The Black Informant

First the news…

(usatoday.com) “Crime, that old menace of the old New Orleans, is back, and it’s bedeviling a city trying to recover from Hurricane Katrina. There have been 147 people killed in New Orleans this year, police say, down from 204 by this time in 2005. But the city’s population is about half what it was before Katrina flooded 80% of the city, forcing an almost-complete evacuation.

That means New Orleanians are murdering each other at a rate of 73.5 murders per 100,000 residents. That figure is above that of the nation’s most murderous city — Compton, Calif., whose rate was 67 murders per 100,000 people in 2005, according to the latest FBI statistics.

Because many traditionally violent areas flooded and remain nearly empty, crime has moved to upscale, high-traffic areas such as the Marigny, the French Quarter and Uptown, leaving residents with one more reason to question their decision to remain in the city.”

[...]

The post-Katrina crime wave began in earnest in June, when five teenagers were found shot to death in a sport-utility vehicle. That’s when the state police and the National Guard returned to the city to patrol the city’s flood-ravaged and sparsely populated streets, freeing up local police to concentrate on the more populated areas. They were to remain only through December, but Riley said this week he will ask Gov. Kathleen Blanco to leave them in the city for at least another six months.

Riley estimates that 80% of the criminals that operated in New Orleans before Katrina have returned to the city. But simply policing traditional hotspots doesn’t work anymore, Riley says. Violence in high-traffic areas such as the French Quarter makes residents jittery and draws national attention. (more…)

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I truly believe that there are good people down in N.O. who are tired of this crap that has been going on for decades. Some of the loudest mouths out there that claimed to speak for these people during Katrina are proving once again (through their silence) that they care NOTHING for these people and their city.