The New Orleans City Services Coalition has laid out its plan for how the new mayor and city council of New Orleans can best serve its residents.
One of the five vital city services the coalition say needs overhaul: crime prevention and public safety.
Coalition members say the Crescent City's next elected leaders must put public safety and crime prevention at the fore, but they say those leaders can't fight crime alone.
"How do we reduce crime and violence, especially gun violence?" coalition member Carlin Connor asked rhetorically.
According to him and fellow coalition member Joe Givens, the answer is community- and faith-based programs.
"What we have today as a part of this effort is 'communities of hope," Givens said. "We believe that it's not just collaboration between politicians and those in government, but those relationships have to extend to people in neighborhoods, in communities, and in congregations."
Givens says those relationships have already paid off, with community members helping authorities shut down businesses that harbored crime and criminals in the last year.
"Isolate a neighborhood that has difficult problems, deal with them, and bring in additional resources to help solve the problem," Givens said.
Givens and Connor noted that a local elected officials has already endorsed their plan.
"The partner that we've got now is Jason Williams over at the District Attorney's Office, who says, 'We want to address those imminent threats that you find in your neighborhoods and in your communities,'" Givens said.
"With cross-collaboration with the NOPD and the district attorney's office, there's an ability to fix some areas that need to be fixed that will cut off some of the criminal elements," Connor added.
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