\"We're directly on their ass.\"\n\n\"That seizure I believe is a Tulane cheerleader.\"\n\nSomeone cracks wise: \"Tulane lost again, huh?\"\n\nSomeone else sighs: \"I wish Tulane was better.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nAfter the Rex parade disbands, Officer Bourgeois drives me down Iberville, toward the French Quarter, toward Ground Zero of Mardi Gras, toward Bourbon Street. On the outskirts, we encounter a chubby fella with far-gone eyes. He's sporting a crew cut, a tank top, and a tribal tat. He flags us down and bashfully asks where he might find the Hustler Club. \"It's on Bourbon,\" Bourgeois tells him. \"Go down and make a left.\"\n\nThe man looks confused, betrayed by this advice. \"I thought I was on Bourbon,\" he says.\n\nHappy Mardi Gras.\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nPersonally, I don't see my first pair of (female) breasts until almost 5 p.m., and even those are basically a profile shot, some side boob. Along with Bourgeois, I'm pushing through the French Quarter foot traffic with two other cops, and I realize my travel party, decked out in neon lemon-lime vests, probably isn't helping anyone loosen their inhibitions, let alone bra straps. One of the officers sees a guy in a glitter Speedo whip out his Johnson\u2014a big New Orleans no-no\u2014but lets him off with a warning, informing the flasher that he wouldn't be able to convict him, anyway, \"due to lack of evidence.\"\n\nIt will come as no surprise that a solid chunk of Mardi Gras arrests occur in the Quarter. A few of the most common charges: drunk in public, disturbing the peace (or whatever semblance of peace there is on Mardi Gras), and public urination. Officers I speak to concede that the restroom situation is less than fair for partiers, that the bars and clubs are running a merciless racket, because \"when you drink beer you're only renting that beer.\" Still, if they catch you peeing, \"we'll let you finish, but then we'll put the Roles on.\" There are paddy wagons that make regular deliveries between here and Central Booking, and over the weekend, the Orleans Parish Sheriff's Office, which runs Central Booking, sets up a station in the French Quarter, as well, to help handle the increased volume. Perhaps the worst offense you can commit is messing with a mounted officer's horse. \"Fuck with the officer, but do not fuck with the horse,\" I am warned. According to Bourgeois, the demographic that behaves the worst in jail is drunken white women in their 30s and 40s. \"They're uppity. Excuse me?\" he says, mimicking their attitudes. \"Honey, you're in jail. It's not Walmart.\"\n\nAfter hoofing it a few more blocks, the officers decide to give me a balcony view. We enter a tourist-trap shop, a rat hole selling beads and novelty shirts and everything fleur-de-lis, and they let us through to the back steps, to the upstairs apartment, where we crash a bachelor party-in-progress, eleven guys from the Boston area who've rented the space for $1,500. From my new vantage point, I can see what Captain Pfeiffer had been telling me earlier about crowd dynamics. \"It's like a river, there's a flow,\" he'd said. \"Little eddies crop up when there's a problem or if someone's flashing. You have to control the disturbances to that flow.\" It is mesmerizing to watch. I would be content to stay here for hours, though I soon discover we are unwelcomed guests. \"You leaving soon?\" the groom-to-be asks me. \"Because we were just about to smoke some weed.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThe officers and I reenter the river of humanity, journeying further away from Iberville, and finally discover a woman beyond the moral-tightening effects of any color neon, vest or otherwise. She has the wild, standing-on-end hair of what I can only assume is recent electroshock, nipples for breasts, and a washcloth-sized loin cloth-slash-skirt. She's perched on a second-floor balcony and is grinding on a handrail. To her right, a middle-aged white woman with Harry Potter hair suctions her mouth to the exhibitionist's chest\u2014I try to imagine these women in Walmart, bargain-hunting. The cops decide now would be a good time to turn me off Bourbon Street. We make a right on Toulouse, then another on Royal. A brass band is playing. From a balcony a handful of pranksters are dangling what appear to be furry puppet tails on fishing line. The crowd is hysterical to grab them. One house over, I see a wisp of a man materialize from behind translucent curtains. He looks pale, misunderstood. Next to me, a guy with long hair and a polo shirt glances up, sees the apparition, hollers to his buddies: \"Does he look like a faggot or what?