The police chief today talked about what NOPD did during the Mardi Gras season to make the city and the Carnival celebration safer.
"It was a resounding success," Anne Kirkpatrick said at a news conference.
In addition to about 175 arrests through a federal violent crime taskforce before Mardi Gras, the superintendent says the NOPD had scores of additional apprehensions during the ten days of the city's official Carnival Season.
"NOPD themselves made 185 arrests along the parade route."
The chief says 31 were felonies, 64 were misdemeanors and 8 were traffic related arrests.
She said there were also additional minor offense arrests, juvenile arrests and fugitive arrests.
In one case, the chief says a specialized team seized a haul of fully automatic weapons in a case she said could have been an extremely serious "bad act."
"They were able to seize ten firearms, including rifles, along with switches which convert the firearms into fully automatic machine gun-type weapons. They also confiscated narcotics as well as cash."
Kirkpatrick says they received about 19,000 calls for help during the Mardi Gras season... with 80 percent of those phone calls answered within 15 seconds.
"We are growing with more visitors...We had 2.2 million visitors over our Mardi Gras season."