For the first time in several years, Endymion rolled through Mid-City in all its splendor this year, a return to a longtime New Orleans tradition.

But with that tradition comes another – parade-goers staking out their spots along Orleans Avenue.

"I started to spray paint what I thought would be my area, probably spray-painted a tenth of a line before a cop motioned me over to question me about what I was doing,” said a man going by the name of John.

And as John quickly found out, spray-painting the grass on the neutral ground is illegal.

Despite having no criminal record, the officer arrested John and took him to Orleans Parish Prison for spray-painting the grass.

“My 5-year-old son got to see his dad cuffed and stuffed and thrown into the back of the car,” John said.

Nearly 60,000 people were arrested and taken to jail in New Orleans a year ago, and, according to the Metropolitan Crime Commission, a majority of those arrests weren’t for crimes like rape or murder – instead, for more minor offenses.

As New Orleans police closed down Mardi Gras, police Superintendent Warren Riley talked about Mardi Gras crime in the French Quarter. There were a total of 346 arrests, compared to 242 in 2007, Riley said.

That means police arrested 43 percent more people this year than last, and Riley said 214 of those were municipal arrests, for things like public drunkenness and urinating in public.

"If it didn't require an arrest, we wouldn't arrest people,” Riley said. “You have to control little things so they don't grow into larger things.”

But some are things like spray-painting the neutral ground.

Luceia Ledoux works for the Baptist Community Ministries and is a member of New Orleans’ Criminal Justice Leadership Alliance – a group of city leaders trying to reform the way New Orleans’ justice system works.

"The disproportionality is really the number of people we take into physical custody,” Ledoux said.

It’s something that became clear after Hurricane Katrina flooded OPP. In 2006, the jail could hold only 1,200 inmates.

The difference in municipal arrests opposed to state offenses is four to times as many.

State offenses are generally more serious, violent crimes, like armed robbery and murder. After Katrina, the glut of non-violent, municipal offenders was forcing Sheriff Marlin Gusman to ship state inmates out to Angola, making it tougher to transport them back for court appearances.

So Judge Calvin Johnson ordered all non-violent municipal suspects to be booked and released after getting a new court day, making room for the more violent offenders.

Thousands were affected, Johnson said.

The Metro Crime Commission estimates police made 20,000 arrests last year for non-violent petty offenses that all end up with the person booked at OPP. Whether they’re there for five minutes or five hours, it costs New Orleans $23 a day.

Unlike most other sheriff’s offices in the country, OPP gets paid per inmate. With 20,000 non-violent offenders spending just one day in jail, that equals $450,000 of New Orleans’ city tax dollars spent.

Gusman created a “fast track” booking system to get non-violent petty offenders in and out of OPP. Just in the first three months, more than 2,000 people qualified, meaning they’re not repeat offenders and they didn’t commit violent crimes.

They were booked and released with a court appearance scheduled for a few days later.

How many people does it affect?

Said Gusman, “It depends on who's released. If it's a municipal offender, a non-violent offender or person who does not have a habitual criminal record, then it probably doesn't affect us.”

It’s why reformers said they should never go to jail in the first place, not avoiding punishment, just detention. Aside from the hundreds of thousands of tax dollars spent to house them every year, they argue it takes police officers away from focusing on violent crime.

"Arresting people via a misdemeanor summons as an alternative to taking them into physical custody is done all over the country,” Ledoux said.

Summons do have limitations – officers must feel that the person will appear in court and the person must not be a danger to themselves or the public. It’s why many officers hesitate to take the risk in issuing them.

Police said something called municipal attachments are the largest cause for non-violent arrests. That’s when someone has an unpaid traffic ticket, for example, and so the court issues an attachment for their arrest.

Law requires police to arrest and detain people with municipal attachments, but some city council members are working to change that, to allow police to give people another warning before taking them into custody.