Crime and violenceweigh heavy on the minds of N.O. residents
14th September 2015 · 0 Comments
After a brief slowdown in the waning days of summer, violence erupted again in the French Quarter early Wednesday morning with a triple shooting that left one person dead and wounded two others.
Police said the shooting occurred about 2 a.m. in the 600 block of Iberville Street.
According to police, the victims were involved in an earlier argument . A 35-year-old man died on the scene. A 31-year-old man was shot in the torso and a 27-year-old man was shot in the leg. Both shooting victims were taken to a hospital, where they are listed in stable condition.
Detectives discovered a handgun under the 35-year-old’s body. Another gun was also recovered from the scene.
Police have not made any arrests.
Anyone with information about this triple shooting is urged to call CrimeStoppers at (5040 822-1111.
Two days earlier, Peacekeepers held a march and rally against gun violence on Labor Day in the Faubourg Tremé.
With at least 121 murders by Labor Day and the city’s murder rate expected to surpass last year-s record low total of 150 homicides, the New Orleans Peacekeepers said they felt it was important to take their message of peace to the streets.
One of the march’s organizers told WWL that the community needs to be proactive about finding solutions to the scourge of violence that is destroying families and tearing the community apart.
“No longer can we sit around and wait for anyone else to come in and help bring some remedy to this problem,” Peacekeepers Field Coordinator Walter Umrani told WWL.
“We also understand that there are systemic and social issues and needs that have to met that is aiding this senseless gun violence.”
During the summer, U.S. Sen. David Vitter, a Louisiana gubernatorial candidate, said in an interview that another high-profile murder in the French Quarter could potentially cripple the city’s tourism industry. Vitter also said that New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu should focus less on removing Confederate monuments and more on lowering the city’s murder rate.
In a story that aired Wednesday, WWL reported that both the French Quarter and eastern New Orleans have seen a rise in gun violence.
Citing a recent story in The New Orleans Advocate, WWL said that as of early September, there have been 269 shootings and 108 fatal shootings in New Orleans.
Criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf told WWL that the numbers reveal some interesting things about the patterns of crime and violence in New Orleans..
“These patterns are a little more mobile than one would think, so that areas that were safe are now treacherous and areas that were treacherous now become more safe and more gentrified,” Scharf said.
Despite having large numbers of officers deployed to those ares, New Orleans East and the French Quarter have experienced more gun violence in 2015 than in years past.
“It isn’t the streets or the buildings that kill people, it’s the people,” Scharf told WWL.
He said it’s important to remember that the gun violence problem is people-based.
Eastern New Orleans resident Ralph Bryan told WWL that he has lived in the area since 1976. He said when he moved into his first home nearly four decades ago, it was a different place.
“Oh man, it was a beautiful place. Everybody was conscientious and happy,” Bryan said.
He added that crime has taken over eastern New Orleans, particularly after Hurricane Katrina, when homeowners began renting out their properties.
“I hate to say this, but when you rent to people that don’t care about your property and then different people come from different neighborhoods of the city that produce most of this crime, they are now living in your neighborhood,” Bryan told WWL.
Although New Orleans East serves as home to the NOPD’s largest district with the highest number of officers, he said it’s not enough.
Security in the French Quarter has been bolstered with extra NOPD officers, state troopers, an anti-crime app introduced by businessman Sidney Torres and most recently, the French Quarter Patrol.
Bob Simms, who runs the French Quarter Patrol, said the difference between the shootings that take place out in New Orleans East and the ones in the French Quarter seem to be that it’s people coming from the outside in.
“Random acts of violence are going to occur no matter where you are. When two people who have a beef with one another meet together, that’s going to happen and there is nothing you can do about it,” Simms said.
As if a rising murder rate isn’t enough to put residents on edge, a recent news story by FOX 8 revealed that burglaries in New Orleans are spiraling out of control.
FOX 8 News shared the story of a burglary on Bancroft Drive near City Park where the culprits were caught on video surveillance,
Neighbors told FOX 8 that the gunmen didn’t just hit this car. In fact, they say these types of crimes have been happening regularly for the past two years.
