Free Republic

...There were 161 homicides in this city last year, and there have been 18 so far this year, making New Orleans by most measures the nation’s per capita murder capital, given its sharply reduced population. Many of the victims and the suspects are teenagers. About two-thirds of the deaths have gone unsolved: the killers, in many cases, continue to walk the streets and are likely to kill again, the police say. Other cities have plenty of murders. But only in New Orleans has there been the uniquely poisoned set of circumstances that has led to this city’s position at the...

In an unprecedented display of civic outrage over violent crime, as many as 3,000 people marched on City Hall on Thursday, demanding that city leaders stem the tide of violence and calling on ordinary citizens to help make New Orleans safer. Organized in the wake of a string of almost daily murders in the new year, the protest channeled the city's rising anger and fear. "We have come to declare that a city that could not be drowned in waters of a storm will not be drowned in the blood of its citizens," said the Rev. John Raphael Jr., one...

HOUSTON-- The number of murders last year in Houston hit a 12-year high and increased by 13.5 percent over 2005, figures the mayor attributes in part to evacuees from Hurricane Katrina. There were 379 homicides in Houston in 2006, according to the Houston Police Department. That's the most since 1994, when police reported 419 murders. There were 334 homicides in 2005. There were 202 homicides in Houston from January to June, a 28 percent increase over the 158 recorded over the same time period the previous year. Houston Mayor Bill White pointed to Hurricane Katrina evacuees from New Orleans as...