\"\n\nI look at my watch\u2014shit. I'm late for jail.\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nAs I wait to be buzzed into the secure sector of the Orleans Parish Intake and Processing Center (i.e. Central Booking), I notice a young woman being claimed by her father. He is not tall and has a pointy wolf beard, an oversized raincoat. The girl has a gash across her cheek. Before leaving, this man profusely thanks the female deputy behind the bullet-resistant glass, but she has not saved his daughter, and likely knows it. On the other side of this glass, where the deputy is sitting, there are signs taped up as reminders\u2014\"Do not take bond from American Bail Bonds\"; \"Only accept cash from B.B.C. Management Bail Bonds.\"\n\nChief Deputy Jerry Ursin is expecting me. He shakes my hand and offers to give me a tour, describing how, when arrestees arrive, they are sent down a sort of assembly-line penal process. They are searched and stripped of possessions. They watch a 12-minute orientation video. They are medically screened, given a bar code, a color classification on a scale of baby blue (for first-timers) to red (for old friends). The facility's color scheme, meanwhile, is jaundice and lima bean, and the high-ceilinged main room contains a swath of DMV-like seats\u2014what they call \"open-sitting lockup\"\u2014and two locked holding pens in back. \"This was actually our kitchen warehouse,\" says Ursin. \"FEMA converted it after Katrina.\"\n\nBy the open-sitting area, there are large-screen TVs, and anyone who isn't in for an aggravated charge, and isn't misbehaving, is allowed to remain cage-free. To my surprise, it seems like a slow day, and Ursin tells me that arrests actually go down on Mardi Gras day. \"The police are tired,\" he says, by way of explanation. Though he adds that, as of 5 p.m., the Sheriff's office had booked 1,164 people since the start of the season, which is a 5% jump over last year. To prepare for Mardi Gras, the IPC typically doubles its weekly supplies.\n\nA little before 7p.m., Ursin has to leave and passes me off to one of the Sheriff's sergeants. Together we wander through the main room, as recent arrivals twitch and slump in their seats. The female holding pen is almost empty\u2014just two women asking for blankets\u2014though the male cell is roiling with boredom and grief. Some inmates itch inside their starchy orange jumpsuits. Others lie down, using toilet paper rolls as pillows, hunting for an ounce of comfort. I walk up to the cage, to see if anyone wants to talk. Many do.\n\n\"I was at Harrah's, the casino, then I woke up in jail,\" one guys tells me. \"I'm getting out tomorrow, only minor charges.\" When I ask him what he's in for, he has to check his paper. \"Uh, resisting arrest\u2014see I don't remember none of this\u2014disturbing the peace, and public drunkenness. In a casino. I don't understand how you disturb the peace in a casino.\" The next person I talk to, a clean-cut athletic type in the Abercrombie mold, tells me how he was walking back to his hotel with a co-ed but got distracted from his mission when they stumbled upon another couple. The woman was on the floor crying. She looked abused. \"So I stepped in,\" he says. Turns out: not a mark on her.\n\nI'm surprised at first that these men want to speak with me from the other side of the bars. Perhaps they're looking for an ally, a scrap of understanding. I am a stranger, I suppose, as good as anyone. Captain Pfeiffer had told me that this is a place where individuals can \"drop off the map,\" if they can't post bond\u2014an amount that typically ranges from $300 to $2,500, for municipal charges.\n\nSo what are some of the others in for?