“It’s scary to see where this thing could spin up to. I know myself and other neighbors, especially the ones that were broken into. The level of anger is starting to increase,” Dan Huben said.
FOX 8 reported that what happened on Bancroft Drive has happened and is happening to thousands of residents across the city.
In a recent CrimeTracker Investigation, FOX 8 obtained the incident reports numbers, locations and time of day for every burglary that took place in 2014. They discovered that there is not a single section of the city that has not been hit by burglars, who have targeted both vehicles and homes.
Businesses and houses of worship have also been hit by burglarss.
“It’s very distressing to think that someone would come into God’s house and try to steal,” one minister told FOX 8.
The pastor at Deliverance Missionary Baptist Church in New Orleans East said he stopped keeping cash in the church after someone broke in to steal it — not once, but twice in the same week.
“I do believe if there’s an area where these things are happening, someone else will see it and think ‘They’re easy prey,’” the pastor said.
Out of 6,000 addresses obtained by FOX 8, the NOPD visited two of them more than any other, and both are apartment complexes in New Orleans East.
Burglars hit the Parc Brittany Apartments eight times. The building, located in a very desolate area between the I-10 Service Road and Lake Forest Boulevard, seems to be tucked away.
Second on the list were the Lakewind East Apartments on Bundy Road with five burglaries.
“This is probably, I hate to say it, but the worst place I’ve ever lived,” Joseph Izak told FOX 8.
Izak and Vincent Martinez moved to New Orleans six months ago from Indiana. Site unseen, they decided to move to the Lakewind East Apartments.
“It’s unpatrolled. The neighbors don’t look out for each other. The big lights here for safety, there’s a lot of them missing bulbs,” Martinez said.
Martinez and Izak safe victims in one of the five burglary cases in the apartment complex.
“One of our lawn chairs were stolen right outside our patio. Our cable lines were cut, along with maybe two other units, and there’s vandalism,” Martinez said.
Both say they love the city and want to be part of New Orleans, but crime is driving them out of this neighborhood.
“To know that is scary. This is not the type of area that we want to be in,” Izak said.
The two will be hard-pressed to find a crime-free neighborhood in the city.
FOX 8 did find that Lake Vista — where there was a car burglary and a home burglary on the edge of the neighborhood — and Audubon Place in the Garden District were two of the safer neighborhoods in the city.
The latter’s gates and security guards provide added security to protect the pricier homes behind the barrier.
With 104 incidents on the five-mile stretch of Rampart Street last year, residents in that stretch of asphalt have earned the dubious honor of living on the hardest-hit street.
Burgundy Street, which runs from the French Quarter to the Lower Ninth Ward, suffered 70 burglaries last year.
“I wasn’t aware of the statistics, but it makes sense. I mean, you could get binoculars and watch people park,” musician Fred Staehle, who was robbed twice, told FOX 8. Several of his fellow band members were also victimized.
“The piano player moved to town and his house was broken into. The bass player, a nice man, they robbed him on the street,” Staehle said.
Nearly half of the 6,000 burglaries reported in 2014 were auto burglaries, and 1,820 were residential burglaries. Some believe it’s a crime that can be avoided, but only if everyone works together to prevent it.
“Get with you neighbors,” Martinez told FOX 8. “Talk to your leasing office. Talk to your local community law enforcement. It helps, but I don’t think the people here like to get involved. That’s probably why we are No. 2,” Martinez said.
“What is happening is a direct result of the crisis of leadership at City Hall and in the NOPD,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly Thursday. “The city’s top leaders are obviously not committed to improving city services for the most vulnerable families or turning the police department around. We need honest accountable leadership, not spin artists and propaganda.”
“This all goes back to the City of New Orleans not doing enough to increase opportunities for the city’s children who are most at risk,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly.
“We need real job training for young people who slip through the cracks of the school system and are forced out of schools to make it look like these schools are doing a better job of educating New Orleans children than they actually are.
“The solution is simple but not easily accomplished — turn the schools around with real, positive changes, improve services for the city’s poorest families and give young people a chance to earn an honest living rather than forcing them to prey on the weak and vulnerable.
“It won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.”
This article originally published in the September 14, 2015 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
