Rallies doing little to combat crime problem, residents say
24th October 2016 · 0 Comments
Less than 24 hours after shootings left two dead and two others injured in New Orleans, residents gathered across the city for the annual Night Out Against Crime events Tuesday.
Still, some of them told WWL News last week that the rallies aren’t making an impact on crime in their neighborhoods.
Every day Earline Scott and her neighbor sit out on their steps and talk about what’s going on in their community. Crime has been a big topic between them the last few days. Monday night, four people were shot in three separate incidents, WWL reported.
The first happened at about 8 p.m. in the 2400 block of Dreux Avenue, where investigators said they found a 26-year-old man with a gunshot wound to the chest outside of a home. Less than an hour later, a 47-year-old man was shot multiple times Uptown near the intersection of Lyons and Constance streets.
The shooting occurred just a day before the annual National Night Out Against Crime, a time when the community gets out alongside local law enforcement to talk about the violence that’s going on in their neighborhoods.
“To me, it’s just a place where you can meet and drink and talk to your neighbors and get to know one another — that’s a good thing,” said Scott. “But to me it’s not really helping crime.”
The Rev. Patrick Dowell agreed, saying that police should hold events like these more often.
“I think it shouldn’t be just one night in one month, it should go constantly all the time,” Dowell told WWL. “Through the week, officers come out and families get together to try to save our neighborhoods.”
Dowell believes more positive police interaction could prevent shootings like the one investigators said happened around 2 a.m. on the corner Louisa and Almonaster streets, where a man and woman were shot.
“Now, everybody sticks to themselves,” said Dowell. “Your business is your business and this is why crime is getting the way it is and people are scared”
Night Out Against Crime events were held Tuesday all over the metro area.
Regina Adams, a Gentilly resident, said she thought about going to a Night Out Against Crime event in her neighborhood bout thought twice about it after considering that she would have to head home on her own in the dark of night.
“It’s easy to say that the odds are low of you getting robbed or worse on the way home from an anti-crime event but when you look at the news it really makes you think twice about going out at night,” she told The Louisiana Weekly. Adams also said there’s no guarantee people won’t be robbed even in daylight.
Another resident who did not wish to give her name said that she too feels like a prisoner in her own home and is constantly gripped with the fear of becoming a victim. “I’m afraid to go out at night and put something in the garbage can or get something that has been delivered off the porch,” she told The Louisiana Weekly. “I tell all my family, friends and neighbors to call before coming to visit me at night — otherwise I won’t open the door. It just doesn’t feel safe in New Orleans anymore.”
With media reports last week that say both homicides and armed robberies are on the rise in the city, some activists say that in order to significantly reduce crime the City of New Orleans must first address the root causes like chronic unemployment among Black men in New Orleans, poverty and a steady influx of illegal drugs and firearms into the city’s poorest neighborhoods.
“We hear people say all the time the violence is the language of the oppressed, the unseen and the unheard,” the Rev. Raymond Brown, a longtime community activist and president of National Action Now, told The Louisiana Weekly. “This is what happens when families are systematically deprived of a decent education, health care, proper nutrition and economic opportunities for several generations.
“Nobody just wakes up one day and decides to be a killer or a drug dealer,” Brown continued. “Many of those in jail will tell you that they are behind bars because they did what they had to do for their people to eat and survive from one day to the next.”
Brown said elected officials, the Black Church, educational officials and others must do more to meet the needs of those less fortunate in order to turn around the city’s crime and violence.
“Good intentions are not enough — the road to hell is paved with those,” Brown told The Louisiana Weekly. “We need a lot of things to make that happen — better schools, real job training for school dropouts, safe and affordable housing, improved family services, etc.
“The bottom line is that until we see economic justice, reform in the criminal justice system and a school system that places a premium on preparing young people to meet the challenges of the world they live in, we will not see dramatic improvement.”
This article originally published in the October 24, 2016 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
