New Orleans officials announce major crackdown amid crime wave
NEW ORLEANS — Responding to residents' outrage over a sharp increase in crime that claimed nine lives in the first eight days of 2007, Mayor C. Ray Nagin announced a slate of crime-fighting initiatives Tuesday, two days before a planned residents' march on City Hall.
"We are drawing a line in the sand and saying we've had it," Nagin told reporters at a briefing held at the site of the year's first slaying -- that of a man who was shot in the head on the evening of Jan. 1.
The measures, which Nagin said would be implemented immediately, include increasing police foot patrols and installing 50 surveillance cameras -- and up to 200 by the end of the year -- in crime hot spots. Nagin pledged to expedite the prosecution of murder cases, and said police would conduct random checks of residents for drugs and alcohol between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m., when 30% of the city's violent crimes reportedly occur.
Nagin was joined at the announcement by the police chief, City Council members, community leaders and representatives of the criminal justice system. He said they had all spent the last several days meeting to devise a cohesive strategy to tackle crime.
"We are here to say collectively that one murder is too many," Nagin said. "We will put all our resources to focus on murders and violent crime
The anti-crime program is also to include "community walks" by police and city officials to promote residents' participation in the effort, and a clergy-led No Way Out program to offer young people ways to avoid getting involved in violence. Church leaders also pledged to offer moral support to murder victims' families.
"We want to try and create a contagious compassion," said the Rev. John C. Raphael Jr., who recently staged a hunger strike to protest crime in his Central City neighborhood.
A Court Watchers program, in which residents would monitor murder cases "from arrest to adjudication," was another facet of the plan, Nagin said.
"Everybody involved will come under the microscope under this program," said Councilman James Carter, who organized a summit last year on fighting crime.
Orleans Parish Dist. Atty. Eddie Jordan, often said to take too long to prosecute murder cases, said his office had finished hiring staff for a new violent offender prosecution unit, and had created a homicide division to help bring cases to trial quickly.
