Inside America's murder capital: How police lost control of a city | Times Documentaries

there's a new murder capital of the United States New Orleans now leads the nation in murders per capita there have been more than 200 homicides so far this year in The Big Easy yes murder capital of the United States right here New Orleans he said he's in the United States have seen a dramatic rise in their home surgery since 2020. some people feel it's as a result of the pandemic and ensuing lockdown While others believe movements to reform the police have led to a collapse of morale and a reduction in officer numbers here in New Orleans the homicide rate is the highest in the country how did it get this week and what can be done to fix it [Music] schwanda rails left her 18 year old daughter at home with the girl's boyfriend on May the 7th not knowing it was the last time she would see her alive her daughter died of a gunshot wound later that day it's never nothing like mother and daughter you know what I'm saying when like when it happened I see other little girls remind me so much of how slim she was and I just like oh walk over because I'm like my daughter supposed to be here with me she's supposed to be like that's all I wanted was a daughter and not like that's gone you know that's something I always wanted I had two boys my legs when I'm like I wanted a girl and I got that girl and now someone took hoe it's like is is all you know it's just I wish I could get more on it but I know she don't want me to crash you don't want me to be upset she just want to live where did the homicide happen it happened here [Music] um like I said they didn't didn't let me see but when I came like I said it feel like and I just had things was I feel like she was on this side they never tell me where it but when you get you when you know your house you feel you know what things so I feel like she was on this side of the meeting and he was supposed to be on that side of the beat so what is his story of what happened I never spoke with him the detective told me that he said he was playing with the gun and the gun went off and when he looked then he noticed he was she was hit then he dropped the gun on the beat and then what you call him the dead told me he said he was throwing a gun in the hell that don't sound I mean it's just so many conflicts of the story it's just so I was trying to figure out and asked him how did they come up with they came up with so they said that your daughter's boyfriend had a gun and it went off yeah yes when he claimed yes yeah I feel if you it was an accident why did you leave her you know I know you could have been in shock but you you could have went and got help because I feel like if I accidentally did something I don't care how much scared I am I'm going to get help I'm gonna go get help I'm not gonna I say I love you and I will never harm you and it was an accident if you loved her you want another love her the way you loved her so that let me know you didn't have no kind of concerned he wasn't eating cow [Music] s [Music] oh we're in the 3000 block of toledano Street which is in the Broadmoor area of the city okay can you tell me what's happened here uh we had a call earlier tonight a report of shots fired our officers responded to the scene and located a adult male who was starting to have to sing the gunshot wound and was declared deceased on scene by emergency medical technicians uh the institution is being rescued as a homicide unfortunately this is you know one more way too many we've had we have agree we have a great homicide unit a very overworked homicide unit we're in the sixth district of the city right now the series and sixth district and if you had a lot of Home stays in this area this year uh we've had a few and now I can't say for a lot for sure we had a few I mean it's basically been happening all over the city there's no no real area of the city is you know has not had something you know so it's that's the sad part it's just not really you know kept them in one specific area we've had things all over the city so we just just try to respond as best we can investigate these and get them solved and build a strong case for our district attorney to bring to court you know once we get to get somebody arrested and charged you know if we have enough evidence to have them prosecuted so we do so let me see it's it's a lot of work for a very overworked and it's the over stressed department and you know we're very it's the Manpower issues have been you know yeah they're well documented yes that's what it is I mean you have to work at what we have I think we're doing a great a job as we could do with the situation we're in right now yeah it's going to be tough though when they're coming you're sticking fast as they are right it can be yeah it can be but I said we have a very good group of people in this department and I think very smart you know very knowledgeable of the city and are doing their best to solve these cases as fast as they can yeah just 36 hours later there was a second homicide this one in the audios area of the city on the south side of the Mississippi River how are you it has to be expected for what's going on we're here so what's happening uh we had a homicide uh happened about I guess our initial calls about six o'clock tonight um male victim was uh found in a little grassy area a little bit off the way from here toward the intersection uh he had multiple gunshot wounds and uh he was transported to the hospital via EMS and it was declared deceased at the hospital so it became a homicide at that point so yeah so we're out here and we're investigating the scene and we actually just had a one of our K-9 units arrive to do uh to bring one of the dogs out to search for any ballistics evidence gun bullet casings um you know actual bullets um anything we can find that could help the case so we had one on Friday didn't have one on Saturday not on Saturday and then one today yes only one today so far so yeah yesterday we actually didn't have any yesterday which was great so is that unusual for a Saturday night at the moment um I mean I wouldn't necessarily say it's unusual I mean we you know some days we may go a few days without having one and it's amazing we have a lot it just kind of depends but the numbers being the way they are any day we don't have one it's a good day foreign deaths there are some crimes that retain the power to shock those who witness the deadly carjacking of 73 year old Linda Fricke are still haunted by what they saw