Yep!
Posted on 04/02/2006 6:35:23 AM PDT by MadIvan
THE wail of police sirens is back and gunfire again punctuates the night. As drug dealers move into flood-damaged houses, alarmed residents say that in the past few weeks they have begun to sense a return to the bad old days before Hurricane Katrina, when crime was an omnipresent straitjacket on life in New Orleans.
In a city that once led the nation in homicides per capita, crime has long been a leading indicator of New Orleans's health and prospects - an unavoidable part of the equation for a walk around the block or a trip to the grocery store.
That diminished greatly after last year's storm, when several hundred thousand people were evacuated. But there are signs that the past may be returning, with a new twist.
Police officials say the landscape of abandoned houses, stretching block after block, is being incorporated into a revived drug trade, with the empty dwellings offering ideal shelter to dealers returning from Houston and Atlanta.
Residents agree, pointing to a boarded-up house or an abandoned-looking shed as a place where they have seen young men congregating.
Capt Timmy Bayard of the New Orleans police, who is in charge of narcotics investigations, said: "Crime's coming back, although it's not as plentiful as it was." His men, searching abandoned houses in the Eighth Ward, have found drug stashes, although, Bayard added, it was like "looking for a needle in a haystack".
The popping sound of gunfire can also be heard at night again in the Central City and St Roch neighbourhoods.
"It's started back up," said the Rev AP Williby, who owns a house in Central City. "Shooting and killing - that's what we had before. It ain't gone nowhere."
Parasol's, a classic bar in the Irish Channel neighbourhood, was held up at midnight recently. And a young man was killed after handing over his wallet in the Faubourg Marigny, a neighbourhood of popular bars and restaurants.
New Orleans' loss is at least Houston's gain. In the Texan city, which reported a sharp rise in killings after Hurricane Katrina evacuees moved in, police officials say they have noticed a decline since the beginning of 2006, compared with a sharp climb in homicides - up 24% - in 2005.
Last autumn multiple killings took place in Houston nearly every weekend, but Sgt Brian Harris of Houston police said the violence had significantly eased now that evacuees were returning home.
New Orleans again appears to be drawing the people who wreaked havoc on its streets before the storm. A local murder suspect wanted in Houston drifted back to the city and was arrested this month in a New Orleans suburb.
In the past, even when there were lulls in crime, many residents felt as if they were living in a city under siege. Perception became part of the reality, fuelling an exodus of whites and blacks to the suburbs or out of the state.
But crime is not yet back to pre-storm levels. With the city's population reduced by at least three-fifths, statistics indicate that crime is down by up to 70% overall.
There have been 16 killings this year, compared with more than 60 for the same period last year, but this still works out to an annualised rate of 32 killings per 100,000 people, ahead of Cleveland and Chicago.
A sense of vulnerability, particularly in poorer neighbourhoods, is returning. It may have no more basis than the sight of young men hanging about, but it is there nonetheless.
"They're beginning to surface again," said Alfred Barrow, a newspaper deliverer, painting his porch on an empty-looking block at Third and Magnolia in Center City. "I'm out here throwing papers at 3am and I see them. What reason is there for them to be out there?"
The anxiety is not helped by the Police Department's struggle to return to normal. At about 1,400 officers, it is not far from its strength of just under 1,600 before Hurricane Katrina. But it is operating out of trailers, much of its data-gathering capability is impaired because of storm damage and about 80% of officers lost their homes in the storm.
But there are a few hopeful signs as well. Before, New Orleans was a city virtually awash with guns. The contractor who cleaned up the city's storm drains after Katrina said his crews had recovered at least a dozen firearms.
But guns are not now as prevalent, police say, and officers are enjoying a post-hurricane level of co-operation from citizens who had traditionally mistrusted New Orleans law enforcement.
For years, the police had complained that witnesses and residents refused to help, fearing retribution from gangs and drug dealers. Killings in broad daylight on busy blocks produced few or no witnesses.
Capt John Bryson, who commands the Sixth District in Central City, a high-crime area, said: "It's incredible. People you normally wouldn't believe would want an association with the police department call us up.
"We have control," he added. "We have gained this ground."
Barrow, the newspaper deliverer, remains to be convinced. "It don't take much to improve what it was," he said, "because it was probably the most vicious killing scene in the US."
The Good Number of New Orleans that got the message didn't go back.
Last autumn multiple killings took place in Houston nearly every weekend, but Sgt Brian Harris of Houston police said the violence had significantly eased now that evacuees were returning home.
New Orleans again appears to be drawing the people who wreaked havoc on its streets before the storm
I guess the crime hype wasnt overblown. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
Wonder how long before the good citizens of New Orleans start taking out the trash with guns of their own.
The solution to high crime rates is firearms in the hands of capable, upstanding, law abiding citizens.
For years, the police had complained that witnesses and residents refused to help, fearing retribution from gangs and drug dealers. Killings in broad daylight on busy blocks produced few or no witnesses.
Adding to that, in the old days, you simply didn't do anything that would put a brotha in jail. Blacks would support their own in most cases, no matter how guilty the party involved was, much like we see in the Cynthia McKinney case. Now it looks like blacks want a new start and aren't taking the crap any more! Good for them...
We sent them millions.
I thought this article was referring to the Rev's Jackson and Sharpton doing their racist bit in the Big Easy this week................
I met a black man at a gym we go to who said he would never go back to NO - he now has a home and a job here in AZ. said he had thrown off the shackles of welfare forever.
Yep!
The most valuable police tools are in such places, the wrecking ball and the bulldozer.
Hey, it's hard out there for a pimp!
"The solution to high crime rates is firearms in the hands of capable, upstanding, law abiding citizens."
Very true, but most of those kinds of people left the Chocolate City long ago.
Sadly, the only thing that could possibly change Chocolatetown is for it to be blasted and flooded again by Hurricane X proving once and for all that those crime ridden(and flood prone) areas like the 9th Ward should never be rebuilt. Bulldozing those areas is the only way the criminals won't return.
But since there are lots and lots of good people(and some of my family) in the surrounding areas, I can't rightfully wish for that.
Now, six weeks without a fix, THAT's a disaster. Just playin' catch-up, I guess.
"New Orleans was a chocolate city before Katrina and...this city will be chocolate at the end of the day."
Ray Nagin
And our money is being poured into NO to rebuild this playground for criminals.
New Orleans is more chocolaty today. This was a move by Nagin, Jackson, et al to lure voters back. The pushers are a leading indicator foe Democrat voters returning.
Check with FEMA and all those debit cards
"And a young man was killed after handing over his wallet in the Faubourg Marigny, a neighbourhood of popular bars and restaurants."
So much for not resisting.
About time the drug dealers got the hell out of Texas. I guess they don't want to get shot.
In Texas, we have guns and aren't afraid to use them.
I guess the dealers accept the FEMA debit cards.
Well...
So much for Mayor Nagin's boast that
NO is a crime free, drug free city.
God must hate NO.
First the hurricane, then Al and Jesse, and then all the other criminals returned.
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