Most local crime tied to drugs, officials say
1st February 2016 · 0 Comments
During the same week that a Jefferson Parish sheriff’s deputy was shot by a suspect during a Multi-Agency Task Force operation in the Ninth Ward’s Holy Cross neighborhood, law enforcement officials across the Greater New Orleans area said most of the violence they investigate and prosecute is tied to drug use. These local crime fighters also said that two-thirds of young teens who try drugs will go on to addiction, but there’s a lack of treatment in this area for them. WWL News reported that one group is targeting drug use as a strategy for reducing crime and violence.
“The profit motive and the lifestyle that’s developed as the result of the selling of drugs is one that people are willing to die for, and that’s a scary proposition,” Jefferson Parish Sheriff Newell Normand told reporters after his detective was shot and critically injured last Tuesday.
Friends, loved ones and fellow law enforcement officers gathered at the hospital after JP Sheriff’s Deputy Stephen Arnold was shot during a drug arrest that included law enforcement officers from the Drug Enforcement Agency, NOPD and JPSO.
As officers on the front line of efforts of curb violent crime in the region, the officers can attest to the major impact of drugs and crime on the region. They also know that neither civilians nor cops are immune to the violent crime that often accompanies illegal drug activity.
“It’s craziness. I don’t know what it’s going to take,” Sheriff Normand continued.
Hours after Deputy Arnold, members of the Greater New Orleans Drug Demand Reduction Coalition gathered to discuss the increased use of illegal drugs and the accompanying rise in violent crime, but some members of the coalition were absent because of the early-morning shooting.
“We work with the community to get the community to educate themselves and their kids that there’s a connect between drug use and violence and crime and addiction and child abuse,” Stephanie Haynes, President of the Steering Council of the Greater New Orleans Drug Demand Reduction Coalition, told WWL.
During Tuesday’s meeting, a new local company revealed to the coalition a first-of-its-kind, web-based program to give parents and schools a real tool called The PACT, to help prevent new adolescent drug users.
“Eighty percent of kids nationally are being offered drugs in high school, almost 50 percent in middle school, so it’s starting younger and younger. And how do you stop that as parents?” said Laura Sillars, President of The PACT.
A local entrepreneur who saw drugs destroy a loved one, teamed up with a former “Oprah Winfrey Show” producer and others, hoping to sell this program locally then nationwide. They say it’s back by years of brain science on teens, their quest for novel activities, cash rewards for making the right choices and hair drug testing.
The Drug Demand Reduction Coalition is working to get the science out about the increase in violence, crime and health problems in areas where marijuana is legalized.
For more on the Coalition, visit www.gnoddrc.org/.
In other crime- and drug-related news, on Wednesday opponents and supporters of a new ordinance that reduces the severity of marijuana laws weighed in before the City Council’s Criminal Justice Committee.
Lighter marijuana penalties are becoming a trend nationwide, WWL reported. And now the topic is, once again, up for discussion here in New Orleans.
Councilwoman Susan Guidry said she wants to see people with marijuana get warnings, have lower fines, and see police issue a summons to appear in court, rather than being arrested and going to jail. Police would have discretion in the field.
All but one person who addressed the committee Wednesday said they supported the proposed new ordinance.
“If I want to do something recreationally, that makes it easier for me to palate all of the craziness that goes around, then they just don’t get it,” said a New Orleans man who says he enjoys smoking marijuana.
WWL reported that most of those speaking, represented pro pot advocacy groups, lobbying from other cities around the state. Some were from local advocacy groups.
“With the allocation of scarce resources, a majority of our people feel that they would rather see the resources that are being used on marijuana enforcement, go toward violent crime,” said Kevin Caldwell, Executive Director for CommonSenseNola.
The ACLU wants lighter punishment too, saying the current ordinance disproportionately punishes African Americans.
However, the lone person at the public hearing against the ordinance change, came representing the Greater New Orleans Drug Demand Reduction Coalition, made up of doctors, law enforcement, social workers and concerned citizens.
“Marijuana is a mind-altering, harmful drug and more and more studies are showing the connection between marijuana and psychosis, marijuana and violence,” explained Stephanie Haynes, President of the Steering Council of GNODDRC. “There are medical journals on addiction showing marijuana and aggressive behavior and marijuana linked to homicides,”
After Tuesday’s shooting of Jefferson Parish narcotics officer Stephen Arnold who is fighting for his life, Sheriff Normand appeared frustrated with changing drugs laws.
“I don’t get where we’re talking about legalizing this, legalizing that, trying to do this, do that, while these men and women are out there risking their lives day in and day out. For what?” Sheriff Normand told WWL.
In Denver, where marijuana is legal, drug and conduct violations have risen, WWL reported.
The NOPD is working on this ordinance with Councilwoman Guidry and shares her goals of reducing the jail population by focusing police resources on violent offenders.
This article originally published in the February 1, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