carjackings have been on the rise in cities Across America but this is one of the most shocking police say a 73-year-old grandmother was attacked in her car by four teens and ended up being dragged to her death it was March 21st and I was making an iced coffee here so I was just grabbing a glass and and filling it with some ice and reaching for the cold brew and um and then I just heard this loud noise and it was and it just it sounded like oh I knew it was it was coming from somewhere on this corner um I Heard voices I heard um something it was like a scream but it didn't sound like a scream not not a it was just loud and so I'm running I start running across the the room here and I'm going out the front door and I'm stopping here for a second and I start looking because this is where the noise is to my writing and I see this car and I see this um I see this it's a body I was like this isn't real and um and then it starts like getting closer to me and so I run down these stairs and I'm running all the way to the end and when I reached here I'm just looking at this car that's steadily going in front of me and I'm continuously and I'm screaming no and I'm running and I'm stop and I stop here it's coming so it slows down the car slows down and I can steer I could still hear up to this point I now realize it was a woman and she's saying please let me go and I it looked like she was clutching a purse I swear it was like she had her arm so close to her her side and she was just bouncing up and down against the cement and then you can hear that dragging with her skin and and I literally from there to here I can see like her clothes are peeling off of her and and and I'm I'm just like I want to catch the car because it's slowing down in front of me and Mark and I Mark put lotus in the house and we're running and we just continue to run after the car and I'm looking because from this angle you can see that it's making the Curve it's making this corner to go into the Rouses through the Rouses parking lot Rouses being the supermarket that's here and when we got to the top here so we cross all the way over onto the sidewalk and Miss Linda which now I know her name is her head is sort of a meshed in this this metal these metal lines here there are steel and the the lines obviously when they tried to cut through it finally cut her loose because it severed her arm and I just remember when I reached this point she was just laying face up in her and her arm was was next to her and her other arm I remember looking over and there's an arm over there it's like two feet from her three feet maybe and I just remember thinking where is the blood I just like felt like I was having an out-of-body experience and just looking down at her and I'm thinking she's naked I have to cover her up I remember thinking I was seeing her as as I would my mom or or it was just so undignified for her to be just laying here in the middle of the sidewalk naked after everything she had just been through so I ran back home and I got a sheet and I came across here and then there's even more people starting to gather and and they let me cover her up she was supposed to be retired and she was just finishing up a couple more um couple more days because she was helping somebody out I believe and uh so she shouldn't have really even been here New Orleans has long been known as a violent city with a high number of homicides so I wanted to find out more about the cultural reasons behind this reputation I drove an hour or so to the state capitol Baton Rouge to meet with Dr Edward shahadi he has spent years studying the sociological drivers of homicide in high crime areas New Orleans has always been in the top five top ten murder cities in America and it's got a very high homicide rate and always has for as long as I can remember I think as long as we've measured these numbers um and it's traced back to the fact that in Louisiana I mean here we are in in Louisiana this is uh very high poverty very low you know lower education and then on top of all of that on top of those socio-economic pressures that we know increase homicide there's the culture and in the South there's something called the southern subculture of violence and that is a subculture within America it's not all over America it's mainly in the south where um there's slightly more social approval to deal with things in a violent manner especially if things are taken more personally as an affront you said something to me now I need to get back at you I can't let that go because I would look weak and so you add all those things together the poverty lower rates of Education the lack of services High rates of incarceration all of that plus the southern subculture of violence and you end up with cities like New Orleans that have very high homicide rates and it's no coincidence that Louisiana has the three cities that are among the most violent in America New Orleans Baton Rouge and Shreveport this homicide rise that we're seeing not just in New Orleans but all across the United States is driven by the pandemic one of the mothers of all criminological theories which is called social disorganization Theory started back in the 1920s and it was kind of the transformative the Big Bang of criminology itself and it says that when things change very quickly when you get a disruption crime goes up because you and I now are disrupted we don't have interconnections anymore you and I can't work together to lower homicide rates in the streets it happened in Baghdad when crime rates Rose after the U.S Invasion it happened in New Orleans after Katrina the Hurricane Katrina it happened in Baton Rouge when a hundred thousand people were rendered homeless after a flood crime rates went up and it's happening now Nationwide with this pandemic and that's what's happened and so during a pandemic people Retreat into their homes as you and I did we stayed at home and we didn't Engage The Streets anymore well that leaves the streets free now for young men especially young men who are not attached to anything to wander around and get into problems and to get into fights and conflicts and so on and that's what happened Ron serpas was the superintendent of the nopd from 2010 until 2015. a period when the city was still struggling five years after Hurricane Katrina in your last year as Chief here in New Orleans in 2014 there were 156 homicides in that year and now in 2022 even at the only at the end of June of this year so six months of the year there's already been 145. what's happened in