There are some truly disturbing statistics in the Metropolitan Crime Commission’s latest bulletin. Disturbing may not even be a strong enough word to cover it. If something doesn’t change, and fast, the year 2022 is going to be incredibly ugly for New Orleans’ families and businesses. I invited Rafael Goyeneche onto the show this morning to go through the numbers with me.
What’s in the report?
“This is gonna be a downer for your audience, but they need to know this. Homicides are continuing to pick up steam. We've had 110 so far. So when we released this report on Monday, there were 109. We've had one since Monday. So it's up to 110. And so the change from 2021 to 2022 is up 45%. Shootings are down this year relative to last year, but that comes with some caveats. Carjackings are up 17%. Armed robberies are up 26%. Going back to homicides and shootings, we had 121 homicides for the entire year in 2019. And as of today, we're at 110. So the question is not, are we going to exceed 2019’s numbers - we are. We're gonna exceed 2020’s numbers. It's likely that we will surpass the 2021 total possibly by the end of this month. That's bad news,
Related
We’re going to exceed last year’s number in less than half a year?
Yeah. Homicides, we are counting the actual homicide victims. For shootings, carjackings, and our robberies, those are incidents and incidents don't necessarily identify how many shooting victims there were. So in one incident, there may be multiple victims, but it's counted as one incident. So when we say that shootings are down 9% this year in comparison to last year, that is a little misleading because what we have seen this year is incidents involving multiple victims. And I'm not just talking about two - we're talking four, five, six people being shot in one shooting incident. While the incidents are down, the numbers of shooting victims are probably as high or higher than last year.
I think one of the silver linings that we may have in the near future in June is that we're about to start Operation Golden Eagle again, which is when the state police send down a task force to assist and work with the NOPD and proactively policing some of the crime hotspots in the city. And last year, that initiative helped slow down some of the violence that we had experienced prior. That usually is a successful operation because you are applying those strategic assets in high crime areas to drive down and identify some of the people that are responsible for committing the violent crime surges that we're seeing around town.
One of the criminologists at Loyola said that they really believe that this plan is not gonna work, that it needs to be more about jobs, summer programs and things of that nature. I made the observation that a lot of the folks that we're getting our hands on and arresting aren't folks looking for a summer job. These are young kids that have been in the business of stealing other people's property. I don't think we turn the tide with the offer of a summer job. I just don't see that. I mean, after 40 years, I heard these stories over and over and over again, and having interviewed a number of these kids myself. I don't see that. I don't see that at all.
This is unscientific, but I think that anybody that wants a job, particularly, you know, entry level employees like high school kids that may be looking for summer employment - I don't think that there is a shortage of jobs that are available. You know, most businesses are hiring and they're actively advertising for hiring. If anybody wants a job and they can get to work, they can pretty much pick and choose where they're gonna work. So it's not a shortage of jobs. I disagree with whoever stated that, particularly when it comes to violent crime. The people that are committing these violent crimes are not gonna abstain from committing the violent crimes because they have a job. As you pointed out, their job is committing violent felony offenses.