NEW ORLEANS — The Christmas day killing of 14-year-old Jamere Alfred is among more than 190 murders in New Orleans this year. 2020 may go down as the year that a virus killed people across the world, but here in New Orleans 2020 also marked a significant surge of people killing and wounding each other. Shevelle Fontenette lost her son to murder in September. He was an aspiring rapper.
“He was at the studio that night or going to the studio. He had a session and got ambushed. Two other kids were with him, so three kids got murdered that night,” Fontenette told us earlier this month.
Fontenette says New Orleans Police managed to arrest two suspects, but she says that won’t bring back her son. Many other families are suffering. According to data compiled by Jeff Asher for the New Orleans City Council, murders in the city are up 61-percent from last year. Non-fatal shootings are up 65-percent and carjackings up a staggering 126-percent.
“Individuals work hard for their properties, their belongings, and to have another individual vandalize their car, burglarize their home and these carjackings? Crime is up across the board,” said Tamara Jackson.
Tamara Jackson is with the victim’s advocacy group Silence is Violence. She believes the pandemic has created a sense of desperation that criminals are capitalizing on.
“For a crime city, and I hate to label New Orleans as such, but we’ve always had a problem with violence. The pandemic has exacerbated that,” said Jackson.
Complicating the crime fighting in New Orleans are the city mandated and pandemic related furloughs on police. Those furloughs are expected to extend through next year. With crime rising, and police staffing and funding falling, Jackson and Fontenette say the community must be more willing to help solve crimes.
“With everybody being hush hush and silent, we do need to reinforce the police officers. I’m praying it does get better,” said Shevelle Fontenette.
“The police can’t fix us. We can’t expect the mayor to fix us. We have to step out on faith and learn how to fix ourselves,” said Tamara Jackson.
Other major cities in America are seeing increases in violence. According to crime analyst Jeff Asher, murders in dozens of U.S. cities are up more than 30- percent. In a year dominated by a pandemic, New Orleans continues to suffer from a plague of violence.