the city to raise that homicide rate so high there's movements of people through time who are going to choose ultimate acts of violence against one another and the police and the criminal justice system needs to be as predictive about that as they possibly can and then Focus their time and resources on those people and in the very predictable places where they're going to do these things that's a scientifically proven method if you will of reducing violent crime associated with guns takes a lot of people though and what's happened here in New Orleans in the last several years is the staffing has dropped the ability to fund those units with people and resources has been eliminated in fact they've been cut out and that type of criminal Behavior pays a lot of attention to the police too and if they see that the police aren't engaging them in that anyway anymore they they get a little emboldened by it in 2013 we had indicted more than 10 groups and gangs with more than 100 defendants many of them looking at life sentences that's a treatment effect that went into the community of those types of people and they said we need to slow down a minute here because this is getting out of control for us and and I don't make light of it but you've got to be like that focused and if you can't be you start to see these escalations of uh conflicts with people using guns there's a whole body of knowledge of what we don't know about why they choose to kill each other so randomly over things but it happens we can do better I know we can we've done it here in New Orleans two or three times already we've done it in other cities it's just it takes resources of people takes resources of funding it takes collaboration of the criminal justice Partners or probation parole Corrections the prosecutors it takes the citizens willing to see that this small number of people are holding them all hostage it can work but you just can't do it in a condition in New Orleans right now with the Staffing equations that they have it's just it's just not going to work in 2011 the nopd had 1 349 officers by 2021 this was down to just over a thousand it is currently around 900 with one officer leaving every 36 hours only 33 new officers were recruited in 2021. one of the key issues in New Orleans like many cities in America is there's been a political expediency in the purposes of demonizing these young men and women there are going to be errors in life and they're going to be errors that are preventable that we should do everything we can do and there's going to be errors that occur that we're not preventable and there's been a political win through New Orleans and many American cities where there's no tolerance for an era it had to all be illicit and that vilification of police officers is um it's damaging to anybody to go to work every day and realize that that the political environment assumes that you're Criminal assumes that you're murderous assumes that you can't be repaired and that's going to drive morale down and Leadership is about being where sometimes you're not going to say what people want to hear but you're going to say what you know is going to make a difference and we've had too much of the same what we think people want to hear versus we know is going to make a difference right after 9-1-1 the police were very popular it didn't take too long for that to change again and we're probably at one of the most lowest points we've been in nationally however that trend is starting to change I think as crime has escalated in most of major American cities uh people have decided that maybe supporting the police isn't such a bad idea after all and that while there were some changes that perhaps needed to be made we didn't have to abandon the entire process and I think that's what's happening now is we're starting we're going to see a bit of a Resurgence back into the profession and I think people will appreciate the police a little bit more and that will help nationally now locally that's another story we've been losing officers to local departments all around us tells you that people aren't leaving policing they're leaving policing here and that's the problem so why are they leaving here to go seven miles to the north and seven miles to the East and seven miles to the west but they won't stay here we should have a dozen On Any Given shift at least at least 8 9 10 if not a dozen but we often have two or three if we have four if we have four that's a good day for a particular District yeah that would be a good day if they have four they should have at least twice that maybe three times that to be truly effective so we don't have anywhere near what we should have if something happens it may take 10 minutes for somebody else to get there and a lot happens in 10 minutes you know everything is very frequently over in 10 minutes so basically you don't have backup and you don't have support this is a violent environment like we have a murder rate 12 times that of New York and the highest in the country which means the chances of getting involved in a deadly forced situation are are good and you have nobody there to back you up you have three officers working in a district and each one is on a call in a different place you don't have any backup you don't have any support and that's another reason why cops are leaving is because they don't want to work in that environment I can't say I blame them in a city with so many homicides and so few police what happens to the mountain of evidence that each killing generates it ends up here in an unassuming building under an overpass in the city and so you are open 24 hours a day seven days a week yeah we're open 24 hours a day seven days a week all year every year um you know we uh we maintain this this building regardless of what happens so when hurricane I'd hit it was manned 24 7 365 days a year based on the niche what we do we always have Personnel here is always secured um we'll go this way okay so what we're looking at all right so this is one of two rooms that we have where we house uh everything all the evidence associated with homicides that occurred in the City of New Orleans and some of these bags you can see those house more than one piece of evidence a lot of times so you can see there's there's envelopes and things like that so we do have a lot of items all of these go back to Hurricane Katrina uh that's when we were in this facility uh homicide is unique in the sense that all evidence associated with them it's kept indefinitely so we store it until we don't