New Orleans police have arrested four teens, three of them juveniles, for a string of carjackings in the Crescent City. According to authorities, two of the suspects, including 19-year-old Ja’Maarion Banks, were already on electronic monitoring for previous offenses when they were taken into custody this week.
Banks, along with several unidentified juveniles aged 16, 14, and 14, were arrested after police developed enough evidence to secure a warrant. It sounds like the fact that they were wearing monitors may have helped police track them down, though the devices apparently didn’t have much of a deterrent effect in terms of keeping them out of trouble.
Banks was allegedly the ringleader in a carjacking scheme spanning St. Roch and the Desire Development. Police say he would hail Uber drivers, then steal their vehicles.
Early May 8 near Abundance Street and Edith Weston Place, Banks and a co-conspirator allegedly called an Uber, aimed a gun at the driver as they helped the two load bags into the back of a Chevy Trailblazer, and then fled in the vehicle.
That same day, four committed a carjacking in the 4000 block of Johnny Jackson Boulevard, and three were involved in a carjacking in the 2700 block of Abundance Street, according to NOPD.
When New Orleans police executed an arrest warrant for Banks in the 3800 block of Ursula Spencer Way on Wednesday afternoon, he and one of the juveniles holed up in an attic with a gun, prompting an hours-long SWAT roll. Both wore court-ordered ankle monitors and were arrested in connection with the carjackings, NOPD said.
Banks was wearing an ankle monitor while he awaited trial on charges of illegal possession of stolen goods. And according to NOLA.com, within a month after having the monitor attached in February, the teen was routinely violating the terms of his release on bond.
Beginning March 23, Banks logged 49 violations. During the two weeks leading up to his apprehension by NOPD’s SWAT team, he logged daily violations. [CEO of Assured Supervision Accountability Program Matt] Dennis alleged [Judge Tracy] Flemings-Davillier failed to effectively monitor Banks.
Flemings-Davillier did not immediately return a request for comment.
“This kid is running the streets. We’ve been reporting (the violations),” Dennis said. “She could have corrected him.”
Electronic monitoring is a joke, and I’d love to see it completely go away in every jurisdiction across the country. In Cook County, Illinois, where a man wearing an ankle monitor is accused of killing a Chicago police officer and wounding his partner last month, nearly 10% of those ordered to wear the devices have gone missing, according to the county’s chief judge.
New Orleans has had its own issues with the devices. Accoring to NOLA.com, there have been several murders committed by individuals on electronic monitoring in the past few years, including one man shot and killed in 2024 by a juvenile offender who had logged “hundreds of monitoring violations.” The website reports that the Louisiana House of Representatives Criminal Justice Committee recently approved HR278, which tasks the Louisiana Department of Justice with reviewing the “framework and efficiency of electronic monitoring laws and statutes” and reporting any recommendations on improving the system to lawmakers ahead of the 2027 legislative session.
Electronic monitoring is unquestionably cheaper than keeping a suspect behind bars until trial. Are the savings really worth the public safety risk, though, especially when these suspects can repeatedly violate the terms of their release without consequence? In New Orleans and elsewhere, electronic monitoring has essentially become nothing more than a catch-and-release program for criminals, and its failings offer more evidence of the importance of lawfully carrying in self-defense.
Editor’s Note: The American people overwhelmingly support President Trump’s law and order agenda.
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