September 2019 to January 2022

Seventh District

This was the sixth district I had been assigned to.

I may have to explain what it meant to me to hear the words “the Seventh” from Chief Noel. First, it had been over 17 years since I had been on a platoon in a district. Nowadays, most cops don’t have 17 year careers in total. So, this wigged me out a little. Also, the Seventh District is one HUGE district. It has more interstate in it than the rest of New Orleans AND Jefferson Parish combined. If the Seventh District was a city, it would be the 5th largest in Louisiana. Both in population and square miles. I knew almost nothing about the Seventh District except it was horribly busy and violent.

I didn’t know the captain that well, Lawrence Dupree. I knew very few of the officers, including the sergeants I’d be in charge of. But I’m not that guy who gets an assignment like this and goes out sick, a response MANY expected. A great number of people in my position do this. I showed up the next week for 2:25 P.M. roll call and got to work.

I will likely never forget a turning point that very first day at roll call. An officer, Vanessa Adams, asked me if I would be dedicated to the platoon or would I be flying through like all the other lieutenants. She was referring to a lack of consistency in leadership and this hit me hard. I didn’t WANT to stick out there, but now… DAMN. Yes, Officer Adams. I am dedicated to 7B, the Seventh District “B” Platoon. It was like my first time on the Zephyr at Pontchartrain Beach. I forget who I was with as a child that day on the Zephyr, but as the ride started leaving the station and up the first hump, the person said, “there’s no turning back now!” That’s how I felt. Uneasy but sure.

I started getting the hang of it pretty fast. I had great sergeants to help and Capt. Lawrence Dupree left me alone – rarely ever saw him. It was a different schedule to what Julie and I had experienced together – ever. 2:25 to 11:00 P.M. I was leaving for work while she was still at work, and I’d get home after she was in bed. Still, it was what it was and I’ll never forget how she supported me.

Very soon after my transfer, my good friend Kurt Eischen was getting promoted to sergeant. We worked some magic and – boom – he was assigned to the 7B platoon with me. This was the beginning of the best time of my NOPD career – all 28 years of it by then.

Wiggins Turn

Our platoon had these two guys, I think they attended the academy together, named Brucken and Wiggins. They, like almost everyone on the Second Platoon, were new. I can’t say enough how much I love these guys, along with everyone else on the platoon. Many will have their own stories but this one is for Alex Wiggins. He and Brucken are large men. Once Sgt. Kurt Eischen noticed they looked Amish there was no way not to see it. The memes are endless on this topic, and they were both great sports about it.

There is an area in the Seventh District at the end of Hayne Blvd where it meets Paris Avenue. It is a 90º turn and more than a few people have gone up onto the grass rather than make the turn onto Paris. One of those people was Officer Wiggins. I don’t remember which of the thousands of emergencies or car chases was happening at the time, but Officer Wiggins was in a big hurry to get there.

After things calmed down, Wiggins came over the radio calling out a 20X and requesting a rank. This meant he had been in an accident involving a police vehicle and needed a supervisor to come out along with a Traffic Division unit. Sgt. Eischen gets out there but can’t find the huge Chevrolet Tahoe nor the huge Alex Wiggins. Eischen calls him on the radio, thinking maybe there was a mistake in the location or something. Wiggins says, “look up here” as he shined a flashlight toward Eischen.

Yes, there was Wiggins on top of the levee but still no Tahoe. Wait, could it be OVER on the other… no way. The other side? Eischen walked up to Wiggins to see the Tahoe among a bunch of trees on the back side of the levee. Now imagine driving a very heavy truck at what was probably a very high speed on the way to an emergency then suddenly finding yourself on a big ramp.

WHEEE! Into the air he must have gone, down into the brush and trees below. Wiggins was as calm as if he had just walked out of roll call. More memes came after this and again, Wiggins was a great sport about it. We began to call this area “Wiggins Turn” and would even refer to it as such when needed to pinpoint where something was. “It’s right past Wiggins Turn on Paris.”

