| By Drew Broach | Deputy metro editor STRONGMAN: It was quite the scene when police found Peter Bowen, a senior official in New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell's administration, asleep at the wheel of a wrecked pickup truck in the French Quarter. Arresting officers say Bowen warned them, "You're going regret doing this," fished around in the glove compartment for his own badge, demanded they call Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson, boasted he could bench-press 405 pounds and refused to sign the drunken-driving citation they issued him. PACK A WET SUIT: In other French Quarter police news, Capt. Jeffrey Walls, commander of the 8th Police District covering the Vieux Carre and nearby neighborhoods, has been chosen police chief of Ketchikan, Alaska, population 8,192, which bills itself as the rain capital of the state and the salmon capital of the world. The City Council there voted 5-2 to offer Walls the $132,761-a-year job. DILEMMA DEADLINE: When New Orleans public schools resume classes after the winter holidays, vaccine-hesitant parents will face a dilemma: Whether to comply with the school system's new, groundbreaking mandate that all students age 5 and older be inoculated against the coronavirus, or home-school the children. “It’s an open-ended question of how this plays out,” said Vincent Rossmeier, policy director of Tulane University's Cowen Institute. “One of the biggest findings from our poll is that parents want their kids in school.” Welcome to the weekend. Keep up with the news all day on NOLA.com. D.B. |
