WSJ: Failure of the Police and Prosecutor’s Office. New Orleans and Crime – August 29, 2007
Date: Aug 29, 2007 1:28 PM
Gee, wonder why the media have not been reporting on the N.O. Crime problem?
WSJ: Best of the Web Today – August 29, 2007 Editor’s note: James Taranto is
on assignment. In place of his column,here’s today’s OpinionJournal Federation
Feature. President Bush is visiting New Orleans to mark the second anniversary
ofHurricane Katrina, as are Democratic presidential candidates Barack Obama,John
Edwards and Hillary Clinton, and Republican candidates Mike Huckabeeand Duncan Hunter.
The White House will probably release a fact sheetdetailing how many billions of
dollars the government has spent on GulfCoast recovery. The Democrats, no doubt,
will call for more money andaction. Here’s hoping at least one political visitor
will be brave enough tosay the truth: that while many New Orleans residents are
courageously takingthe initiative to rebuild their homes, they cannot build an effective
policeand prosecutorial force on their own.
To understand how New Orleans is doing two years later, consider a fewrecent stories.
This past weekend, seven family members and friends wereenjoying a quiet evening
outside their home in a tranquil neighborhood onthe city’s east side, which
was badly flooded by Katrina. Then, according toNew Orleans police, gunmen forced
them into their house, robbed them, andshot them all, killing two. It was the neighborhood’s
second such crime intwo weeks. Previously, gunmen had murdered a couple, Anjelique
Vu and LuongNguyen, leaving their infant and toddler unharmed.
“The slayings . . . were the latest in a series of armed home invasions androbberies
in eastern New Orleans,” wrote the New Orleans Times-Picayune.”Several
crews of gunmen . , . have robbed and shot workers . . . andhomeowners in the area,
where many residents are rebuilding theirflood-damaged homes.” Also last week,
gunmen lined up six laborers and shotthree, killing El Salvadoran Julio Benitez-Cruz.
(New Orleans hasexperienced a post-Katrina influx of Hispanic laborers, both legal
andillegal, who are tempting targets for criminals because they carry so muchcash
from contracting jobs.) In fact, since Katrina, New Orleans’s murder rate has
been higher than thatof any First World city. Depending on fluctuating estimates
of the city’sreturning population, it’s perhaps 40% higher than before Katrina
and twiceas high as the rate in other dangerous cities like Detroit, Newark andWashington.
Families trying to make a home in this environment live in fear,even while many
have taken to rebuilding their homes with their bare hands. As the Rev. Nguyen The
Vien, pastor of one of eastern New Orleans’schurches, told me earlier this year,
“We’re here and we’re rebuilding”–withor without federal assistance.

Indeed, Mr. Nguyen and his parishionersseemed to treat the subject of government
help almost as an afterthought: itmay help pay the bills if it ever arrives, but
it’s not expected. AfterKatrina, neighbors fixed up Mr. Nguyen’s church
under his direction so thatthey would have a “home base” for eating, sleeping
and showering. Then theyset to work rebuilding houses, one by one. Residents of
many otherneighborhoods–white, black, and Asian–have done the same. As NewOrleanians
have found out the hard way, the work is backbreaking, but notimpossible.
What individual New Orleanians can’t do by themselves is fix the city’slong-broken
attitude toward criminal justice. Over and over again during myFebruary trip to
New Orleans, I heard how demoralized residents feel whenthey buy and install new
appliances, pipes and furniture for theirflooded-out houses, leave for a day or
two, often to temporary homes–andreturn to find their hard-earned new handiwork
ripped out and stolen.
For generations now–and this is the city’s deepest problem–New Orleans hashobbled
along without a real law-and-order presence. Criminals graduate frompetty crimes
to burglary to drug-dealing to carrying illegal weapons to gangrobberies to murder,
and face few consequences at any stage. The police, andespecially the prosecutors,
are ineffectual. Since Katrina, things havegotten much worse, in part because criminals,
finding life difficult incities that enforce the law, have returned to the Big Easy
in numbersdisproportionate to those of law-abiding citizens. Mayor Ray Nagin doesn’ttry
to fix things, perhaps because, as he often says, he believes crime is asocial problem,
rooted in a lack of opportunity for poor youth.
The Bush administration has deployed extra federal law-enforcement agents totry
to get the worst criminals off the street. The state of Louisiana,meanwhile, has
sent the National Guard to patrol half-empty neighborhoods.But just as the U.S.
military can only do so much in Iraq when Baghdad’slocal government is ineffective,
the federal government can’t do much in NewOrleans until the city’s local
government changes its attitude and behavior.Residents have no reason to think that
criminal behavior has predictablenegative consequences, because Mr. Nagin and District
Attorney Eddie Jordanhave failed to make clear that people who commit crimes in
New Orleans willbe prosecuted. But President Bush can use federal dollars to try
to convince them to do it.In his speech in New Orleans today, Mr. Bush should announce
that he’s readyto ask Congress for $500 million over two years to overhaul New
Orleans’spolice and prosecutorial forces. But he also should say that the money
iscontingent on a pledge from Messrs. Nagin and Jordan that their city’s No.
1priority will be law enforcement. Mr. Bush should also tie the federal moneyto
measurable results: rational arrests (from quality-of-life crimes all theway up
to homicide), effective prosecutions and, ultimately, fewer crimes. It’s an
enduring mystery why Mr. Bush hasn’t used the Katrina disaster toshow the world
that America can rebuild a major city using a bedrockconservative principle: law
and order first. Democrats are welcome topropose the same idea, of course. Mr. Obama,
Mr. Edwards and Mrs. Clintonhave all mentioned New Orleans’s crime problem in
their recent speeches. Butthey often tie it to a lack of staff and equipment in
the city afterKatrina–as if it’s a question of rebuilding something that was
lost,instead of building from scratch the most essential component of any city’ssuccess.
Until politicians understand that basic difference, spending moremoney–or bragging
about past billions spent–while tolerating intolerableconditions in a first-world
city is nothing short of disgraceful. Ms. Gelinas is a contributing editor of City
Journal.

The Second Amendment IS Homeland Security !