The New Year is less than two weeks old and crime in New Orleans has taken no pause. There has been a triple homicide near the FairGrounds, a triple homicide in Mid City along with a series of car break-ins and other crimes.
The outbreak of crime in 2023 recently prompted New Orleans City Councilwoman Helena Moreno to say the city’s posture must be of a “declared state of emergency.”
On Tuesday’s edition of the Newell Normand Show, Jeff Asher, co-founder of AH Datalytics and public safety consultant for the New Orleans City Council, gave a sobering assessment of the city’s crime rate and the shrinking number of police officers able to respond to it.
“I think it (2022) was a rough year and I think there are a lot of trends that are not necessarily heading the way you would want, and I think there are difficult problems that are going to require difficult solutions, and I think the first step is going to be accepting reality,” Asher said.
Asher told Newell that begins with an honest and thorough examination of the New Orleans Police Department.
“The police department has the lion’s share of the public safety money, and I think that you look at staffing over the last three years and there presently 933 officers and 11 recruits. And this is really a national issue as far as police departments shrinking and not being able to replace officers that are leaving. Back in 2019, we had over 1,200 commissioned officers and recruits. Now, we’re below 950,” said Asher.
That level of staffing, Asher says, severely cripples the NOPD’s ability to implement everything from patrol activities to the timeliness of their responses to emergencies. Compounding that, Asher mentioned the added pressure that staffing shortage is placing on detectives working to solve cases and take violent criminals into custody. Listen to the whole conversation including the impact on the average person needing something as simple as an accident report:
