Reply #38: It's all true except "there is little problem with crime." [View All]

Edit: I just noticed you meant the Quarter. My mother lives a block from the Quarter in Treme, and I have friends in the Marigny who are SCARED TO DEATH because of the high crime. Nevertheless, there are murders almost every day and criminals are even attacking us in broad daylight. I know two people who were attacked this week in the French Quarter, one in broad daylight. Many of the crack dealers are back, and a LOT MORE new ones from out of state. Sunday in the park yesterday was not like it was before the storm - it was full of gang bangers and cholos in their low-riders. I have NEVER seen this in New Orleans!

Fuck you Nagin, you worthless piece of shit!!!

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http://www.bestofneworleans.com/dispatch/2007-09-04/news_scut.php

Expert: Crime Challenges City's Leadership

New Orleans recorded 140 murders as of Aug. 29 -- the second anniversary of Hurricane Katrina -- and the city is on pace to repeat as the nation's homicide capital, according to Texas State University criminologist Peter Scharf. "It's staggering, and nothing that has been tried since the beginning of the year has worked," Scharf says. "I'm projecting 204 total murders for the year," based on an average monthly total of 17 homicides during the first eight months of 2007. Using Mayor Ray Nagin's city population estimate of 300,000, the city's murder rate was 67.5 per 100,000 residents. Using the more conservative and more commonly cited population estimate of 275,000 residents, the city's murder rate is 73 per 100,000 people. Either way, New Orleans is way ahead of the next-highest murder capital -- Gary, Ind. -- which has a murder rate of 48 per 100,000 residents. Scharf, an unpaid consultant to the House Judiciary Subcommittee on Crime, will deliver an address titled, "Murder in New Orleans: A Crisis in Leadership," at the annual meeting of the Alliance for Good Government, beginning at 8 p.m. Friday (Sept. 7). "I'm going to discuss how the leaderships of other cities have reduced homicide risks, including Newark, Chicago and Richmond," Scharf says. For ticket information, contact Robert K. Moffett at 822-2224. -- Johnson


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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=9348942

Murder Rate Spikes in New Orleans
by Alexandra Cohen

Day to Day, April 4, 2007 · Four men in New Orleans were killed on Monday, marking the deadliest day in the city. All four victims were shot in the head from point-blank range, but the murders did not appear to be connected. At least 55 people have been killed in New Orleans so far this year.


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http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=14058337

In Post-Storm New Orleans, Murder Is a Fact of Life
by Ari Shapiro

All Things Considered, August 30, 2007 · There are many parts of New Orleans that have not fully rebounded from Hurricane Katrina. Violent crime, however, is back in full force: The city's murder rate averages out to roughly a killing every other day.

So when cities across America marked the National Night Out Against Crime a few weeks ago, residents across New Orleans embraced the event in a burst of desperate energy.

More than a dozen block parties were held across the city; Mayor Ray Nagin was scheduled to visit six of them. The chief of police made the rounds, as did Orleans Parish District Attorney Eddie Jordan. Although some New Orleans residents want Jordan to resign over what they call a dismal record, he handed out glossy brochures touting the convictions he has won in court.

At Dillard University's party, New Orleans police officer Ed Perkins chatted with neighborhood residents, sweat pouring down his face. Perkins has been an officer with the NOPD for 26 years. He tried to put the best spin on a crime problem that has been getting steadily worse.

"We're not going to let crime or any other hardship run us out of here," Perkins said. "This was home before I became a police officer, and this is going to be home after I leave the police department."

Police Lack Basic Support Systems

But the fact is, two years after Katrina, many police officers are still working under conditions that would be unfathomable in any other major American city. The Police Department still does not have a fully functioning crime lab. Officers are still working out of trailers and using portable toilet stalls; for some officers, even a fax machine is a far-off dream.

(snip)


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http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8999837

New Orleans murder rate on the rise again
Homicide rate nowhere near ’94 peak but still 10 times national average

NEW ORLEANS - Last year, university researchers conducted an experiment in which police fired 700 blank rounds in a New Orleans neighborhood in a single afternoon. No one called to report the gunfire.

