A double shooting near Bourbon and Canal and a murder near Jesuit High School are two examples of how crime is now taking place right on the city’s front door.
We’re right in the mother lode of the city. You’re having to notice that kind of violence right in the heart of the city,” says Dr. Peter Scharf, a criminologist with the LSU Health Department of Trauma Surgery and Primary Care. “One, your object to preserve life, two, you’re going to kill any kind of investment.”
Speaking particularly of the shooting on Canal Street Scharf says, “When this kind of incident occurs, someone who spent a lot of money to go stay at the Ritz-Carlton downtown, they’re going to think about that, and that’s a frightening thought.”
Why is crime now out in the open, brazenly taking place on Canal Street and in front of Jesuit High School?
“The reality is we were a safer city two years ago than we are right now.”
LSU Criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf says the end of proactive policing and other factors have brought us to a place where crime is taking place right out in the open.
“We moved to a responsive-passive criminal justice philosophy,” Scharf says. Whatever we were doing proactively with some of the task forces we stopped doing.”
Scharf, says our own tolerance of criminal activity is why we’re seeing brazen acts of violence play out in such public places.
“The dope dealers are shooting dope dealers in large numbers and again, you let the unmanaged drug trade keep going and you’re going to get a lot of murders,” Scharf explains. “You get beef, you get arguments over territory, and you get revenge for various kinds of drug transactions, that’s what we’re seeing.”
Finally, Scharf says it’s ironic that this past weekend’s shooting occurred at the intersection of Canal and Bourbon:
“The shooting at Canal and Bourbon, 13 people shot [in December 2019]. The irony is at Canal and Bourbon is where we started this horrendous murder increase.
It was the December mass shooting at Canal and Bourbon that kicked off 2020, a year when murders began to spiral upward, eclipsing the previous year.
With the killing last weekend near Jesuit High School, New Orleans now has 52 murders, on track to surpass last year’s number.
