Falling crime rates are a sign of success for the NOLA Coalition of businesses, nonprofits, and civic organizations that banded together three years ago when crime rates were rising. So where does it go from here?
While crime rates have fallen dramatically, there's another mission of the NOLA Coalition that needs their attention.
"One of our main focus areas is going to be on supporting NOPD recruiting and retention because, even though they've been doing a remarkable job with lower numbers," said GNO Inc. President Michael Hecht, a member of the NOLA Coalition. "We know that we need to work on that."
Hecht says they are also not losing site of their mission to raise funds for youth programs that help keep kids away from crime.
Has the drop in crime this year made that harder? Quite the contrary, Hecht said.
"Even though there's not an emergency issue in the same way, the fact that we've made progress is actually encouraging people to double-down," he said. "It's a mission from acute reduction to now continual reduction because even though we're going to have the least-deadly year in modern history, there still are going to be too many deaths so we have to continue to push those down, but then, yes, think about how do we sustain this into the future so we don't have another acute spike in ten years."
