The shooting of an innocent bystander in the French Quarter and a bartender losing several fingers when attacked by an impatient patron with a hatchet: those are among the violent crimes ProjectNOLA says its crime cameras have helped the New Orleans Police Department solve in the last few weeks.
In fact, ProjectNOLA says it's helped the NOPD's Eighth District clear around 99 percent of violent crimes in the downtown area.
"The case closure rate is a percentage of cases that you help close through arrests or warrants or what's called an exception," ProjectNOLA director Brian LaGarde said, noting that an example of an exceptional circumstance is police learning a suspect is dead. "It's not only that we're helping with the case closure rate, we were able to catapult it in the Eighth District."
LaGarde says even though the ProjectNOLA cameras can identify suspects quickly, they are not the end-all-be-all to solving crime.
"What we provided is considered to be a tip, so even when we hand names, it's not considered to be probably cause for arrest," LaGarde said. "We're getting all these extraordinarily good face and vehicle shots in the case something regrettable happens. Then we're able to help identify them."
Still, LaGarde says the tips those cameras provide allow the NOPD to close cases much more quickly than they would otherwise.
"Normally for like a shooting, it might takes days, more often weeks, sometimes months, sometimes longer (to solve the case). We're very often helping to identify a person within minutes," LaGarde said, adding that the crime cameras are also helping the NOPD close multiple cases at one time. "That's because we're very often helping to solve one crime, and at the same time, we're helping to connect that person to other crimes that they apparently committed."
LaGarde says ProjectNOLA is working to add more cameras across the city to fill holes in its network to help the NOPD reduce violent crime rates outside of downtown.
"Taking violent offenders off the street is making it to where they can't hurt more people," LaGarde said.
