By: Pat Austin
SHREVEPORT – Another violent weekend in Shreveport and our homicide rate continues to climb. The violence is literally out of control on the streets and as of this morning only one elected official has made any kind of statement (a city councilman).
Saturday night, shooting broke out at Tinseltown movie theatre leaving a thirteen-year-old boy dead, two critically injured, and an innocent lady who picked up her kids after a movie traumatized after her Tahoe was riddled with bullets. She was at a stoplight two blocks from the theater. The video she posted immediately after, while waiting for the police, is horrific.
A nearby hospital took at least six bullets through the lobby windows from this incident.
The mayor of Shreveport has made no statement about this violent weekend – possibly because he wasn’t even here. He went to California for the LSU game.
But there is a lot of discussion on local social media pages about this ongoing, and escalating problem. It isn’t just Shreveport where this kind of violence is happening; we realize this. The story is always the same, after every shooting: nobody saw anything. The no-snitch rule is in effect.
We want to blame someone for all of this: the mayor? He’s young, ineffective, a Democrat…whatever your logic. The police chief? The police chief stepped down last week after a vote of no-confidence from the city council although in truth he was doing the best he could with extremely limited resources. He is 100 officers short because the pay is abysmal. A week with an interim chief has made no difference and we are still 100 officers short.
Who else can we blame? Now folks are looking at the District Attorney. Our DA is a Soros boy; every time he runs for re-election, Soros pumps money into his campaign. In 2015, George Soros dropped $406,000 into James E. Stewart’s campaign. He was re-elected in 2020; his opponent in the race, attorney Patricia Gilley, was jailed for contempt of court a month before the election. A mug shot doesn’t do much for your campaign. So, we get Soros boy Stewart for another six years. In the 2015 special election for Caddo Parish District Attorney, James Stewart’s candidate was Dhu Thompson, who had a great chance to win until Soros pumped a fortune into the Stewart campaign.
“As a candidate and citizen of Caddo Parish, if an outsider was that interested in the race, I wanted to know exactly what he had in mind for the criminal justice system if he were to win,” said Dhu Thompson, a Louisiana attorney who lost a district attorney race to a Soros-backed candidate, James Stewart, in 2015. Soros gave over $930,000 — more than 22 times the local median household income — to the group boosting Stewart.”
Soros funded district attorneys across our nation are all heralding over escalating crime rates in their cities. Soros has spent a lot of money on district attorney campaigns in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas. Why? Because he wants influence over the criminal justice system; the candidates he favors are soft on habitual offenders, favors reduced sentences, plea deals, diversion programs, and aims to combat what he calls “racial disparity.”
In St. Louis, Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner has an “abysmal” relationship with the police department:
“I would describe it as abysmal,” Jeff Roorda, general manager of the St. Louis Police Officers Association, said when asked about cops’ relationship with Circuit Attorney Kimberly Gardner. “It has gone from bad to worse and now there is no cooperation.”
The city has suffered a crime surge since the Soros-backed prosecutor took office. Violent crime rose by 8.8% since 2006. In terms of violent crimes per 100,000 residents, St. Louis has surpassed Detroit as America’s most violent city.
Soros pumped almost $200,000 into Gardner’s campaign.
“…homicides have again shot up, rising by 34% in 2020 and hitting 257 as of Aug. 3, according to police department figures.
District Attorney Larry Krasner won the office in 2017 running on his background as a defense attorney and litigant against the police department. In that campaign, Mr. Soros’ Pennsylvania Justice and Public Safety PAC spent $1.7 million supporting Mr. Krasner’s bid, a figure which startled a state’s political class that had never seen such sums spent in a district attorney race.
In San Francisco, same thing. The district attorney there is Chesa Boudin who was raised by Bill Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn, and according to The Washington Times, “While Mr. Boudin did not receive money directly from one of Mr. Soros’ multiple state PACs, a network of left-wing donors connected to the Hungarian-born billionaire helped Mr. Boudin raise more than $620,000.”
There is no question that this has been the most violent year in recent Shreveport history, and we still have four more months to go. We’ve seen gang violence in the ‘80s, and a terrible riot in 1988, but what is happening on our streets now is the worst we’ve seen in decades.
In response to the violence this weekend, the District Attorney posted on social media: “Unsupervised teenagers driving around with guns shooting at each other is at epidemic level. Parents, if your child is out of control, please go to the Caddo Parish Juvenile Court, 1835 Spring St., and ask for an ungovernable child petition. This will get your child under the supervision of a juvenile court judge and their authority.”
Once in that juvenile system, what happens? A probation worker meets with the kid once every few weeks and asks him questions. “Are you doing your homework? Minding your mother? Staying out of trouble?” Then the kid goes on about his business. Stewart’s post was met with ridicule.
Maybe it is time to quit blaming the police chief struggling with minimal resources. Maybe it is time to look at societal factors and why kids with guns are running the streets at all hours. Maybe it’s time to look at the DA who gives them a slap on the wrist, a fine, and sends them back out.
I’m not sure what will be left of this city when Stewart’s term ends in five more years. Perhaps it is time for him to step down.
Pat Austin blogs at And So it Goes in Shreveport and at Medium; she is the author of Cane River Bohemia: Cammie Henry and her Circle at Melrose Plantation. Follow her on Instagram @patbecker25 and Twitter @paustin110.
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