New Orleans overtakes St. Louis to become the murder capital of America

New Orleans has overtaken St. Louis as the US homicide capital in the first half of this year, as the city grapples with the lowest-ranking police personnel in modern history amid a crisis in officer morale.

In the first six months of 2022, New Orleans registered 41 homicides per 100,000 residents, a higher homicide rate than any other U.S. city, according to a report. Wall Street Journal analysis of Major Cities Chiefs Association data.

By comparison, the first-half homicide rate per 100,000 was 11.5 in Chicago, 4.8 in Los Angeles, and 2.4 in New York City.

In New Orleans, the homicide rate is up 141 percent compared to 2019, while shootings are up 100 percent, car thefts are up 210 percent and armed robbery is up 25 percent, according to city officials. Metropolitan Crime Commission.

In New Orleans, the homicide rate is up 141 percent from 2019, while shootings are up 100 percent, car thefts are up 210 percent and armed robbery is up 25 percent.

Members of the New Orleans Police Department investigate a carjacking scene on N. Pierce St. that resulted in the death of an elderly woman in New Orleans in March

A separate analysis of the Rochester Institute of Technology named St. Louis the US homicide capital last year, with a full-year homicide rate of 61 per 100,000.

New Orleans could easily top that if the current 2022 trend holds, with a full-year homicide rate of 82, compared to the city’s second-placed 56 last year.

Since the FBI has not released a nationwide Unified Crime Report since reporting year 2019, comparing homicide rates across cities has sometimes become tricky.

However, available sources indicate that violent crime rates have risen in many cities across the country, a surge following psychological and financial stress from the pandemic and police cuts in response to Black Lives Matter protests.

In fact, in New Orleans, the police budget has increased significantly in 2022, from $178 million in 2021 to $215 million.

It’s about $570 per capita, near the city that spends the most per capita on policing, New York, where spending on the massive police station is about $653 per capita.

Investigators search the crime scene of a shooting at Xavier University in New Orleans in May

Mayor LaToya Cantrell blames a decade-old pact with the Justice Department that she says made it difficult to recruit new police officers by putting them under a federal microscope

Hoping to bolster the meager precinct, New Orleans officials last week announced an $80 million three-year plan that offers pay increases for all officers, free health care and $30,000 in incentives for new hires.

Some in New Orleans have blamed Mayor LaToya Cantrell, a Democrat who was reelected last year, for rising crime rates.

But Cantrell blames a decade-old pact with the Justice Department that she says has made it difficult to recruit new police officers by putting their actions under a microscope.

New Orleans is facing a police personnel crisis, with the department topping 1,000 officers for the first time in modern history, up from more than 1,300 several years ago.

The city loses about 100 officers a year through retirement and layoffs, about 10 percent of its current number of 989, city council chair Helena Moreno said in July.

“You can’t run a department made for about 1,400 officers if there are fewer than a thousand,” Moreno said at a city council meeting. WWL TV.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson talks to reporters outside the federal courthouse in New Orleans last month after the city petitioned to end a decade-old consent decree granting federal oversight to its police department.

The staffing crisis has been going on for a long time, dating back to a decade, when then-mayor Mitch Landrieu imposed a two-year hiring freeze.

Landrieu, who took office in 2010, invited a Justice Department investigation into the city’s police station after deadly police shootings of civilians following Hurricane Katrina re-examined the scandal-ridden department.

It led to a DOJ consent decree that was approved by a federal judge in January 2013, placing the city’s police force under federal oversight.

The agreement will remain in effect after nearly a decade, and Cantrell has said the bureaucratic demands it imposes have increased workload and contributed to the decline in morale and manpower.

But a federal judge last month seemed skeptical of the city’s request to end the agreement during a status hearing.

Captain Michael Glasser, chief of the New Orleans Police Association, said other factors are more damaging to ordinary officers’ morale.

He called an overzealous “public integrity office” – the police’s internal affairs office that sometimes accused the police union of using false information against officers.