Something smells in New Orleans.  It’s noxious.

I’m talking about a recent Inspector General’s report declaring that our police didn’t properly investigate over 1,000 reported sex assault crimes between 2011 and 2013.

On top of that, last month we learned that 81 rape kits held at Children’s Hospital have remained untested.

Citizens are frustrated at how slowly the city has moved to reform our police department.

It’s hard for me to gauge what it must be like to be raped.  I’m a big guy.  I’m 6’1”, 220 pounds, beefy, bearded, balding and big-nosed.

I don’t really “get” what it’s like to be a woman afraid when she walks alone in a dark place, or to go to the police station to file a report only to realize after months and months that the detectives have no intention of ever catching that scumbag.

But, so what?

I don’t have to live that experience to feel for somebody who has.

I can open my heart to one who has been pushed down, because I do know what that’s like: to fall down in life.  Something awful and nasty hits you hard, and you tumble down to the ground.

Maybe you break some bones in a car accident.  Maybe your boss fires you.  Maybe you get some disease.  It could be a lot of things.  Like that kids’ song says, “We all fall down.”

The rules of the game of life seem clear: that you see someone who has fallen, you remember what it was like when you fell, you give them a hand and you help them back up.

Michael Jackson says this: “I’ll be there.”  Bill Withers says this: “Lean on me.” I’m sure that when you were five or six your mom said this.  I’m sure the Jesuits, and all other religious and non-religious groups of decency say just this.

You help people get back up.

What you don’t do is look down at them, kick them in the ribs and walk away laughing.

This is what the New Orleans Police Department sex-crimes detectives did to the women and men who had the courage to ask the police to bring forth justice.

Justice moves slowly in America and sometimes slower in New Orleans.  You must not forget that you are a citizen of this fair city.

You and I agree to give our tax money to the government and police force, but only on the condition that they provide us with adequate protection and routine justice.

The public servants of the law are answerable to you, not the other way around.  It is not your job to do the policing of this city.

But it is your right and, when things smell really bad, also your duty to oversee the people we’ve entrusted as public servants to be there for us when life pushes us down.

We want the police to investigate sex crimes and the district attorneys to prosecute the offenders.

If you’d like to be a voice for these more than 1,000 who’ve been silenced, consider joining Voices for the Silenced and Students Against Sexual Assault, two organizations started by professors and students at Loyola.

“Like” them on Facebook, but at the very least ask yourself: Are you smelling this?