By: Pat Austin
SHREVEPORT – A recent article in The Wall Street Journal breaks the oh-so-shocking news that New Orleans is now the Murder Capital of America.
I’m tempted to blame this distinction on decades of poor management and Democrat mayors, but an article in RedState breaks it down further:
While it’s tempting to blame the city’s crime woes on “defund the police,” in this case, it’s more complicated than that. Hurricane Katrina did enormous damage to the city’s infrastructure, causing major instability and violence. In response, then-Mayor Mitch Landrieu called for a two-year police department hiring freeze, which the city has still not fully recovered from.
But remember, Hurricane Katrina also famously “flushed out” hundreds of …let’s say…undesirable, criminally inclined residents to other cities. Call it a diaspora of criminals if you like.
Yet this is no doubt that New Orleans is an extremely dangerous place to be these days, especially for tourists who don’t always know the right and wrong parts of town to visit.
According to the WSJ:
In New Orleans, city officials and residents point to an overwhelmed police department as a major factor. The city has about 50% to 60% of the officers it needs to offer adequate protection for residents, estimated Ronal Serpas, who was the city’s police superintendent from 2010 to 2014 and is now a criminal justice professor at Loyola University New Orleans.
This is the trend all across the country; many cities are seeing a rise in violent crime. Here in Shreveport, we see it too. It is easier to find the problem in Shreveport: it is a combination of factors but primary among them is our Soros-elected District Attorney who sets accused murders free and refuses to lock up known criminals. We also have an extremely ineffective young, Democrat mayor with his eyes on bigger things rather than the challenge at his feet.
Recently in one of our neighborhood Facebook groups, someone posted pictures of a once lovely walking trail in the city that is now overgrown with weeds, deteriorating, and suffering crippling neglect. In some places you can’t even see there is a paved trail at all; you can only see what looks like an empty overgrown field.
I see this as an analogy for the city and for New Orleans, too. All the positive things are covered by the negative; neglect and lack of care are evident at every turn. When you drive into Shreveport from any direction it looks like a town nobody cares about and I know this is the case is a lot of places.
It is past time for us to start caring and start making things better for all of us. From elections to local grassroots volunteer work and service, we’ve got to turn this around.
New Orleans is still a great city and Shreveport still can turn the tide, but that window is closing very fast. New Orleans is filled with history and culture; that city will survive. But what about all the others across the nation? When are we going to stop the festering decline and neglect in our cities?
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