have to store it anymore it's a long long time this will be here long after you and I have passed where are we going now this is the Firearms room uh it's one of two rooms that we have and I'll explain to you what you see when we get inside okay so you can see there's a bunch of different boxes in this room we've got a bunch of different shelving so every box you see here is a handgun these larger boxes you see up here and the larger boxes you see back here on the wall those are all long guns that could be a rifle a shotgun um anything it runs the gamut or what we have as you can see we have a fa is for firearms G is a location so it's something as simple as that now I say simple you look at what we have here this is one of two rooms so it's simple in the sense that we know where things are sometimes you still have to do a little looking though and what are the kind of most common guns that you um recover so the majority of what we have as you can see we have a lot more handguns uh than we do long guns but you know uh Louisiana is a hunting state so we do get a lot of hunting rifles and things like that so you can see some of these go back to 2007 like I said and uh possibly 2005 if you want to make your Trek back here we can squeeze through a lot of this again in these boxes these this is all ballistic evidence that we have stored the older stuff we keep it here um and you can get an idea of the sheer enormity of what we deal with well this is incredible yeah so you can see we have a lot of long guns in here we have a lot of handguns in here um and these are all guns that have been recovered in the City of New Orleans these are all guns that were covered in the City of New Orleans yes yeah oh is this a semi-automatic rifle yes that's an ak-47. you can see that the stock has been sawed off on it oh yeah we get a lot of different stuff we really truly do what about this um that is it looks like an AR-15 an extremely old AR-15 and it's completely rusted shut and you see the same thing with a lot of the hand all the handguns they're all completely rusted and that did not happen here that was brought in that way so would you take a guess at how many guns we're looking at here probably about 10 000 just right here I mean you can see we got them piled and pulling each other and at some point these will be destroyed get you all the way to the back so you can see the scope of it all so one of the main things that the police department houses here is DNA right so there's two types that we have we have sexual assault kits that have to be kept cold they're kept inside of these refrigerators and then we have DNA swabs that are taken uh it could be something is simply the swabbing the steering wheel of a stolen car that was used in a robbery or a homicide so you can see how much of it we do have and we have one officer that's responsible for all of them so are these old samples that have been processed no the majority of these have not been processed yet okay and how far back do these schools um I can't speak so some of these go back as early as 2010 um and even further back to Katrina in 2005. with that being said the sexual assault kits are tested uh through LSP Louisiana State Police crime lab we're on the schedule to get those tested so I can't give you definitive answer how many we don't have tested in August of 2022 the nopd admitted it has over 70 000 DNA samples stored here that have yet to be tested it is not just in the testing of DNA samples that there are problems in 2020 a civilian working at the police crime lab began voicing concerns about how evidence was being processed he complained that the lab was using outdated reference samples for drugs and not testing samples of marijuana properly when these issues were ignored his health began to suffer and so he told the nopd he needed some time off to get some help I inform my sergeant that I was not going to work I told him that I wanted to take time off I I don't really care if we got paid for it I just said unpaid time off and um I don't even know how long I sold him probably a week or two and uh he kept trying to get me to come to the crime lab to have a meeting with the police I didn't want to do that and you know if they wanted to try to fire me I guess they could have tried to fire me but what they did to me was not was not right next thing I know is I hear Keys jingling I go to open the door and they're about to make the apartment assistant manager open the door I actually don't want to talk all right well you need to talk to me you have to at this one foreign next thing I know the guy sticks his foot in the door and then he says and we're coming in this is a wellness check and then I said and you're coming in huh like these are all armed cops on my underwear you know like I feel like if I would have slammed the door on him or something then they would have tried to like bust through and like do something to me so he walks through the other cop follows him foreign supervisor and used to be a cop as well and like they just let themselves in my apartment and he's like they can't do that it's against the phone I I was I was scared because I know I knew my rights were being violated and the guy on the phone's telling me my rights are being violated so but it's not easy when you're in that situation you've got three people in uniform telling you my my kids half naked Center here you know and he's had a lot of issues since that like for months he would hide under my desk and enter the door knock and stuff not gonna knock on the door you know or uh hide under the table or just running the whole way you know it was frightening for all of us pib is the public Integrity Bureau which is the nopd's version of internal affairs it is tasked with ensuring officers are following the rules and so then when you came outside on the body cam we see the lieutenant saying that you've got to go to pib and what what were you thinking when she said that because obviously their first um explanation for being here was it was wellness check and now suddenly it's become you've got to come with us to pib right I I definitely believe that uh pib and the officers here use that as a precursor to take me to to pib the wellness check was just a farce um I think they were all in it together I don't think it was just the individual officers at this point we're just concerned about your well-being from from under arrest without you are not on the rest at all I just got off the phone with him tib said that you need to come to their office and then she