The contract licenses Lafayette police to use the camera footage for “law enforcement purposes” only but appears to place no such restriction on the firm, which will own, maintain and operate the cameras — and the data it collects.
News + Notes
The Pope chapter behind them, Lafayette marshals await runoff election
Pope’s crimes and vanity hung a cloud over a small agency used to operating mostly out of public view. Pope now in prison out of parish and a new marshal is soon to be elected, the office is primed for a new chapter.
5 min read
Council Preview 12/2: More money for the Less Pay redevelopment, Downtown curfew for minors, revising the UDC
The gist: A relatively lightweight pair of council meetings is again on deck this week: another developer looking for more public subsidies, new grants for the police department, and the administration seeking to establish new restrictions on minors relative to their use of electric bikes and scooters and late-night access to Downtown. Bigger news is on the horizon, though, as […]
4 min read
COLUMN: The parish needs to raise taxes (don’t shoot the messenger)
Every part of parish government is underfunded. And there’s no way to fix it without raising taxes.
6 min read
Bending over backwards: officials avoid punishing noncompliance of Louisiana’s coronavirus restrictions
When the governor said at Tuesday’s Covid press briefing that state inspectors had “bent over backwards” to help businesses comply with state-mandated restrictions, he wasn’t exaggerating.
8 min read
Acadiana healthcare workers are exhausted from months of fighting a pandemic, misinformation and apathy
Pandemic fatigue for healthcare workers means exhaustion from months of long shifts, frustration at working uphill against a landslide of misinformation and fear that we’re giving up just as the end is in sight.
8 min read
Solution Hub: New Orleans actively releases videos of police shootings. Is it paying off with trust?
Since 2016, the NOPD, at one time among the most brutal and corrupt police forces in the country, has quickly and proactively released camera footage of police shootings and other critical incidents. The logic of the policy is simple: The videos are there for clarity, and transparency is the cornerstone of building community trust.
11 min read
Ballot Basics: What are those two Lafayette city sales tax ‘rededications’?
As far as legalese goes, the ballot language on these “rededications” is about as bad as it gets. Fear not. We’ve got it translated to plain English.
6 min read
Coronavirus trends match up with the indicators of Lafayette’s summer surge
The gist: Following a predictable curve, a rapid spike in hospitalizations has followed a doubling in the number of tests coming back positive. Health officials are warning a third surge is imminent.
3 min read
Acadiana reported 121 patients hospitalized with COVID-19 Wednesday. That’s a 50% increase over the last week. The region had the third-most Covid hospitalizations, behind only the Shreveport and Monroe areas as of Tuesday.
Official positivity for Lafayette Parish is above 10%. LDH reports positivity — the number of positive tests — on a lag. The most recent figures reflect the week of Nov. 5 through Nov. 11, and more than doubled the previous positivity report.
The trends mirror the second surge that saw Acadiana and Lafayette lead the state. Increases in test volume and positivity preceded a dramatic increase in cases in June and July, followed by peak hospitalization of 304 and the deadliest period of the pandemic recorded for Lafayette Parish. Once again, urgent care centers in the area are beginning to see higher test volumes and higher positivity.
“Based on the July surge, it was a good indicator of future Covid hospitalizations,” Oschner Lafayette General spokeswoman Patricia Parks Thompson says of the testing and positivity trends in the system’s network of urgent care clinics. “It also seems to be the case with what is highly suspected to become a third surge.”
Healthcare workers are beleaguered by months of pandemic ebbs and flows. Staffing remains a big problem, not physical capacity. Hospital reps have pushed back at the suggestion that the medical community has a facilities problem, made flippantly last week by Mayor-President Josh Guillory who has resisted enforcing the state’s current restrictions.
Anxious. Overwhelmed. Sad. Numb. Local healthcare workers are telling us the predictable rise is taking its toll on them, even with upbeat news about the incoming prospects of a vaccine. With Thanksgiving around the corner, families are making difficult decisions about if and how to gather, echoing anxieties around Easter earlier in the pandemic.
“Masks are all we have right now, and it is most effective if we all use them,” a frontline worker in healthcare administration wrote to us. “Healthcare providers face burn out and loss of income when we have surges. We are a vital part of the economy in Lafayette and need consideration when people want a thriving economy.”
Are you a healthcare worker? Tell us how you’re feeling. What would you like Lafayette to know?
Ballot Basics: So what exactly does the Lafayette city marshal do?
Around half the readers we heard from say they don’t really know what the marshal does. Marshals don’t have much of a public face, but they have a big public function. Here are the basics.
5 min read
COLUMN: Coronavirus is rising, and Guillory is doing less than nothing to stop it
Instead of doing the bare minimum and enforcing existing guidelines, he’s blaming the medical community.
6 min read
Healthcare workers, how are you?
How are you feeling about the way things are going? What worries you? What doesn’t? What scares you? What gives you courage?
2 min read