Louisiana news briefs

10 years for Houma man in federal drug case
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The U.S. Attorney in New Orleans says a 36-year-old Houma man received a 10-year federal prison sentence on a cocaine distribution charge.
Kenneth A. Polite says in a news release that Channing Christopher Miller was sentenced Wednesday. Miller had pleaded guilty to a one-count indictment for possessing cocaine hydrochloride with the intent to distribute it.
Prosecutors say Miller was arrested last November in New Orleans during a drug surveillance operation at a bus terminal.

Lafayette home sales surge in Oct.
LAFAYETTE (AP)— Brisk homes sales in October have set the stage for what is shaping up to be another record-breaking year for real estate in Lafayette Parish. That’s according a market analysis for the first 10 months of 2014.
Homes sales in Lafayette Parish from January through September 2014 had lagged just behind 2013, which was a record year for the local real estate market.
Van Eaton & Romero Chief Executive Officer Bill Bacque said the market this year has been driven by new construction.
Bacque says sales of existing homes are down about 3 percent from last year, but that dip is offset by sales of new homes, which are up 12 percent over 2013.

Plane missing in Lake Pontchartrain
NEW ORLEANS (AP) — The Coast Guard and several other agencies are searching the choppy waters of Lake Pontchartrain for a missing plane.
Petty Officer Carlos Vega says air traffic controls at the New Orleans International Airport notified the Coast Guard around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday that a Cessna 172 was missing with two people aboard.
Vega says say the aircraft was last seen on radar one mile northeast of the Lakefront Airport. The flight was reported to be a student instructor flight.
Vega says a debris field was found near the last known location of the plane, but it was unclear whether it was parts of the plane.
He says rescuers are facing strong winds and rain on the lake Thursday morning.
Ground broken for new SLCC campus
ST. MARTINVILLE — South Louisiana Community College’s new $9.2 million campus in St. Martinville could be open by next fall.
A crowd of state legislators, local leaders and education officials braved the chilly weather Wednesday to officially break ground at an old sugar cane field off La. 31 in St. Martinville, the site of SLCC’s planned 36,000-square-foot Evangeline Campus.
SLCC Chancellor Natalie Harder said the new campus should be open by the fall of 2015 or the spring of 2016.
She said enrollment is already up at the existing St. Martinville campus, a rise she attributes to excitement about the new facility.

Port Allen’s
old city hall set
for demolition
PORT ALLEN (AP)— The Port Allen City Council has amended its 2014-15 budget, allocating $200,000 in additional sales tax revenue toward a batch of projects that include the demolition of the old City Hall building.
The city is set to pay a contractor $40,000 to bulldoze the building, which has been vacant since the council and city administration moved to its complex near the Mississippi River levee, in 2007.
Terry Vincent, Port Allen’s director of public works, said demolition crews will begin tearing down the old structure sometime this month.
City leaders on Wednesday did not have any definitive plans for the lot, part of which the city owns, but said the council is in preliminary discussions about what to do with the land once the building has been leveled.

Man asks for money, told no, attacks
with machete
NEW ORLEANS (AP)— A New Orleans man says he was attacked with a machete after refusing a beggar’s request for money.
City police say the 59-year-old man told investigators that a stranger walked up to him Tuesday evening in the St. Claude neighborhood and asked for change.
He said no, and was attacked with the machete.
Paramedics took the man to a local hospital. Police spokesman Garry Flot says he does not know the man’s condition.
The incident was briefly described Wednesday morning in the department’s daily list of major offenses.

