Group to host public summit to address crime
23rd January 2023 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
The New Orleans United Front, a collective of community grassroots organizations, will be hosting the New Orleans People Assembly Crime Summit at Cafe Istanbul at 2372 St. Claude Avenue on Monday, January 23, from 6 to 8 p.m.
The summit is in response to recent actions by New Orleans Mayor Latoya Cantrell regarding the city’s crime problem. On January 11, Mayor Cantrell announced the creation of the Violent Crime Task Force. The task force would be led by Tyrell Morris, the executive director of emergency communications for Orleans Parish.
According to a press release from the City of New Orleans, the Violent Crime Task Force’s priorities include evaluating internal policies and providing legislative recommendations to both Mayor Cantrell and the New Orleans City Council. It also aims to prevent acts of violence “by embedding themselves in the community and orchestrating a ‘full government response’ to detect, deter and intervene before an act of violence happens.”
The press release referred to the city’s surging violent crime rate as a “public health emergency.”
While the New Orleans United Front agrees that the situation is an emergency, they disagree with the mayor’s approach to it.
“The reason for the summit is [that] the mayor’s formation of a crime task force excluded 90 percent of New Orleans, including the City Council,” said W.C. Johnson, a spokesperson for the New Orleans United Front. “How can a task force come up with a workable plan when you exclude so many of the people affected by it?”
Monday’s summit will be open to the public. Johnson encouraged interested citizens to come with their ideas on how to solve the crime problem, but also come with an open mind towards others’ thoughts. He said multiple ideas can be blended into a workable solution for the city.
New Orleans ended 2022 with the most killings per capita in the United States. Its 265 murders was the city’s highest total since before Hurricane Katrina, a per capita average of 70 murders per 100,000 residents. In a NOLA.com article, crime analyst Jeff Asher pointed out the pre-Katrina total occurred when the city’s population was approximately a quarter larger than it was in 2022.
Last year’s total was especially stark when compared to 2018 and 2019, which saw respective murder totals of 148 and 125. NOPD statistics indicate that Black men between the ages of 15 and 54 accounted for approximately 75 percent of 2022’s murder victims.
Non-violent crimes also increased in 2022. WDSU reported that preliminary statistics compiled by the NOPD for 2022 listed 4,379 auto thefts citywide, an increase of 1,124 from reported auto thefts in 2021.
Johnson said there are many factors contributing to the acceleration of violent crime. He mentioned the city’s loss of police officers. As of September 2022, the number of police officers had dwindled to under 1,000 from approximately 1,300 a few years earlier.
“When you don’t have a happy police force, you’re going to have serious problems with crime,” Johnson said. “Recruiting is hard because people see how poorly the mayor is treating the police force.”
While Johnson noted that police staffing issues were a contributing factor, he emphasized they were not the cause of the crime spree. He said the city needs to address root causes like poverty and joblessness. He added that the city needs to improve services for children because it is easier to set a child on the right path than put an adult back on the right path.
“We have to seriously look at the poverty in New Orleans,” Johnson said.
This article originally published in the January 23, 2023 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
