With the recent rise in violent crime in New Orleans, including a number of high-profile cases, City Councilman Oliver Thomas joined Newell Normand on WWL Radio and offered his opinion on the state of safety in the city and what should be done to improve it.
“Criminal justice reform should never have gotten in the way of criminal justice perform,” Thomas said about how the problem was allowed to worsen. But he also said it’s time to move on from the blame game, saying whatever happened in the past, the problems with the city’s enforcement of the law must be fixed in the present.
“People don’t want to hear about whose fault it was or what the last person did,” he said. “What are you doing right now? And I think that’s where we have to be right now.”
Thomas said the recent spikes in violent crime have made the atmosphere in New Orleans more dangerous than he’s ever seen it.
“The violence we see right now is so indiscriminate,” he began, noting that in the past, “we had some rises and we had some increases in crime, but never as indiscriminate as it is right now. A hundred rounds at 1:30 in the day on Elysian Fields, 90 rounds on Claiborne and Napoleon, 40 rounds in the east right off of Downman and Chef, 60 rounds in front of the Zulu club, and of course, everyone knows my friend’s wife who got shot up by Gert Town with a hail of bullets that hit her car with two kids in the car. I’ve never seen it as indiscriminate it is. So people don’t give a damn about whose fault it was or who should’ve did what. Everybody needs to step up their game yesterday.”
Thomas said he has seen what looks to be movement on policy changes from New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams’s office, stating, “We’ve seen the district attorney now in many cases take a look at that, talk about what they’re doing now, list these joint efforts with the task force… with the police chief.”
He also said he made sure to impart upon the rest of his fellow councilpersons that they are not powerless to affect change.
“One of my comments was, ‘Hey guys, guess what we control,’” Thomas said. “And I gave them a little history on the last time it worked. And you’ll remember the big war with the Morial administration… and [that city council] used the ultimate authority they had. They used the power of the purse to hold up the budget until there was a plan and responses that mirrored the cries from the public.”
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