NEW ORLEANS — Rose McGowan tends to her garden in the New Orleans’ Desire neighborhood.
Monday, a 12-year-old boy was hit by a bullet when a shootout between two different cars broke out on Benefit Street, not far from McGowan’s home.
The 84-year-old says a lack of police presence is partly to blame for the violence in her community.
“I haven’t seen the police in I don’t know when and I’m right here,” McGowan said.
NOPD Superintendent Shaun Ferguson has another theory.
This week, he told the City Council Criminal Justice Committee normal neighborhood feuds and the drug trade are no longer driving the city’s murders.
“There are real stressors out there, psychological, mental stressors that have pushed this homicide rate above normal,” Ferguson said. “Meaning road rage, meaning stressors such as acquaintance arguments that have escalated to these violent acts.”
Nine people were shot in the city on Monday.
One victim was killed and 8 others injured, including two children and an infant.
That’s on top of ten murders last week.
Criminologist Dr. John Penny at Southern University at New Orleans says Chief Ferguson’s theory has some merit. He said New Orleans is a melting pot of social ills which can trigger mental illness and violent crime.
“Like idleness, unemployment, under-education, under socialized and just underprivileged and inequities,” Dr. Penny said. “There’s just a whole lot of insanity around us right now, of mental health issues that are paralyzing the very sense of normalcy.”
Dr. Penny says trying to live a life without hope is dangerous.
“If you don’t have a normal life then you’re going to go against the grain. That’s what’s going on right now," he said.
Back in Desire, Miss Rose says blaming the uptick in violence in the city on mental stressors is a cop out.
“I know real from that fancy stuff, trying to sugarcoat stuff,” McGowan said. “I’m not going to sugarcoat it because I know all of it ain’t about people being this crazy.”
Chief Ferguson says the number of killings in the city is up by 27 percent over this time last year.
New Orleans police are holding a news conference Wednesday to announce a series of arrests in recent violent crimes in the city.