Two thousand fifty-seven: that’s the number of guns the New Orleans Police Department says it’s taken off the streets in the month of October.
On Monday, department officials announced its statistics for illegal gun crimes, seizures, and arrests. Those numbers show that the NOPD is making strides to combat violent crime amid a reorganization of department staff.
In addition to reorganizing the department, NOPD officials say they have hired 44 civilians to fill a number of positions within the department, including a crime lab director and human resources director, and deputized city officials to handle some matters typically handled by officers. On top of that, those officials say they recently graduated two classes of officers, adding nearly 400 uniformed officers to the department in the process. A third class of nearly 200 recruits is currently in its ninth week of training.
All of this, officials say, has allowed officers to focus on violent crimes.
According to data provided by the NOPD, the department has seized 26.5-percent more illegal guns so far this year than it did in all of 2021. Just in the last week, officers have cleared 40 percent of homicides and solved 43 percent of those cases.
Meanwhile, officers in the French Quarter have made a rash of arrests for gun-related crimes. In October, officers made 60 gun arrests; 18 were on Bourbon Street. Twenty-three of those arrests came in the final week of the month; 18 were on Bourbon Street.
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