calls pib again and the first thing you hear from a guy is clock him in and he's been ordered to be put on the clock clock him and bring him he's going to take the drug test he's gonna put him on the clock okay all right so so cool you've been all about people that you're now on the clock you're being paid you've been in order to come and take a drug test and a urinalysis blood and alcohol reality test aprb you can't clock someone else that will you know it's called forced labor it's also against the law you know so like they just they just broke so many laws you know they isn't everyone not just the officers here they took out to the car um and when you get to the car they decided they're gonna stare at you they uh patted me down first me whatever you want to call it um and they told me that they had to do it to put me in the back of the police car and it made me feel like I was a criminal basically I do how you doing today sir I knew it was my right secretary's test and they want to let me go he said you can't leave until you take the test and not until I said well you're not letting me leave uh you're telling me I'm a city employee you already took me against my will this doesn't seem right so you know I guess the only way you're gonna let me go is if I resign and and after I said that he's like you're resigning and I said well if you're not gonna let me leave then I resign and he said okay put he resigned on the paperwork and then then they took me to the interview room this wasn't on the body camera but this is what happened I I had the sneaking suspicion and uh that they were trying to set me up for something that they were trying to uh that they were going to doctor the test you know it was either forcing to resign or doctor the test that's that's my suspicion at that point and I I could not trust any of these officers the officers in the interview room you know the sergeant from pib he brings a resignation letter back to me and he goes did anyone force you to sign this resignation letter of course nobody forced me to sign it I signed it but I was forced to go there so it would have never happened if I would not have gone there you know um I just don't understand how that happened and how all those people haven't been I don't know it nothing nothing's really happened to them I think most of them nothing ever happened to them Carl failed a federal complaint over what happened to him and it is still to be decided in court but it is not just in the crime lab where it appears the nopd is not addressing serious issues a local Professor has been investigating timesheet fraud within the department an issue he says is widespread and has been going on for years nice to meet you yeah nice to meet in person yeah yeah now standard week is 43 hours it's 43 hours give or take a few minutes and most officers that's what they work all right so when you look at the average officer they work a 43 hour week which is a full work week and a demanding job right you're going into high stress situations and so what is it that you're seeing in terms of officers working more than that 43 hours a week I've seen officers that are recording 100 110 120 hours in a week in a week but on the rules against that so there are there are but it's clear from when I started looking at it they were unenforced and well perhaps we could have a look at some of the um specific examples sure this is one of the officers that I was talking about just this and probably uh long hours so when you start to look at days what you see is there was two different payroll systems and you have to take both of them and look at them to figure out how many total days so just in an OPD time he worked 21 hours the problem is during that same day he also worked at detail and what you see in the red here is where he's claiming to work both at the nopd and at a detail and you can see just lots of red now that's one of the ways to get to more than 24 hours in a day right and this officer this was frequent so you can imagine how a mistake could occur and occasional mistakes could occur I have no doubt about it there's two different systems they don't communicate and there's a human involved the problem is that the average officer is working a 40 hour plus week 43 hours this just doesn't happen and when I look at their records it just never happens here's another example a 15-hour day a 17-hour day a 19-hour day a 22 hour day and a 20-hour day this is the same officer during this one two three four five day period managed to work 110 hours in a five-day period and the longest break in that 110 hours was a four hour break if we look at his pay breakdown it's got um say for example 2021 last year base pay of seventy three thousand dollars his nopdp actually came at 147 000 so he's doubled his pay yes and overtime I'm assuming yeah and then his detail pay is an extra 36 000 that's right so that brings him a hundred eighty three thousand dollars for the year on a base pay of seventy three thousand dollars yeah so just as a comparison who what rank within the nopd would be getting 200 000 a year as a base pay no one no one even the chief of police doesn't get that chief of police if I remember correctly is in the 170 range okay and he is the chief of police so these salaries right here exceed the chief of police and the mayor's pay and has anyone ever um forced to give the money back I have yet to see an example man that's really that's a good question I've yet to see an example where that's happened where they have received a suspension for a day or two or three I have yet to see now it may have happened because I don't have all the records and I but I've yet to see an example where that's happened if this continues to be ignored can the nopd ever recover control of the city most honors most officers in EOP are honest most are trying to do the right thing and unfortunately there is this group that is benefiting at the expense of you I and other officers and it's discouraging and if we keep hemorrhaging good officers what it leaves behind are the ones that we don't want the ones that aren't there for the right reason they're not there to help people they're there to help themselves and that has to stop [Music] at the press conference in City Hall the mayor announced the new plan for addressing the city's policing problems she had recently brought in two former senior NYPD officers John lender and Fausto pachado to help her conduct an assessment of where the biggest problems are in the police department listening to the men and