According to a report from Alexandria’s Town Talk newspaper, LaSalle Parish Sheriff Scott Franklin prepared the assembled crowd for a violent day. “It’s going to be like Baghdad out in this community at five am,” he continued dramatically, explaining that their target was 37-year-old Darren DeWayne Brown, who owns a barbershop — one of the only Black-owned businesses in town — and his “lieutenants,” who Franklin said supplied eighty percent of the narcotics for three parishes. “Let me put it to you this way,” declared the sheriff, “When the man says, ‘We don’t sell dope today,’ dope won’t get sold.” Catrina Wallace, 29, was sleeping in her bed with her youngest child when her door was broken down and she awoke to the feeling of a gun to her head. When she opened her eyes, her small home was filled with police. “I never seen that many police at one time,” she recalled. “Everywhere I looked all I saw was police. There were six or seven just in my bedroom.” Full article.