An analysis by the New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission finds few of the people that New Orleans Police arrested on felony charges in 2021 actually faced consequences for it.
"In 2021, 39 percent of all the (felony) cases that were closed were dismissals," said MCC President Rafael Goyeneche. "So another 30 percent of the cases were refused; another 16 percent of those felony cases were allowed to plea to misdemeanors."
Goyeneche said the actions of New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams' office left very few of the suspects in serious criminal cases to actually face punishment for their misdeeds.
"The end by-product was, only 15 percent of the felony arrests made by the police department resulted in a felony conviction," he said.
Goyeneche said the D.A.'s handling of cases wasted a lot of good police work by the NOPD.
"We saw crime accelerate in 2021 and 2022 as the new D.A. was implementing new policies that benefited offenders to the detriment of public safety," he said. "An arrest does not mean that an offender has been held accountable."
Despite this, the crime commission says Williams has begun making changes to some of his policies that led to these declines, and said that "offers promise for gradual if not significant improvements in public safety in future years."
The New Orleans D.A.'s office issued a response. In it, Williams said, "The statistic that matters is the one that reflects the City’s crime rate. By the end of 2023, after publicly articulating and implementing a series of strategic OPDA initiatives, the city logged a 27% decline in homicides and the largest decline in all major crime categories in the country. That is an objective truth regardless of vantage point, and we should all embrace that success while doing our parts to ensure those gains are sustainable."