New Orleans police this week touted “Operation Speed Bump,” a multi-agency crackdown on an illegal street takeover promoted on social media and described by officials as an unsanctioned counterpart to the fully permitted Gumball 3000 rally that rolled through Bourbon Street last Saturday night.
Though NOPD Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick declined to identify the group behind the event or the intersections targeted by police, a Times-Picayune analysis of police reports, court records and calls-for-service data found that more than 100 additional officers were concentrated at intersections in Plum Orchard, St. Roch and the Florida Development.
“We had anticipated certain intersections where they might go, and sure enough, about 10 o’clock here they came,” Kirkpatrick said at a press conference Tuesday…