Law enforcement agencies unveil new plan to combat violent crime

Local, state and federal law enforcement agencies recently announced a joint effort aimed at more effectively and efficiently handling violent crime investigations in the New Orleans area, FOX 8 News reported.

Law enforcement officials representing nine agencies said late last month that the effort is a continuous intelligence operation which will focus on identifying New Orleans’ most violent offenders and highest-risk neighborhoods.

The intelligence produced through this effort will create critical support to all over-arching federal, state and local efforts against violent crime in the New Orleans area.

Under Operation Joint Vigilance, law enforcement agencies say they will evaluate suspects, assessing their criminal status, and combine resources, while working side by side to remove those identified as most dangerous from the streets of New Orleans.

Joining forces in this violent crime reduction plan is the New Orleans Police Department, Louisiana State Police, Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, Drug Enforcement Administration, U.S. Marshals Service, Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, Federal Bureau of Investigation, U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Eastern District of Louisiana and the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office.

Despite a lower murder total thus far for 2017, New Orleans has experienced a rash of homicides over the past week and non-fatal shootings continue to spiral out of control.

Last week, the recent violent streak claimed the life of 55-year-old Carol Lombard Ross, a member of a prominent New Orleans family and a leader in her West Bank community.

“She was viewed in the neighborhood as the neighborhood mom,” state Sen. Troy Carter, a friend of the family, told WWL News. “She always looked out for the young kids. Just a great person that happened to be the victim of circumstance.”

Ross, a member of the Lombard family, was fatally shot in the 300 block of LeBouef Street in Algiers.

“It appears she was not the intended target and that there was some gunfire and she perhaps was caught in that gunfire between two individuals,” NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison told WWL News.

The shooting underscored the reality that no one is completely safe from the gun violence that has reached a record level in the city in 2017.

WWL crime analyst Jeff Asher said that on Oct. 19 the city witnessed the 500th person becoming a victim of gun violence. The last time the city reached 500 shooting victims close to this was on November 1, 2011, he added.

This article originally published in the November 6, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.