N.O. mayor tackles crime and violence in Tulane address
2nd May 2016 · 0 Comments
On the evening of April 27 at Tulane University, less than 24 hours before a preliminary hearing on the high-profile slaying of former New Orleans Saints player Will Smith, New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu paused to talk about the scourge of crime and violence that hangs over the Crescent City like an ominous cloud.
The mayor, who launched an initiative called NOLA for Life to address the city’s high murder rate, said during Wednesday’s address that much more needs to be done and that the community needs to be appalled by every killing in the city, not just those of high-profile athletes like Will Smith, who was slain during a traffic dispute on April 9 in the Garden District.
WWL News reported that Wednesday’s address was attended by elected officials, community leaders, Tulane students and members of the community whose lives were negatively impacted by crime and violence.
Among those in attendance was nine-year-old Lionel Bell, who led the audience in reciting the Pledge of Allegiance before Landrieu addressed those assembled at Tulane University’s Dixon Hall.
Lionel Bell’s family knows all too well how violence forever changes people’s lives and leaves them searching for answers they may never find. The nine year-old boy’s father was murdered five years again Uptown New Orleans.
“When he was five years old, his father was murdered on LaSalle and Washington,” Nadia Bell, Lionel’s mother, told WWL.
As he has done several times during past Essence Festival empowerment seminars, Landrieu shared the names of some of the city’s murder victims with the audience.
“I want you to look at these books. These books contain the names and faces of every human being, every American citizen that has been killed in the City of New Orleans, since I have been honored to be your mayor,” Landrieu said.
The mayor shared examples of high-profile murders which have rocked the city, like former Saints player Will Smith’s death and the 2012 slaying of five-year-old Brianna Allen, killed attending her cousin’s birthday party in Central City.
Since taking office, Landrieu said 1,003 people have been killed, but he noted that the overall murder rate is down by 61 percent since 1994.
“For as big as this problem is there are solutions, and we are in fact, even though it doesn’t feel like it, every day making progress,” said Landrieu.
According to the mayor, that progress includes a host of NOLA for Life initiatives, improvements to the New Orleans Police Department including redeployment of 100 extra officers to city streets, and the success of the NOPD’s multi-agency gang unit to get violent criminals off-the-streets.
WWL political analyst Clancy DuBos said the mayor didn’t break any new ground with his remarks but Landrieu’s address comes at a time of anxiety and uncertainty in New Orleans.
“I think the timing has to do with the killing of Will Smith and other high-profile crimes, violent crimes, and there’s a feeling across town that he may have detected; that people don’t feel safe,” said DuBos.
Landrieu also mentioned the need to enact sensible gun laws and also said the state needs to stop cutting funding to mental health and the Public Defender’s Office.
Landrieu was offended by some of Saints Coach Sean Payton’s remarks in USA Today after Smith’s killing, saying that Payton “could be forgiven” for saying that the city is “broken.”
A few days after Smith’s death, Landrieu called NFL Commis-sioner Roger Gooddell to make sure that the high-profile killing wouldn’t negatively impact the City of New Orleans’ chances of landing an upcoming Super Bowl.
Landrieu also took offense to comments made by businessman Sidney Torres, whose mother lives in the French Quarter and was upset by a series of armed robbers in her neighborhood. After Torres criticized the City of New Orleans’ failure to keep the public safe, Landrieu challenged Torres to get involved and come up with a better solution. Torres responded by creating an app to fight and report crime.
“If you let the mayor tell it, he’s the only one that cares about Black-on-Black violence in New Orleans and the rise in violent crime but the truth is that there are a lot of us who are out there every day fighting for Black people and trying to stop the violence,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly Thursday.
This article originally published in the May 2, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