I had an idea. I ordered a legitimate heavy gauge aluminum sign, made to order, that read:

- SLOW -
WIGGINS
   TURN

It had been a while since the incident before the sign came in. I was so excited! I went over to our city sign shop and told the guys there what I planned to do. They provided me with the two poles and instructions that I’d need at least 6 feet of depth for it to stay up. SIX FEET?!? Yep, six feet. I wondered how the hell I could do that. My original plan was to use a sledgehammer, but these poles were so long I couldn’t reach the top.

The guys at the sign shop agreed to leave a pole tool for me under a trailer in their yard which I would come pick up after their day was over with the promise I’d bring it back as soon as I was done with it. The pole tool was more ridiculous than this entire operation. It was a very heavy elongated cup at the top of very long “handles”. The idea was to put the cup at the top of the pole and use the handles to raise the tool up and slam down, forcing the pole into the ground.

I went to get this thing, and I mean this thing is AWKWARD. Kurt and I planned to install the sign that night. Naturally it was crazy busy in the district so in between shootings – and I am 100% not kidding – we went out in my personal pickup truck to Wiggins Turn. We are out there, in the bed of my truck so we can reach the top of these poles, slamming them down maybe an inch and a half per slam. This was not easy. Finally, it’s time to bolt the sign onto the poles. One side firmly bolted in, we pull the second pole over to bolt the other side of the sign in. NO! It’s too tall but we are out of time. It’ll just have to stick up two inches above the left side of the sign. Who cares.

Boom, it’s done. Lord it was glorious! You could see it from way back on Hayne. I took a photo from far away. The plan was to allow the officers to organically see the sign as they drive around. But it never happened. Kurt pleaded with me not to say anything but it was eating me up. A week went by and I couldn’t take it so I posted the far away photo in our platoon GroupMe chat.

Nothing. So, I went out and took progressively closer photos. Each day I’d post one closer. Nothing. Nobody said anything about it. I went out and checked; it was still there. I finally posted a close-up photo of the sign.  NOTHING.

It turned out the officers thought it was a Photoshop job. I made them go out to see it and finally it was official. That was in March of 2020 and as of today, in August of 2023, the Wiggins Turn sign still stands proudly at the intersection of Hayne and Paris. (UPDATE: I was told on March 21, 2024 the sign is still there, but it’s bent because someone hit it, obviously not heeding the warning.)

For a new officer to be memorialized by his lieutenant in this way is a bigger deal than I thought, because, Frankly, I didn’t think at all. Nor did I think that sign would last. After a while I went back to the sign shop and showed off my handiwork to the guys. They loved it, but noticed the one pole sticking up. I explained what happened and they said, “we got you.” That next night I went out there and they had already fixed it.

My hope is in years to come, regular citizens will refer to that as Wiggins Turn, having absolutely no idea why.

Gas Pumps

The refueling station in the East was creepy, remote, and dark. It was on Old Gentilly right off Read, sharing a lot with an old, dilapidated factory of some sort. Trees and weeds grew through this factory like an awesome post-apocalyptic movie and large boars would grunt behind the fence, taunting us.

The procedure for getting gas goes like this: Insert gas the card which was hopefully located in the vehicle somewhere. Enter on the keypad your personal 5-digit PIN and then the mileage on the vehicle. You then selected the pump number and if you crossed your fingers, the pump would come on. This is how it worked on all three city pumps around town. But at this one, there was no light. No street lights and no “gas station” lights. It’s just a concrete slab with 2 gas pumps and a kiosk. Most of the time one had to navigate through a flooded street, not knowing where the road was or was not.

The mosquitoes will eat you alive faster than a pool of piranha. I once left my door open while trying to hold my flashlight on the keypad as I entered the various information, and a billion mosquitos got inside. I don’t know what I was thinking but I took my mosquito spray and fired away at them all. But it got all over the inside of my windshield. It’s sort of greasy and will not come off with a mere wiping. In fact, I’d have been better off leaving it alone. Now I had to drive back to the station with my head out of the window so I could see. Pelted by mosquitoes all the way. God I hate those pumps.