New Orleans crime dips in 2015, but murders, rapes and armed robberies rise
14th March 2016 · 0 Comments
NOPD officials said recently that crime dropped six percent in 2015, but it has been difficult to enjoy that dip with homicides, rapes and armed robberies all rising last year.
NOPD crime stats from 2015 that were released on Feb. 26 reveal that there were fewer assaults, simple robberies, burglaries, thefts and auto thefts in 2015 compared to 2014. Burglaries dropped 16 percent last year and there were 12 percent fewer assaults in 2015.
But there was a slight rise in armed robberies, 70 percent more rapes and 14 more homicides committed in 2015, records show.
It is unclear how many more crimes went unreported in 2015 because victims or witnesses left the scene before NOPD officers arrived. With a severe manpower shortage, the NOPD — which is in the midst of a federally mandated consent decree aimed at overhauling the department — has struggled to meet the needs of residents and have been criticized for having some of the nation’s longest response times.
Additionally, the 70 percent rise in rapes in 2015 may be a by-product of the public’s increased confidence in the NOPD’s handling of complaints of sexual assaut.
While NOPD Supt. Michael Harrison saw the latest numbers as cause for optimism that things might be turning around, he also hinted that New Orleans is far from out of the woods.
“These numbers are encouraging, but we have a long way to go to make our city safe,” Harrison said in a statement.
NOPD officials pointed out that overall crime in the categories reported to the FBI has dropped by double digits from its peak in the 1990s, following a national trend. They added that the total number of crimes has decreased by 67 since the 1990s.
If there was a silver lining in the rise in the number of murders in 2015, it was the fact that homicides in the last three months of 2015 fell by 11 percent compared to the same period in 2014. NOPD officials said in a press release that reducing the city’s murder rate remains a top priority for the City of New Orleans.
Harrison said he was encouraged by the fact that there were only 15 homicides committed during the first two months of 2015, compared with 26 committed during the same period in 2014.
The police superintendent said the department’s strategy for continuing to reduce crime will include efforts to reduce NOPD response times, increasing officer visibility and making arrests as soon as possible after crimes are omitted.
It’s impossible to gauge how many crimes were actually committed in 2015 since victims and witnesses sometimes get frustrated and leave the scene of a crime before officers arrive. If the person reporting a crime does not give the 911 dispatcher a callback number or doesn’t answer when a responding officer tries to contact them, the incidents is classified as “unfounded” or “gone on arrival.”
NOPD Capt. Michael Glasser, president of the Police Association of New Orleans, told Nola.com that the officer who files a report that notes that witnesses or victims were “gone on arrival” are essentially saying that they found nothing at the reported scene of the crime to indicate that a crime was actually committed.
“That doesn’t mean (a crime) didn’t occur,” Glasser told Nola.com.
The use of terms like “unfounded” and “gone on arrival” certainly raise doubt about a department that has come under fire in the past for underreporting or misclassifying certain crimes, failing to follow up on reports of sexual assault, failing to report at least one officer-involved shooting during which a body camera was turned off and cooking the books.
Raising even more suspicion is the fact that there appears to have been significant jump in the use of “gone on arrival” in police reports in 2014. Nola.com reported that between 2011 and 2014, about four percent of calls per year were listed as “gone on arrival.” But that number jumped to six percent in 2915, according to NOPD response times data. An additional 10 percent of calls in 2015 were classified as “unfounded,” the same as in 2014.
What is still unclear is how much of the increased use of these classifications is attributable to residents’ frustration with long NOPD response times and how much can be blamed on efforts to change the public’s perception that the City of New Orleans is getting a better handle on crime.
An October 2014 analysis of NOPD data by Nola.com and FOX 8 News found that the average wait time for residents who called police for help over the first nine months of 2015 was 73 minutes, nearly five times higher than it took in 2011.
The wait was even longer during the same period for crimes like car burglaries for which residents routinely waited more than a day.
“The bottom line is that public safety and police protection have not improved under the Landrieu administration,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly.
“The NOPD has lost more than 400 officers since New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office, police response times have risen dramatically and violent crime has risen dramatically. That’s unacceptable.”
Brown added that part of the problem is the City of New Orleans’ refusal to give high school dropouts and unemployed Black males a chance to build better lives for themselves. Why even talk about the city’s murder rate or the rise in violent crime if you are not willing to provide young people without high school diplomas a chance to learn a trade, not willing to stand up for a citywide raise in the minimum wage — especially in the tourism industry — and are not willing to do everything you can that children are treated fairly and equitably in the city’s public and charter schools?
“There will be no public safety and no peace as long as there is no commitment to bringing about economic justice, improving healthcare access and ending economic apartheid.”
In an effort to boost its ranks, the NOPD is currently training 56 police recruits and another 28 are slated to begin field training in April.
As it continues to increase its numbers while keeping residents safe, the City of New Orleans has been aided by support from the Louisiana State Police.
Of the 432,878 calls for assistance in 2015, 24,001 were classified as “gone on arrival” and an additional 41,763 were classified as “unfounded.”
“It just seems like the mayor and police chief have no idea what they are doing,” Ramessu Merriamen Aha, a New Orleans businessman and former congressional candidate, told The Louisiana Weekly. “We hear all these spin doctors crunching numbers and telling us that things are getting better, but then you turn on the local news and talk to your neighbors, friends and co-workers and know that things are far from good and far from getting better.
“The sad part is that all of this is happening as the NOPD remains under a federally mandated consent decree to implement much-needed reforms to bring efficiency, professionalism, constitutionality and integrity to the department,” Aha added. “Instead of making the necessary and mandated changes according to the 492-point consent decree, NOPD officials actually blame the U.S. Department of Justice for making it harder for the department to do its job. What a joke.
“The only way this is going to change is when we get a new mayor and a new police chief. We need another NOPD reformer like (former Supt.) Richard Pennington to turn this department around.”
Additional reporting by Louisiana Weekly editor Edmund W. Lewis.
This article originally published in the March 14, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
