Tens of thousands of riders and hundreds of thousands of paradegoers took part in Carnival celebrations in New Orleans. Based on online comments and our interviews with some of them, those revelers overwhelmingly had a wonderful time and obeyed the rules regarding what you could and couldn't do along the parade route.
But a handful of paradegoers caused headaches for some by taping off areas of neutral ground and claiming those spots as their personal property. Now, one New Orleans city councilman says the city may need to consider taking action against those scofflaws in the future.
"There's something that we can do," Councilman Eugene Green told WWL's Tommy Tucker.
According to Green, there's an easy way to deal with the troublemakers who brought banned items or taped off large swaths of neutral ground along the parade route, and there's a hard way to solve the problem.
The easy way, Green says, is for people to do the right thing and follow the law going forward.
"It's just common sense," Green said. "It's public space. It's almost like living on public space. It's not allowed by the city of New Orleans.
"We want everybody to have the opportunity, if they get there early, to be at the front of the parade, but it doesn't mean that they block off that area and it becomes theres," Green added.
However, Green says the city, if necessary, can solve the problem the hard way: taking police officers away from other priorities and have them actively look for scofflaws during parades.
"We can have members of the New Orleans Police Department waste their time going to people and say, 'No. You can't block this area off, and I'm going to stay here until you move everything that you put in place that denies the public the right to have access to this space," Green said. "We can have officials come out there and we can hire them just for that purpose and then call the police if people don't move. We don't want to do that."
Green says he's hopeful that common sense will prevail.
"I'm being a little bit cynical in saying: yeah, we can have the fine, hard-working members of the New Orleans Police Department spend their time going to the many thousands of people and tell them that you have to move things, or we can have people just think more about doing the right thing. I hope that that happens in the future."
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