\n\n\"DWI, which was stupid of me. I should have given my keys to a friend or something.\"\n\n\"I got caught with a firearm.\"\n\n\"My chick lied.\"\n\n\"I was just chilling in the cut, rolling up a blunt, and the cops came out of nowhere, with their Tasers out.\"\n\n\"The cops saw me picking up an iPhone and they told me I stole it.\"\n\n\"I'm too wild. I smacked a dude with a beer bottle.\"\n\nFacebookPinterest\n\nThis last man, with a shaved head and twisted teeth, seems more at ease in convict clothes than most of the others, and he tells me that he was just released, in 2011, after serving a ten-year prison term. I speak to him longer than anyone, because he seems most desperate for a connection. \"I haven't slept since Friday, just been popping Adderall and drinking beer. I hope they just drop this shit,\" he says, his voice then softening to a whisper. \"That's not bad, though, right? Hitting someone with a beer bottle. Does it sound bad?\" I tell him that, yes, to me it sounds bad. I ask how it sounds to him. He sighs. \"My record's fucked up, man. It sounds fucked up.\"\n\n\u00B7\u00B7\u00B7\n\nThe total number of arrests during the Mardi Gras season fluctuates from year to year, with two major influencing factors: the weather and the date. (The later Mardi Gras falls, the more it aligns with college spring breaks.) My cab driver doesn't believe that I am not among 2012's statistics when he picks me up from Central Booking. His name is Smain, he is from Algeria, and he is used to making this run, retrieving Mardi Gras washouts.\n\n\"So what'd you do?\" he asks me, as we pull away.\n\n\"Me? Nothing.\"\n\n\"Come on.\"\n\n\"Really,\" I tell him. \"I'm just a reporter.\"\n\n\"No.\"\n\n\"I am.\"\n\n\"Are you serious?\"\n\nHe is very impressed that the Sheriff's office allowed me into Central Booking, and asks a few questions about the place. I tell him what I can. \"The people fight too much. You can tell from the face,\" he agrees.\n\nWe fall into silence and I complain about the humidity, which hits a nerve: \"You got to take at least shower a day, minimum. Swear to God.\" And then he begins to tell me about his own crazy Mardi Gras experiences over the years, like the time a couple got into the backseat and offered him $500 just to drive up and down Tchoupitoulas Street and \"let us do the sex.\" And the time he picked up \"a gay guy, who was gay,\" and who offered to give Smain $50 if he would let him suck his dick. In fact, just last weekend, he tells me, he drove a girl to New Orleans East, who tried to pay him with drugs and flesh. \"I say no, that's not me.\"\n\nBy the flickering passes of yellow streetlight, and in the same backseat Smain refused to let two punch-drunk would-be lovers \"do the sex,\" I scribble in my notepad. What are we trying to accomplish with all this Mardi Gras business, I wonder? Why do grown men, with gray hair and wrinkled skin, dress up in doctors' smocks and wear nametags that read: BREAST EXAMINER? What gives us such presumed license to misbehave? To not know our own limits? Are we so desperate for each other's debasement? For our own? Are we so repressed? Lonely? What?\n\n\"We're here,\" Smain says. I pay him with American currency.\n\nA few hours later, minutes before midnight, I make it back to the French Quarter, to walk with the police down Bourbon Street, a procession that signifies the end of Mardi Gras, the last parade. The crowd is crammed onto the sidewalks, cheering wildly for our convoy, for the boys in blue, but is hardly dispersing. We'll tell you when Mardi Gras is over, they seem to say. And the party will indeed go on for hours more, until the power washers hit the pavement, and the beads and the puke and the hangers-on are all rinsed away. I will not be awake for that. I turn back and head for Canal Street. There, at the very lip of the Quarter, I pass an out-of-tune jazzman blowing into his horn. This is my last image of Mardi Gras. He doesn't even have a tip jar, this man. He's just wailing his heart out. I take a picture and think: Surely one of us is missing the point."^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.gq.com/story/new-orleans-mardi-gras-police-force-prison-fat-tuesday-nola?currentPage=2>