A new report from the Metropolitan Crime Commission shows the New Orleans District Attorney’s Office has refused or dismissed over 900 hundred violent felony cases since the start of this year. All of this happening with District Attorney Jason Williams as lead prosecutor for the city. Since Williams won the D.A. position no cases have gone to trial. I spoke with Rafael Goyneche of the Metropolitan Crime Commission and asked him to explain his findings into Williams’ administration.
On average, law enforcement in this country solves a little less than 50 percent of violent crimes. Your report shows we are missing opportunities when the police actually make an arrest based on probable cause and for whatever reason the D.A.chooses not to prosecute.
We looked at police reports generated for screenings after arrests are made and we looked at dispositions, whether or not those cases were accepted or refused, and if they were accepted to go to court, how were those cases concluded in 2019,2021, and 2021.
1,411 violent felony arrests made by the NOPD supported by probable cause in the first eight months of this year. 937 of these cases were refused or dismissed by District Attorney Jason Williams. Do we know why?
We don't really know why because when Williams was running for that post he promised to be transparent, he promised to collect and publish data on who his office decides to prosecute or not prosecute in order to remain accountable to the public. Before we published our report we gave him an advanced copy of it and asked him to call us to let us know if he had any questions or comments about it. We didn't hear from him, so we published it last Wednesday and we were criticized by his administration claiming that we cherry picked our data… we looked at every felony case and arrest made by the police department in 2019 through 2021.. If we cherry picked anything, we cherry picked every felony case that went through the system during those two years and eight months.
What further mystifies me is that he is a self anointed, “progressive” prosecutor. He has to know the downstream implications of what he's doing. We've only seen it in almost every major city that's adopted similar policies to this date, an increase in crime and problems within the criminal justice system. Why would he be surprised by these outcomes?
Progressivism and public safety are not mutually exclusive. At the time when he was professing his progressive philosophies and approaches, he also indicated that he was going to be laser-focused on violent felony crime. You can balance both progressivism and public safety, but we're not seeing that balance. He has not fulfilled his promise to focus on violent felony crime. We've seen that happen historically in this city where there was a disconnect between prosecutors and police. Every time that occurs, violent crime surges and the people that pay the price for that are the law abiding citizens that are being victimized by crime at unprecedented rates.
