NEW ORLEANS — Broken glass is still on Annunciation Street in Uptown after more people woke up victims of continued car break-ins across New Orleans.
“For two blocks, windows smashed primarily in trucks on the driver side,” said Venus Masakowski.
Masakowski noticed the six or seven smashed windows Monday morning while walking her dog.
“It’s 6:30 in the morning, so nobody was up. There was just glass all over the street,” said Masakowski.
She says personal items and belonging were scattered as well.
“I was scooping up business papers, lipsticks, sunglasses and throwing them back into broken windows,” said Masakowski.
She’s now trying to figure out who two sets of keys belong to.
“This is extremely frustrating, and I wish that I could just snap my fingers and make it go away,” said New Orleans Councilman Jay Banks.
Banks’ district makes up a large part of Uptown. Banks says NOPD is working on how to best put a stop it, it just hasn’t’ happened yet. Banks has been a victim three times.
“Both personal cars and the city car were burglarized in front of my door, so trust me I feel the pain along with the citizens that have experienced this,” said Banks.
In Treme, car windows were smashed outside of The Mother in Law Lounge on Claiborne Avenue, prompting the business to post a warning on facebook.
Since Sunday, the post notes 14 vehicles had windows busted.
“We stay on this because we get these calls way too often,” said Banks.
According to the city council’s crime dashboard, as of Sunday there were 5,141 reported vehicle burglaries. Last year there were 6,268. The New Orleans Police Department released a statement
Monday afternoon saying the department understands the frustration and is working tirelessly to investigate and bring offenders to justice.
Banks says a big concern is folks leaving weapons in their car, which criminals are on the lookout for.
“Nobody is going to steal a gun just to do something nice with it. If anybody steals a gun, they’re probably going to do something bad with it and as frustrating as a break-in is, a murder or a shooting is even worse,” said Banks.
“We can’t continue to live like this,” said Masakowski.
Masakowski says these continued property crimes are taking a toll on folks.
“I don’t want to live in an area where people stuff is thrown all over the street, what if it was our stuff,” said Masakowski.