women of the New Orleans Police Department quickly gave us some immediate next steps things that we can present to make some changes we know that everyone across the entire country is experiencing Staffing shortages relative to policing so it's not immune to the City of New Orleans but this requires us to do things differently and create Force multipliers within our city but more importantly make sure that every officer that is commissioned in our city is available to patrol and so what we will be doing starting immediately we have non Patrol special operations and investigative duties will immediately be reassigned to patrol duties in uniform across the city of New Orleans to ensure that we give our officers the level of support that they need and the level of support that they've indicated that they definitely not only mean that they desire at the press conference we were given a handout that detailed the new payment offer of thirty thousand dollars for all new recruits and existing officers also in the handout was an outline of how some nopd duties could be contracted out to civilian providers New Orleans has a long history of using private security companies to provide additional Police Services it is home to the largest number of private security districts in the country these are residential areas where everyone pays a supplemental tax and receives additional services including neighborhood security Patrols the people who live in these neighborhoods feel crime in the city is out of control and that the nopd cannot respond quickly enough when needed I mean our police force I'm saddened because of the lack of police that we have I'm saddened for the lack of of security you know because I should be able to I should be able to call 9-1-1 and the police come out you know when uh normal time frame but that doesn't happen my city frightens me and I hate to say that you know I've lived other places but it frightens me you know the carjackings you know people pumping gas and they're being carjacked you know uh when I pull into my drive before I pull into my driveway I have to be observant to make sure you know nobody's following me if you're out at night and say you're coming home 10 11 o'clock you can call the car and tell them you want to escort and you tell them where you are how long it's going to be before you get you know to your house and when you get there they're sitting there in front of your door I love that Marcia's security district is run by former nopd officer Reginald Grove key tourists are quiet Suburban neighborhood wearing a bulletproof vest and carrying a semi-automatic gun so we're gonna go um and of course we have to be prepared you guys in my custody so I have to make sure you guys are taken care of okay so I don't want to go out there empty-handed and say hey everybody Run for Cover and Run for Cover gotta be prepared sure just tell me what this is so this is a nine millimeter um and uh this is a weapon that I care instead of aside on um in New Orleans um I would say we have more AR-15s on the street than than normal right and so if we don't have the weapons to be able to match their weapons it's a losing battle and so um unfortunately you know we have to carry weapons that will be able to um protect the actual neighborhoods that we're providing the service we go out there with sidearms that don't don't hold up then what's the purpose of having us and so what sort of advantages does that give you over a handgun well disadvantage gives me I can put a sight on it I have a light on it all the things I need to do to and I train with this weapon so it's not a weapon that I just say I'm gonna pop out with and and just carry you know you have to train this is this is my two just like you you guys have a camera doing this interview right now this is my camera and you can't get the work done if you don't have a camera to tell your story so this is how I have to protect um the very people that we're providing service for [Music] it's not illegal for me to ask you hey how you doing today sir what's your name Allison yeah okay you live around here no I don't you know oh wow okay you're interested in purchasing a home in his hand I just thought it looked like a nice neighborhood to have a walk-in can I walk with you tonight actually I'd like to be alone with my thoughts well while you do that I'll make sure that you're okay while you're doing it okay to the difference now how did that make you feel uncomfortable made you feel uncomfortable or did it make you feel like if I'm doing something wrong I may need to get out of this area hello yeah so we put them in a vest because you know you you gift wrap them to me I want to make sure they make it back to where they're going so one of the things we do when we're checking the vehicles we make sure there's no glass on the ground has a signification that the car window has been broken all right and so we come out with our flashlights um making sure that all the vehicles are safe we check down the Alleyways as you see no lights on here right so this car is probably more prone to be broken into okay because it's not in a well-lit area right so checking making sure everything is okay and so we can walk we walk down the you know down the block and make sure that these cars are checked and then we get in the car and do a patrol okay right and the reason we do both is because we want to make sure that we can catch everything most criminals they hide what in the Alleyways right and so having um the capability of walking they're never expecting us to do that not at night they're thinking okay they're going to pass me in the car with the lights on and now I'm going to finish doing my my do finish my crime and so the walking kind of surprises me isn't there a danger that you end up with it with two tiers of policing in the city with those who can afford your services and unless you can I think it's a safeguard I think it's a safeguard I know I definitely wouldn't want it in my community I would want somebody I can call 24 hours or after ready and say hey I heard a strange noise in my backyard compared to uh waiting for the police to come it may take them some time to get there you know we have one of our residents pulling out the garbage the reason they're with their children that makes us feel good because they're not afraid to do that at night right but have you seen the police officer out here since we've been walking yeah and it's not that they're not being proactive it's that they're handling serious calls right so you