Category 5: The Story of Camille, Lessons Unlearned from America's Most Violent Hurricane

4. The Birdsfoot Peninsula

CHAPTER 4 The Birdsfoot Peninsula Louisiana has been graced with a passel of colorfully corrupt politicians , including the likes of former governor and U.S. senator Huey Long, who was assassinated in the extravagant state capitol building he built; the recent governor Edwin Edwards, who as of this writing is serving a ten-year term in federal prison for bribery and racketeering ; and three consecutive insurance commissioners who were convicted of various betrayals of the public trust. It was Louisiana that gave the nation David Duke, the boyish-looking grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan and one-term state legislator who unsuccessfully ran for governor, U.S. senator, and twice for president and who went to federal prison for bribery and racketeering. But it was the shenanigans of Leander Perez—a one-term judge and multiple-term parish district attorney—that set a record for political malfeasance that few are ever likely to match. And it was largely through the political brawn of the same Judge Perez that Plaquemines Parish would be prepared for Camille, losing only nine lives out of some twenty thousand residents at risk. Born in 1891, Perez grew up in Plaquemines Parish at a time when it lacked any roads connecting it with anywhere else and the only ways to leave the parish were by boat or on horseback on the levee. With the encouragement and support of an uncle, he attended Louisiana State University and then earned a law degree from Tulane University. After earning a disappointing $350 during his ‹rst year as an attorney in New Orleans, Perez returned to Plaquemines Parish to work in the Clerk of Courts of‹ce. When in 1919 the parish’s district judge drowned in a ‹shing accident , Leander’s uncle pulled strings with the governor and got the 33 Plaquemines Parish and environs. (Adapted from Louisiana Department of Transportation.) young attorney appointed to the bench for the rest of the unexpired term. Although the bench suited his temperament, Perez overstepped his bounds so quickly and so perniciously that in 1924 he was impeached for a long list of judicial misbehaviors. After several days of brutal testimony, the Louisiana Supreme Court recessed and worked out a closed-door agreement with the principals. The prosecution withdrew its complaints, after which the adversaries made stiff but polite public apologies to each other. A few months later, Judge Perez resigned from the bench to run for district attorney of Plaquemines and St. Bernard Parishes. He would nevertheless continue to use the title “Judge” for the rest of his life. Perez had meantime forged a clandestine alliance with a ‹nancially successful smuggling ring that was bringing in foreign liquor through the swamps and trucking it via the back way to New Orleans. The bootleggers were pleased to have the friendship of a judge, and Perez was reciprocally pleased by those boys’ good manners. Money ›owed into Perez’s pockets—money that he would use wisely. In Louisiana, the of‹ce of district attorney is inherently more powerful than that of district judge. An unscrupulous district attorney can choose whom to arrest and for what reasons, he can decline to prosecute those he favors, and he acts as legal counsel for every public agency and board of directors in his parish—some of which handle lots of money. With his payoffs from the liquor smuggling, Judge Perez could afford to buy all the votes he needed, and in 1925 he won the election for district attorney by a landslide. If Perez was a fool at ‹rst, he didn’t remain so for very long. He soon realized that to establish and maintain his power base he not only had to look over his own shoulder at every minute but also needed to address the needs of the common folk (or at least the white common folk) of Plaquemines Parish. He quickly gained a reputation for being as generous to some as he was brutal to others. He paid from his own pocket for promising students to go off to college, yet he demanded an undated letter of resignation from everyone he hired. Perez established two free ferries so folks who didn’t own a boat could cross the river (even today these two ferries are still the only way to take a vehicle across the Mississippi anywhere south of New Orleans), yet anyone who angered him risked being tossed in...