New Orleans residents are reluctant to come forward as witnesses, fearing retaliation. And experts say that is one of several reasons homicides are on the rise in the Big Easy at a time when other cities are seeing their murder rates plummet to levels not seen in decades.

The city’s murder rate is still far lower than a decade ago, when New Orleans was the country’s murder capital. But in recent years, the city’s homicide rate has climbed again to nearly 10 times the national average.

Many of the killings are related to drugs and gangs — but police say more are simply disputes that get out of hand.

(snip)


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http://www.thenation.com/doc/20070910/templeton

(snip)

Nearly a year after Katrina, the city's backlog of cases reached at least 6,000. Judge Arthur Hunter of the Orleans Parish Criminal District Court declared that "it is a pathetic and shameful state of affairs the criminal justice system finds itself in" and said that he would mark the one-year anniversary of the storm by beginning to release poor defendants.

But just as Hunter was declaring a constitutional state of emergency last summer, New Orleans was hit by a devastating crime wave. With half its former population, the city saw its crime rate escalate back to pre-Katrina levels. By the time it was gearing up for its second post-Katrina Mardi Gras celebration, national media were pronouncing New Orleans the murder capital of the United States.

Under the headline "Dysfunction Fuels Cycle of Killing in New Orleans," the New York Times reported in February that a "uniquely poisoned set of circumstances" was fueling the violence, including the destruction of the city's only crime lab, friction between police and prosecutors, community distrust and fear of the police, uncooperative or vanished witnesses and "murderers' brutalized childhoods." The majority of victims and suspects have been young African-American men--many teenagers--caught up in a drug trade that was reinvigorated, reorganized and made more lethal amid turf wars in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

The crime crisis is part and parcel of a wider social crisis. Two years after the storm, only one-third of the childcare centers and 45 percent of the public schools in Orleans Parish have reopened. Mental health services for residents suffering from depression, drug addiction or post-traumatic stress disorder are practically nonexistent. The city's Housing Authority has slated thousands of units of public housing for demolition, the majority of which were not damaged by the storm.

Bill Quigley has represented hundreds of families fighting to reclaim their homes and possessions from the Housing Authority. "One of the reasons they say they don't want to reopen public housing is that they don't want to let crime back into the city," Quigley explains. "But crime is already back in. The truth is that there are a lot of young people here without their families. The families don't have housing. So kids are coming back on their own, without their aunts and their mothers and their grandparents. Neighborhoods are breaking down because we don't have the families back. We don't have a lot of the churches. We don't have the infrastructure in poor communities that we had before.

(snip)


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http://select.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=F10915FF385B0C768CDDAB0894DF404482

Dysfunction Fuels Cycle of Killing in New Orleans
February 5, 2007, Monday
By ADAM NOSSITER AND CHRISTOPHER DREW (NYT); National Desk
Late Edition - Final, Section A, Page 1, Column 2, 2359 words

ABSTRACT - Uniquely poisoned set of circumstances has made New Orleans nation's per capita murder capital; every phase of killing cycle there is fueled by dysfunction: murderers' brutalized childhoods, often ineffectual police intervention, dulled community response, and tense relationship between police and prosecutors that lets many cases slip through cracks; Hurricane Katrina's devastation pushed teetering criminal justice system over edge, destroying police crime lab and causing loss of evidence in hundreds of criminal cases; in some New Orleans neighborhoods, people refer to 'misdemeanor murders,' or '60-day murders,' length of time suspects can be held without charges; in January alone, one murder suspect and two attempted murder suspects were released when deadlines passed for charges to be filed; Police Dept's history of brutality and its emphasis on minor arrests have fed mistrust and alienated many people who might be witnesses; killing has become integrated deep into community; police blame drugs--drug debts, or deals gone bad, or grabs for drugs.

(snip)

Complete article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/11/us/11orleans.html?ex=1326171600&en=c78e275a90147887&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss


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