told me you made some homicide scenes homicides up here in New Orleans car jack is up here in New Orleans so having that second tier of safety is most important for the residents in New Orleans who can afford it one of the things that the nopd is looking at at the moment is the idea of offloading some of their work to private sector companies because they don't have enough officers and they're struggling to recruit enough officers and that's why that's why you have little brothers so could you see a could you see a time when when civil security provided more than neighborhood security and we're actually providing some Services City way that the police currently provides I believe that they will come believe that they would come and the reason I believe that they will come because of the level of confidence that the people inside of the communities have for us so could you imagine if we started providing these same Services where they work or you know where they hang out it's a possibility that can help and so we're our goal is not to take over our goal is simply to assist and give them a break right let us handle the Low Pro the low uh profile calls and they can focus on the on the greater things goodness yeah [Music] the obvious advantage to civilianizing some of our services is that it would free up officers to address the more pressing issues of violent crime and on its face that sounds like a a very good thing but there are some problems with that part of the problems with that is whether or not first you're going to get the same level of service from a civilianized agency than you would from a commissioned officer in some cases while civilians can respond to the problem the problem has to be solved by a commissioned officer if it requires an arrest that requires a summons or requires a report civilians may not be able to handle that but more importantly in this particular Department New Orleans is an event-driven economy that is we have a continuous number of social events that drive our economy there's Mardi Gras there's Jazz Fest there are all kinds of events that go on all year long and those events require additional police presence and police patrol while these events are going on and typically when these events are going on we draw from those other services we draw administrative officers or detectives and for that weekend or for that week or for that period of time those officer re-tasked into providing additional coverage for the increase of people and patrons who come into town for those events as we civilianize those positions we don't have those offices to draw from anymore the civilians that are hired can only do the job they were hired for we can't pull them to go sit on the street and now Patrol we can't do that so we have to be judicious in what we civilianize and how much we rely on that and then remember once it's civilianized if we lose more officers through attrition and we don't fix that now when are you going to pull people from you've exhausted that that's not a it's not a Panacea that's going to fix everything you can do it a little bit here and there and that would bring some relief and it might even work with a stable environment but this isn't the stable environment we're losing officers still so until you get a handle on the attrition and you stop The Exodus of officers to other departments and how the policing off the other civilianizing will only work briefly because there's only a limited number of positions you can civilianize and then what you know if we take a bureau or we take a service and we staff it with 15 civilians and we save 15 officers and in 30 days those officers are gone now what are your civilian eyes [Music] when there's so much fear fear politicians capitalize on that fear and solutions to fear to the fear problem are usually pretty pretty blunt and fairly primitive responses let's go get them let's get them down you're very fearful of crime I gotta go get these people this is this is the the nation right now is not in in any mood for what some sort of pejoratively called hug a thug now is not the time we need to put this fire out and we need to put it out now we need a big hose we need to put the fire out now I don't want to hear about fire prevention we need to put the fire out now and I need solutions that appeal to my fear and that's what's happening right now and it's counterproductive you just explained to me a little bit about why that response which as you say can be kind of easily understood as a political message homicides are up let's arrest more people let's put more people in prison for longer let's ramp up sentencing that is an appealing Simple Story and so just kind of explain to me why that's the wrong thing well it's the wrong thing to do right now it's expensive to put people in jail not all offenders that go to jail that are in jail are high risk um when they get out because they've been institutionalized it actually increases their chances of committing future crime and if it worked if incarceration and mass incarceration actually worked Louisiana wouldn't have the highest crime rate in the country we should have the lowest crime rate in the country because we our incarceration rates are incredibly incredibly High they're the highest not only in the United States they're the highest in the world so if incarceration and mass incarceration was the model by which to reduce crime we should have the lowest crime rate but we have the highest so it just doesn't work that's the evidence and what we need now we have the technology to use evidence-based practices to not only bring Crime down but to save the taxpayer money and to redeem lives and that's what we've been doing in Louisiana and it has been working this idea of trying to prevent homicides rather than throwing more resources to those which have already occurred this one that has long been supported by Community groups across the city at Anna's place in the Treme neighborhood they have a stark reminder of what could befall the children they help without their intervention it started years ago father actually used to don't and his wife used to bring flowers to the mayor's office just to kind of let them know hey we lost someone and here's the flowers for that individual and so now this is a visual of each person that has been murdered in the city it's an eye-opener you're able to see this is serious this is for real but it also serves as a memorial for those loved ones that were lost because they were a brother a sister an uncle and Aunt a mom