NEW ORLEANS — Organizations and former New Orleans Mayor Marc Morial say there are solutions to help curb the city's crime problem, solutions they say can be put into effect immediately.
New Orleans is being labeled the murder capital of the nation.
According to the New Orleans Police Department major crime log, from 7 a.m. on Saturday to 7 a.m. on Monday there were six shootings, two robberies, two stabbings, three rapes, one home invasion, one murder, and one carjacking.
Mike Glasser from the Police Association of New Orleans said an officer is leaving the department every 47 hours.
“Unless we stop the attrition we’re still going to lose people,” he said. “To be ending the attrition, hiring people, vetting people and then keeping them after they are hired.”
About every 30 hours there’s a homicide in New Orleans. He said the solution is beefing numbers and retaining those numbers, along with addressing internal promotional issues and lifting the consent decree.
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“Three, four, five months from now, we’re going to be down 40-50 police officers, so anything we save now, will be gone by then if we don’t fix the problem,” Glasser said.
Andreanecia Morris from HousingNOLA says curbing crime starts with providing people better options and critical services like affordable housing.
“We have a 20% vacancy rate with occupiable homes and apartments,” Morris said. "Why aren’t we affirmatively putting people first by putting housing first? That’s what we can do that will work to try and change the tide.”
Especially for children. She said if they don’t have a roof over their head, they have no hope.
“All of this is a part of the rocky foundation that puts a kid on the path that has them picking up the gun and doing the unimaginable,” Morris said.
Former Mayor Marc Morial led the charge when the city cut the murder numbers in half in the 90s.
“It was comprehensive, it was aggressive, it was unapologetic but it was also balanced,” Morial said. “You need a philosophy in community policing and you need investments in community, you have to invest in young people.”
He said the plan then was comprehensive.
“Policing alone is not enough, you have to invest in young people, you have to invest in the kind of things that create opportunity and hope,” Morial said.
20 years after his reign came to an end, he said to see results it needs to be a community-wide effort.