Meg Gatto ABC26 News

November 8, 2010
New Orleans—
Cops call them a nuisance. Residents say they're dangerous. Now, some are wondering why transients, or "gutter punks" as they're often called, congregate in the St. Roch neighborhood.

They can often be found hanging out in Washington Square Park. They're not from here; they travel to the city every year around this time, living on the streets, pan-handling for money. John Butler, who works at a bar in St. Roch says, "I mostly see them hanging out around all the convenience stores and fast food places and they're just begging for money".

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Cops say they show up around October and stay until just after Mardi Gras. Resident Jeffrey Holmes says, "There's a lot of abandoned houses out here that they squat in, they sleep in their cars, they've been sleeping in the field here."

The NOPD says they're having problems with gutter-punks breaking into the old St. Roch Market, to spend the night. So just last week cops put another piece of plywood up to try and prevent anyone else from getting inside. But that's not all the NOPD is doing. They've put more officers on patrol in the St. Roch neighborhood and put more blue light cars on the street. Still, residents say these people are causing big problems. Jose Torres-Tama recalls, "One of them in particular in their drunken state, was accosting us for money."

We asked one of these "gutter punks" what he thinks of the cops calling him and his friends a nuisance. Thadeous says he doesn't pan-handle, or commit crimes, so it's unfair for cops to assume all homeless people are bad. "There are nuisances out there and there are dumb people who do dumb things and they end up going to jail" Thadeous says. He also says he's just here to play music and to help keep New Orleans alive. But tax paying residents say they want the gutter-punks gone.