Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry, a Republican gubernatorial candidate, said that New Orleans – the largest city in his state – is “being run like a third world country” this week.
He also said that the city’s police department is underfunded and under-manned during his interview on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” Carlson quipped that he has been to third world countries that are run better.
“The statistics are real,” Landry told Carlson, adding that “these are real people dying in the city of New Orleans.”
Indeed, a Wall Street Journal report published last month found that the city has the highest rate of homicides in the U.S. so far this year at around 41 per 100,000 people. According to the Metropolitan Crime Commission Inc. non-profit organization, the city’s homicide rate has shot up by 141% since 2019.
This summer, WWL host Newell Normand began leading a charge to recall New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell, who has been in office since 2018. Organizers of the recall cited his show in a press conference on the efforts.
Landry said crime problems in New Orleans go even further back, at least to the issuance of a federal consent decree more than a decade ago.
“In May 2010, at the invitation of Mayor Mitchell J.
Landrieu, the United States Department of Justice (DOJ) began investigating an alleged pattern of civil rights violations and other misconduct by the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD),” said information regarding the decree on the New Orleans government website. “On March 16, 2011, the DOJ issued a written report alleging unconstitutional conduct by the NOPD and describing the DOJ’s concerns about various NOPD policies and procedures.”
Landry said that he “called this problem,” with crime in the city when Landrieu was mayor during the Carlson interview. In Landry’s view, the consent decree is one of New Orleans’ biggest problems, and he said other cities with high homicide rates, such as Baltimore, are also under them.
Going forward, Landry is looking to take on the role of Louisiana governor partly because the office holds considerable executive power – enough to bend New Orleans to its will, he told Carlson. He became attorney general in 2016 and has had experience in law enforcement and politics.
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