Jefferson Parish Sheriff Joseph Lopinto, speaking with WWL’s Newell Normand this morning, talked about crime, low crime rates and his officers.
“We have more enforcement officers on the street than we had in January of last year. There’s a lot of transfers of officers, there’s a lot of new recruitment, and next week I have 24 officers graduating from our academy.”
Lopinto is holding down crime rates in Jefferson Parish by keeping track of criminals working the area.
“We see it all the time, when we catch one of these [criminal] crews, basically for the next two, three weeks, a month we have [no crime], then they’ll start popping up again. Somebody got out of jail and that’s who we’re looking for. Because [the same crimes] started up again.”
Speaking about the crime rate in JP Lopinto says the numbers are bearing out rather well:
“This is still our second or third lowest year in our history since 1974. Comparing it to last year, we probably have a 10% uptick, but still a very low year overall. Again, armed robberies, when I looked at my armed carjackings, having nine with one individual is going to skew the statistics.”
Overall Lopinto says Jefferson Parish is safe and enjoying low crime rates because the population keeps a good attitude about their community.
“We have a lot more good that happens in this community everyday than bad,” Lopinto says. “If we choose to dwell on the bad, it’s going to make our lives miserable. We need to choose to dwell on the good because that’s out there.”