Analysis: No abatement of crime in FQ
16th May 2016 · 0 Comments
The Mother’s Day stabbing in the French Quarter underscores the sobering reality that there is still a lot of room for improvement of public safety in the French Quarter.
That reality is also supported by a recent analysis by WWL-TV that shows that despite millions of additional dollars being spent to improve public safety in the Vieux Carre and the deployment of Louisiana state troopers and the creation of French Quarter patrols, crime in the area actually rose over the past four years.
With the troubled police department under a federal consent decree and in the midst of a severe manpower shortage that has brought its numbers to a four-decades low, the NOPD’s 8th District is also struggling to keep the streets of the area it patrols, which includes the French Quarter, safe.
To pick up the slack, the City of New Orleans, tourism industry officials and French Quarter business owners have shelled out nearly $5 million to fund the deployment of additional state troopers and the creation of French Quarter patrols utilizing off-duty NOPD officers to patrol the streets of the French Quarter.
The City also created a civilian patrol force to help with minor problems in the Quarter and free up cops to handle serious matters, but announced recently that the program was being dissolved. And New Orleans businessman Sidney Torres created a crime-fighting app to keep French Quarter business owners, tourists and workers safe after his home was burglarized and a series of brazen armed robberies in the area that left his mother shaken.
French Quarter residents, business owners and workers can utilize the app when in need of police assistance.
“About 25 to 30 percent of what we deal with are app calls,” French Quarter Task Force manager Bob Simms told WWL.
“It’s a proactive response team that responds to information that comes through the app,” NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told WWL. “They can back up officers when they hear calls coming in over the radio, but they’re really a proactive team.”
In the wake of a violent Bourbon Street gun battle that claimed the life of a nursing student and left nine others wounded in the summer of 2014, the City of New Orleans has been scrambling to find ways to improve public safety in the French Quarter. Those efforts have included enlisting the help of sheriff’s deputies from Orleans and surrounding parishes, retired NOPD officers, Louisiana state troopers and Tulane and University of New Orleans campus police to patrol the French Quarter and CBD during Carnival season.
The City of New Orleans has also taken a few steps in an effort to boost the NOPD’s dwindling ranks, which have lost more than 400 officers since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010. Those steps included persuading the New Orleans City Council to relax its residency rule which requires NOPD officers, firefighters and EMS workers to live in Orleans Parish, convincing the Civil Service Commission to do away with its requirement that new police recruits have completed at least 60 hours of college credit and offering bonuses to veteran NOPD officers for successfully recruiting new officers.
Since March of 2015, Louisiana state troopers have been assigned overtime work to keep the Quarter safe in addition to being deployed to New Orleans for special events like the Sugar Bowl, Mardi Gras and the Bayou Classic.
This past February, Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards said he would keep the state troopers in New Orleans for as long as the city needs them. Currently, 30 troopers are rotated in and out of the city to cover assigned shifts.
The NOPD, Louisiana State Police and French Quarter Task Force all utilize the same radio frequency and respond to calls for help in the area, LSP Col. Mike Edmonson and NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told WWL.
While all three groups respond to calls for assistance, on-duty NOPD officers write most of the reports and handle follow-up investigations, WWL reported.
“There’s a lot of things that the French Quarter Task Force cops are not allowed to do, that they are prohibited from doing and the state police generally will respond to code 2 calls, emergency calls, but they’re not gonna handle thefts, other issues, burglaries, they’re not gonna handle those things,” Mike Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, told WWL.
Despite efforts to make the Quarter safer, WWL crime analyst Jeff Asher said last week that he hasn’t found any evidence that suggests crime has gone down in the French Quarter since 2012.
“The data on its surface suggests that the crime level in the French Quarter has not gone down since the state police came to the French Quarter on a more permanent basis and since the French Quarter Patrol started,” Asher said.
In 2011, the NOPD reported that there were 1,201 major crimes committed in the French Quarter that year, compared with 1,873 major comes committed in the French Quarter in 2014.
While the number of major crimes committed in the French Quarter dropped in 2015, that drop has been attributed in part to longer NOPD response times that caused some crimes to go unreported because victims and witnesses got tired of waiting on police to arrive and left the scene.
Despite the department’s woes, Harrison was upbeat about what he viewed as a turning tide in the NOPD’s 8th District.
“Last year we had good success in the 8th District,” Harrison told WWL. “We reduced crime. We ended the year with a reduction.”
But WWL’s crime analysis found that crime in the French Quarter was actually higher in 2015 than it was in 2013.
The overall crime picture in the French Quarter is blurred by inconsistencies in the way crimes are reported and differences in the three group’s computer systems that allow some crimes to fall through the cracks and go unreported.
“Really drawing firm conclusions about what is happening in the French Quarter is tough, so in the end I think all we can say is crime does not appear to be down in the Quarter,” Asher told WWL. “But that doesn’t inherently mean that the addition of these resources is a bad thing for the city.”
Despite a violent Mother’s Day weekend that witnessed the murder of a recent Tulane grad visiting the city to scout possible wedding venues and a stabbing near Jackson Square in the French Quarter, the Zulu Social Aid & Pleasure Club hosted its first Bayou Festival on Bayou St. John in Mid-City. The event attracted hundreds and included food, entertainment and a chance for residents and community leaders to get together and talk about efforts to end the senseless violence that continues to plague New Orleans.
Walter Umrani, a member of Peacekeepers, a local mediation group dedicated to resolving conflicts before they escalate, told WWL News that too often guns are drawn and lives are lost over petty arguments.
“I see hope, I see potential,” he said. “Some kind of way, we have to take all of this energy, and get it to the target groups that are out there that feel there’s no hope, no opportunity, and no love for them. That is the key. They’re beautiful people, they’re youngsters, they’re ours, but if we don’t reach out to them and close that gap, the violence is going to continue.”
This article originally published in the May 16, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
