"Mayor Nagin: Please handle your business"

More than a dozen of Kendrick Thomas' friends stood outside his house Tuesday afternoon, steps from the spot where he was shot dead the night before.

They hugged, commiserated, and most of all, seethed with anger.

"Why, someone please tell me why, that camera isn't working?" asked Thomas' stepfather, Jimmie Ricks. "A girl got shot right over there weeks ago. Some boys got shot right there. Why is this camera not working?

"Mayor Nagin: Please handle your business, " he pleaded.

Thomas' is the second killing in three days in this city that occurred near an inoperable crime camera. The first was Brian Thickstin, 37, who was fatally shot Saturday night in the 2800 block of Chippewa Street in the Irish Channel.

Mayor Ray Nagin's spokeswoman, Ceeon Quiett, confirmed that both cameras don't work -- along with scores of others in the city. She blamed the camera damage on Hurricane Gustav and said the city has started repairing them and will repair all of them soon.

But complaints about inoperable -- or merely ineffective and expensive -- crime cameras have dogged the city since it launched the controversial crime-fighting effort.

Ricks stood near the camera that might have captured the killing of his 22-year-old stepson. A green van traveled down the 2400 block of North Villere Street shortly before 9 p.m. Monday, unleashing the bullets that felled Thomas and wounded two others.

Ricks sipped from a sweaty beer can and paced the sidewalk. His family knows that only about half of all murders end in an arrest -- and substantially fewer end in convictions. They know evidence is often scarce, witnesses often scared. They don't know why the camera on the corner -- a tool the mayor once pitched as the unassailable witness -- does not work.

"I'm debating going to City Hall right now, " Ricks said.

He said everyone in their St. Roch neighborhood, a stretch where homes and vehicles exhibit scars of past shootings, knows the camera doesn't work.

Relatives consoled Ricks. They pledged to do their own detective work and find their own witnesses. They vowed vengeance on whoever killed their Kendrick.

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