THE city of Abbeville, 20 miles south of Lafayette in the lush flatness of Acadiana, is known for a pretty Catholic church beside Bayou Vermilion and some slap-up oyster restaurants. It is the sort of small town in which the same surnames, many of them Cajun, recur among prominent business-owners and officeholders. It was also, until recently, home to a fearsome gang, known as the Gremlins—at least, so say the local prosecutors. That view of the group has yet to be endorsed by a trial, and, on current form, it seems unlikely to be. The Gremlins, and the limbo in which they are sunk, epitomise deep problems in the criminal-justice system of Louisiana, and not only Louisiana.
At first they instead seemed proof of the virtues of all-action policing. In February 2016, Clay Higgins, then spokesman for the sheriff of nearby St Landry Parish, denounced them in a Crime Stoppers video as “animals” and “heathens”. Sporting body armour and a rifle, and backed by a phalanx of officers, he told the Gremlins they would “be hunted”, railing in particular against one “uneducated 125-pound punk” whom he vowed to meet “any time, anywhere…You won’t walk away.” Such...Continue reading
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