Its kind of like Detroit, some areas are just fine, others are suicide zones.
There aren’t any truly ‘safe’ areas in N.O. anymore. Before Katrina Lakeview was nice and rarely saw crime. Now it’s riddled with break-in’s, car thefts and robberies. The east is simply no-man’s-land. Metairie is about the only semi-decent area and there are pockets here of ‘ghetto-ization’ since Katrina that are just as bad as in the city. Criminals in cars have access to EVERY area. There is a young, black schoolteacher from California who has been missing almost a month. She was last seen in a popular bar in Lakeview, drove into City Park and vanished.
Locals know its not safe anywhere- its the naive tourists and newcomers who walk around thinking they are in a ‘funky’ scene from ‘Treme’. And the tourists aren’t safe in the Quarter either- despite the concentration of police there. You only hear about the killings- the assaults, beating, robberies, etc are never in the news. Too negative.