Residents of the Lakeview community say they're seeing slower police response times despite residents there paying higher taxes for beefed up police presence.
According to one of the neighborhood's leaders, that problem falls squarely on the New Orleans 911.
"They started downgrading the suspicious person calls to a Code 1," Lakeview Civic Improvement Association board member Val Cupit told WWL's Tommy Tucker, referring to the signal for lowest-priority calls. "Suspicious person calls are not getting the priority that, in my opinion, that they should give it and treat it."
Cupit added that she's even had conversations about this issue with Orleans Parish Communications Director Tyrell Morris.
"I got a volley of emails," Cupit said. "I started this back in February. He said, and I'm quoting, 'NOPD has determined that suspicious person calls without the presence of a weapon are a Code 1 citywide.'"
Cupit points to another problem that's slowing down response times. She says dispatchers with the New Orleans Communication District enter calls in a computer system that police can access. However, she says requiring officers on patrol to look at a computer screen while driving is unacceptable.
Cupit says Morris could implement an easy fix to this problem.
"We want audible dispatching," Cupit said. "We have available police officers monitoring the radio, driving, hopefully, around the area for visibility purposes. So what we're saying is: Mr. Morris, please put that out audibly over the air."
New Orleans Councilman Joe Giarrusso, who represents Lakeview, says he's already had meetings with Morris and others about how this problem can be corrected.
"My understanding is: there's at least two things that they're working on," Giarrusso told Tucker. "Number one: that if there is a call that relates to some of these crimes, it's not just going to be held. It's going to be broadcast because, in this instance, once it finally reached Lakeview Crime Prevention District, cops who are on patrol were there in a short period of time. Number two: Director Morris committed to reviewing like two weeks of incidents and seeing what he can learn and how they can make better process."
