New Orleans now has a progressive district attorney and a progressive new sheriff. Meanwhile, crime rates are not going in a positive direction.
The same thing is happening around the country in places that have elected officials with similar ideologies.
In Los Angeles, The Grove Shopping Center has strung up barbed wire around stores to stop smash and grab burglaries.The mall has also deployed special ballistic film coating to all exterior windows. Shops have also enacted coordinated lockdown measures to completely close the mall quickly and lock perpetrators inside so they can be arrested.
Now we’re seeing the implications of these lax attitudes toward crime. The CEOs of Target, BestBuy, CVS and others are asking for help against this organized movement across the nation. Meanwhile, the White House says this is all because of covid.
Rafael Goyeneche of the Metropolitan Crime Commission shared some statistics showing how this laissez-faire approach to crime is impacting New Orleans.
Rafael, let’s start with murders. we surpassed last year’s murder total.
Last year there were 201 murders. As of this week, we're at 203 murders and we're gonna blow by last year's number. 2020’s murder total was an historic high. From 2019 to 2021 homicides are up 80%, shootings are up 93% and carjackings are up 167%.
Looking at the Orleans Parish inmate population, there’s about 900 individuals locked up in jail right now. The math isn’t adding up, because the police have been making a lot of homicide arrests, carjacking arrests, and robbery arrests. Obviously, offenders are getting out of jail.
New Orleans Police Chief Shaun Ferguson commented at his budget hearing a few weeks ago that they arrest people who brag to officers that they'll be out of custody before the officer can write his report… that's the reality of the new criminal justice system in Orleans Parish right now, which is demoralizing for the police. They're overwhelmed by violent crime because they don't have the resources to really respond to nonviolent crimes, and can't keep up with the crime rate. The jail population is a synthesis of some of the worst of the worst, and some of the violent offenders are getting out and reoffending.
Several months back, you guys issued a report on the New Orleans District Attorney’s office. Before Jason Williams was elected as district attorney he was critical of former DA Leon Cannizzaro. Now Williams is engaging in some of the same practices he criticized Cannizzaro for. What’s this all about?
As a City councilman, Jason Williams was very critical of the District Attorney's Office’s record with respect to domestic violence cases. He promised when he was running for election to focus his attention on domestic violence cases and not prosecute violent offenders. It recently has come to my attention that in 2019, three offenders were arrested for a variety of narcotics and weapons charges. All three offenders were terrorizing neighborhoods, and plead guilty to lesser charges… essentially they all get off with slaps on the wrist.