As 2022 gets fully underway, Mayor LaToya Cantrell, New Orleans Police Chief Shaun Ferguson and District Attorney Jason Williams have all been forced to address the crime problem in the city, due to outcry from the public and the City Council. While these three entities have spoken about the two-year spike in crime, none have publicly issued any sort of plan or action to combat it. Residents are fed up with their neglectful approach and are applying pressure on elected officials to keep their communities safe. I spoke with Rafael Goyeneche of the Metropolitan Crime Commission about a new weekly bulletin which will provide transparency into the workings of the District Attorney’s office to the public.
Elected officials are finally realizing there will be political consequences for them; the mayor is saying, now's not the time to give up hope on the NOPD. But I think a lot of folks have given up on her, because she refused to address crime all of last year. There hasn’t been any bonuses for police, or any other strategies to recruit additional personnel to the NOPD. She’s done nothing!
Some people say that things aren't going to improve until the the city has a new police chief but
I think it's unfair to blame Sean Ferguson for the failures of political leadership to give him the resources that he needs to police this city. Former Mayor Mitch Landrieu imposed a hiring-freeze on the police a few years ago and police staffing declined. At that time, then Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas warned against the freeze. Landrieu eventually did offer pay raises to police, but those raises ended in 2020. Now, the city has an all-time historical low in police staffing.
The DA and the police chief said they have been having discussions and resolved their issues as it relates to the prioritization of certain arrests and convictions.
They need to be focusing on violent felony arrests and the outcomes of those violent felony arrests. The priorities need to be the most serious offenders. With the declining numbers of police officers, we're seeing arrests go down as the police are trying to focus on the most serious crimes… the Metropolitan Crime Commision is working on a new weekly crime bulletin that tracks the violent crime rates in the city for the last couple of years as it relates to the actions from the District Attorney’s office. I met with Jason Williams about the plan, and he’s in support of it. I hope to be able to publicly launch it next week.
The focus should be on getting a successful conviction for the highest charge possible against violent offenders. Now, the MCC is going to be utilizing and revealing data about what's going on with the District Attorney's office after cases are presented for prosecution?
The same transparency and accountability that we've been employing to provide weekly crime trends, we will be using for the DA’s office. We're just getting it going. There's a responsibility for him in this too. I've requested some information from his office. If a case is refused, I'd like to know the reason why the case is refused. If a case is dismissed, I want to know why. If he gives me that information, we'll put it in our data so the public will have more information.