Hearing held in flood board’s suit
NEW ORLEANS (AP)— Lawyers for dozens of oil, gas and pipeline companies asked a federal judge Wednesday to toss out a Louisiana flood board’s lawsuit against them over damage drilling and dredging has done to Louisiana’s fragile coast.
U.S. District Judge Nanette Jolivette Brown heard more than two hours of arguments on multiple issues, including the energy companies’ contention that the lawsuit seeks relief from the court that should be left to regulatory agencies; and that a new state law that the industry pushed through the Legislature during the summer effectively kills the lawsuit retroactively.
Brown did not say when she would rule but told attorneys she did not expect to have a formal written ruling before Dec. 10, when still more arguments on the case are scheduled.
The lawsuit was filed last year by the Southeast Louisiana Flood Protection Authority-East, created after Hurricane Katrina to oversee levee boards in the New Orleans area. The suit contends that coastal drilling and dredging have contributed to the loss of coastal wetlands that protect New Orleans from hurricanes.

Report: Police poorly investigated sex crimes
NEW ORLEANS (AP)— In the latest blow to New Orleans’ troubled Police Department, a city inspector general’s report claims five detectives failed to do substantial investigation of more than 1,000 cases of sex crimes and child abuse — with one detective being cited for stating a belief that simple rape should not be considered a crime.
The report, released Wednesday, examined the detectives’ work between January 2011 and December 2013. It found the detectives filed follow-up reports for only 179 out of 1,290 sex crime cases. In particular, the report found that some cases of potentially abused children and rape victims went completely uninvestigated.
Police officials said the detectives have been transferred to patrol duty and are under further investigation. The police also said two supervisors who oversaw the detectives have been transferred.
Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said he was “deeply disturbed” by the allegations. Harrison, who took over the force when former chief Ronal Serpas retired earlier this year, vowed Wednesday to make widespread changes in the department to rebuild community trust.
The U.S. Justice Department previously investigated the scandal-plagued police force and in 2012 the city agreed to a host of changes in its policies. Among the federal probe’s major findings were that the police force was rife with corruption and had numerous instances of excessive use of deadly force, discrimination and problems with its sex crimes unit. A federal monitor is overseeing compliance.
The latest city report charged that a detective handling child abuse failed to investigate a case involving a 3-year-old brought to an emergency room due to an alleged sexual assault, closing the case without any charges even though the child had a sexually transmitted disease. The same detective closed the book with minimal or no investigation, and again with no charges, on two cases involving children brought to the emergency room with fractured skulls, the report said.

Common Core opponents turn to grassroots effort
BATON ROUGE (AP)— While students and teachers settle into using the Common Core, a group of lawmakers is trying to build grassroots support for stripping the multistate education standards from Louisiana’s public school classrooms.
The lawmakers are holding town hall meetings around the state, seeking to turn opposition into momentum for a planned push in next year’s legislative session to undo Louisiana’s use of Common Core.
Earlier this year, the Legislature refused to strip the standards from the schools. Rep. Brett Geymann, R-Lake Charles, said he hopes new pressure from parents and teachers can persuade his colleagues to change their minds.
Gov. Bobby Jindal sides with the Common Core opponents. He’s vowed an intensified push to jettison the standards, which are grade-by-grade benchmarks of what students should learn in English and math.

Baton Rouge council opposes stricter air standards
BATON ROUGE (AP)— The East Baton Rouge Parish Metro Council is against the federal government’s plans to toughen ozone air pollution standards, citing concerns about the impact increased regulations could have on area businesses.
The council voted unanimously Wednesday in favor of a symbolic resolution expressing opposition to changing the current federal air quality standards set by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Based on recommendations from a science advisory board, the EPA is expected to propose updated standards. Depending on how low the threshold is set, the Baton Rouge area could be out of compliance.
The standard now is 75 parts per billion, but it could be lowered to between 60 ppb and 70 ppb.

Coyote sightings on increase
in Gretna
GRETNA (AP)— Gretna residents are seeing more coyotes and calling their City Council members about them
Local trapper Chuck Parker cautioned Wednesday night that the animals are not about to disappear and actually have some benefits for humans.
Parker, who owns a wildlife control business, was asked to brief the Gretna council because of the uptick in sightings.
He said the first thing to keep in mind is that coyotes are part of the local ecosystem and don’t pose a problem unless they are acting aggressively, are out during the day or have lost their natural fear of humans.
Parker said people need to make sure they are not leaving food out and are securing their garbage cans.