NARC UNIT TAKES NEW APPROACH TO CARNIVAL

Focus On Violent Areas Pays Off, Officials Say

For the past three decades, the New Orleans police narcotics unit has
spent the Carnival season in the French Quarter, busting street-level
drug buyers and sellers.

But this year, a new commander took over the unit and directed his
30-member team to work overtime in the most violence-prone areas of
the city. The common-sense result: More serious arrests for more
serious crimes.

"How much impact do you have on the violence when you bust a tourist
with a joint?" asked narcotics Capt. Tim Bayard. "These officers went
into the violent areas and did real police work."

Using federal grant money and his Mardi Gras overtime allotment,
Bayard's team frequently worked 18 hours in each of the 22 days that
ended on Fat Tuesday. During that time, Bayard said, officers made at
least nine "significant" seizures of crack, powdered cocaine, heroin
and other drugs, including twice taking in 15 or more pounds of marijuana.

In that time period, they:

- -- Seized 49 guns from people, vehicles and homes -- some of them
while serving 41 search warrants and one of which was linked to an
October murder in the Iberville public housing complex.

- -- Confiscated 915 grams of crack cocaine and 216 grams of powdered
cocaine.

- -- Collected 35 grams of heroin, 28 grams of crystal methamphetamine,
4 grams of methadone, 25 grams of Ecstasy, 2 grams of Ketamine and
33.5 pounds of marijuana.

- -- Made 272 arrests, most of them on drug or weapons-related
charges.

- -- Confiscated $34,525 believed to be associated with drug
trafficking.

With Bayard's recent transfer from commander of the 7th District to
the head of the Police Department's main narcotics-enforcement unit,
Superintendent Eddie Compass beefed up the unit from two squads to
four. These squads include New Orleans police officers and agents from
the Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco
and Firearms. Four police sergeants head the four squads: Sgts.
Stephen Imbraguglio and Paul Noel head up the two major narcotics
squads; Sgt. Michael Lohman leads the DEA-police squad; and Sgt.
Michael Montalbano runs the Safe Home Task Force.

During Carnival season, state troopers also worked in Lohman's squad,
Bayard said.

Bayard said Compass approved shifting the unit's deployment from the
French Quarter to areas that ranged from the Lower 9th Ward to Pigeon
Town and Central City and included five housing complexes and sections
of the 1st, 2nd, 5th and 6th Districts. This was done to "have a
greater impact" on suppressing the city's violent crime, Bayard said.

"It's unfortunate we missed the two guns used in the murder on (St.
Charles) Avenue, but 49 guns is a lot of guns in that period of time,"
Bayard said.

He was referring to the shooting death of 20-year-old Gert Town
resident Latasha Bell and the wounding of three other people on St.
Charles Avenue near St. Andrew Street as the Muses parade was passing
the night of Feb. 18. Stray bullets hit the victims during a shootout
between two rival groups of youths.

In the areas where the plain-clothes squads worked, however, not one
murder occurred during the 22-day period, Bayard said.

He said he hopes to shift the unit full time toward going after
violent drug offenders by targeting the areas in which they are operating.