and dad and they deserve to to be heard and be seen from their loved one we have people that call and say hey I don't recall my son or daughter or whoever's name being on there and so once a month those names go on that list and so outside of the board that we currently have to the far right there is a continuation of names that are being added on the month basis and just tell me um you were saying that your sister's name is on that board as well yes um back in 2016 uh September 13th so yesterday was the six year anniversary uh her husband murdered her in their home and so uh it's something my family have dealt with for the last six years um very tough uh very emotional um I haven't built up um to go out and see it as much I do want to be able to go and not get emotional but it is something that um I definitely understand when people are here and they see it she was a best friend she's my kid's godmother she's [Music] um number three out of the eight of us and so I was very near and dear to me so I'm getting emotional about it and I guess that gives you a very strong connection to the sort of problems that the city is facing in terms of the homosexury most definitely being away from here I left at the age of 17 and I returned at the age of 41. and so it's uh near and dear to my heart to make sure that we are doing everything possible to save our youth we can't afford to lose uh anyone else and we continue to do it on a day-to-day basis but and this place is going to continue to fight to make sure that it's not happening to our youth oh okay so I can see you use this room for art we go paint and open the walls yes lots of paint all over the walls we just transitioned from our summer program to our fall program and so we had a lot of their pictures along the way but if you look up you'll see our rainbow of colors uh and just all of the art that takes place in here over the summer we also had a storytelling one of the deacons from the church would come in and tell stories about African-American history about the Treme area and different things to kind of get our kids up and moving first thing in the morning and so we use it for art we use it for storytelling and any other um subject area that we need to get kids going to find programming and what sort of Ages are the children that you help here the kids here are K-12 used to stop at 17 but now we're moving more to 24. our first cohort of students just finished up their freshman year of college what we've noticed is there's still some things that they need assistance with and so we're going to expand that to 24 now just until they're right out of college and moving into their careers we are trying to interrupt the cycles of poverty and violence we have a lot of kids that lived in this area for a very long time and so now the area is gentrification is taking place in the area and so now our kids are moving into a variety of areas within the metropolitan area and so since that we've had to hire transportation to be able to pick these kids up bring them back to the community that they were raised in and be able to receive the things that they quite honestly probably never would have received at the program didn't exist we offer our kids a hot meal and I bring that up only because we have some students that this is probably the only hot meal that they get we were able to raise funds to get a chef to come in and cook a hot meal for our kids and so it's very important to us to make sure that our kids are receiving everything that they possibly can to be successful and one of the things that people some people say to us is that they feel as though it's the younger people that are driving a lot of this crime and they're driving a lot of the violence in the city and there she was you know the only way to deal with that is harsher and harsher punishments for those people and I wonder if you can explain to me the difference in the approach that you take here in trying to stem the same problem the approach we take here is we're giving them an opportunity and a chance to be successful we're teaching them the things that they need to learn the soft skills that they would need when they're interviewing for a job just the simple fact of eye to eye contact firm handshakes being polite being respectful to the peers and to and to strangers and so we're taking an approach uh to help educate them and we're not looking past the the traumas that happened to them previously and so a lot of our 17 18 19 year olds now if you think back Hurricane Katrina so that was a lot of things that were overlooked with this group of kids that would need to start focusing on and so now that we have a younger crew we're starting at kindergarten we're making sure that they receive the mental health support as much as possible so they don't end up turning tubes I don't want to say gangs but rival groups that may not like each other that may do things to harm each other or may go out and commit crimes together we're trying to stop that our time frame is 3 30 to about seven o'clock with my experience as an educator what I've realized is those are pivotal times most of our kids have parents that work two and three jobs and so from 3 30 to 7 o'clock they can be inside by themselves and they can have that one friend or neighbor that says hey let's go out and do this but by coming to our program that time frame is now booked with positivity it's booked with NASA programs it's book with music therapy this book with the Jazz inheritance Center to learn how to play instruments it's book with opportunities for reading and writing enrichment and so if we can get them in here for that time frame we're blocking out all of the negativity and we're creating students that will be able to save their neighbor or save their friend and we feel like if if we continue to do that it'll only increase in numbers and we have less kids that are committing these crimes my eyes [Music] one Rises

Channel: The Times and The Sunday Times

Views: 863,159

Keywords: the times, the sunday times, mid terms, mid terms 2022, us murders 2022, us murders documentary, mid-terms, us midterm elections 2022, us midterms, mid term, midterm elections, us elections, us election, mid term elections, mid term election in usa, midterm predictions, homicides, us homicide rate, us homicide rate by year, america most dangerous cities, america murder, us murder rate, usa murder rate, crime, crime documentary, crime documentary murders

Id: bwA92u_kdPY

Length: 59min 18sec (3558 seconds)

Published: Mon Nov 07 2022