Murder decline vanishes in one weekend
New Orleans Politics
4/26/08
The Times-Picayune
HOLD THAT THOUGHT: Fewer murders occurred in New Orleans in early 2008 than in early 2007, New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley trumpeted a week ago, citing a decline of more than 8 percent as evidence that his officers are calming street violence.
But starting the very night that Riley noted the drop, the city’s killers underscored how tenuous such incremental gains can be.
From Friday night through Sunday there were six murders, starting with a 23-year-old man shot as he drove away from his girlfriend’s house on Dufossat Street and concluding just a few blocks away with a 32-year-old man killed on Upperline Street.
On Wednesday, Riley acknowledged that the spurt of slayings had erased the department’s gains. On the day of his news conference, there had been 54 murders this year compared with 59 at the same point last year. By Wednesday, the homicide tally had narrowed to 61 in 2007 versus 60 in 2008.
“We went even,” Riley said while defending his earlier press conference as an opportunity to inform New Orleans residents about progress being made by the department with homicides, drug busts and robbery arrests.
Riley cited as a sign of progress the 110 narcotics search warrants issued by the department in the first quarter of the year, which yielded more than 100 drug arrests. During the earlier press conference, Deputy Chief James Scott said the level of search warrants is a “bit of an increase” for the department.
While the number of murders crept back up to last year’s level in the past week, armed robberies declined, Riley said Wednesday. “We’re putting the right people in jail,” he said.
