Should the President Send Troops to Baghdad AND New Orleans?
Here’s an interesting story that may help explain the local response to Katrina that has been entirely blamed on President Bush by the Democrats (New Orleans has been a Democrat stronghold for years) and by the mainstream press. After reading the following report, check out the graph that follows. Notice that the murder rate for Iraq compiled by the government of Iraq is higher than that compiled by the Associated Press. Notice also that the murder rate in New Orleans is higher in years 2003, 2004 and 2006 than Iraq's rate. In other words, not only is it higher, but there is nothing new about the current murder rate in New Orleans.
Homicides on the rise in New Orleans
City's murder rate is 30 percent higher than any other U.S. city
By Martin Savidge
Correspondent
Updated: 7:29 p.m. ET Jan 5, 2007
NEW ORLEANS - In the last week more Americans have died in New Orleans than in Iraq. Since Dec. 29, there have been eight military deaths. In the Big Easy, there have been 14 murders.
Among the latest victims: Helen Hill, a 36-year-old mother shot in her home in front of her husband and 2-year-old.
"She was just such a wonderful person," says friend Sheri Branch, "the brightest spot of New Orleans to me."
The killers are growing more brazen, striking in broad daylight and using assault rifles, even with police just 30 yards away. And witnesses refuse to talk.
"We have a culture, a certain population in this city with an intent on committing violent crime," says Assistant Superintendent of Police Steven Nicholas. "They feel no repercussion, they have no fear of police."
New Orleans' murder rate is 30 percent higher than any other city in the country.
"This alarming homicide rate is a function of the failure of these different municipal entities to coordinate in a really productive way," says Peter Scharf, a criminologist at New Orleans University.
Reasons for the violence are many: Drug dealing, retaliation killings, fewer cops and an overwhelmed legal system.
And there are growing fears.
"Now we're at this total extreme crime, where it's everywhere," said a recent caller to local talk radio station WRNO.
The indictments of seven New Orleans police officers for the killing of two people on a bridge days after Katrina will only make matters worse.
"Morale has to be the lowest in the department in years," says WRNO radio host Andre Trevigne.
In retaliation, there've been rumblings by some police of a work slow down. But police officials deny cops would let there anger interfere with their duty.
"They are still going to stand and do their job," says Nicholas. "They understand their responsibility."
That said, the only persons arrested and charged with homicide in New Orleans in a week have been police officers. MSNBC.com
LEFT CLICK TO ENLARGE
Source: Newsbusters.org
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posted by RussWilcox @ 6:31 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Russel,
New Orleans has always been a violent city. There is no news in that. The difference now is that people have suffered and lost so much. They want their suffering to mean something and for many that is the makig of a BETTER city. These murders have meant that the same old same old is coming back and people there are crushed. The President and Congress will do nothing (the same thing they has done for 17 months now) because there is no political gain for them. And we all know politics trumps American citizens suffering, don't we?
It's hard for someone like me, who worked to exhaustion day after day to save what I could and help others after Charlie to feel much sympathy for people who sit on their asses and wait for someone else to step in. It was hard to watch the criminals from New Orleans plunder the people who accepted them as refugees and tried to help. And when those citizens who wanted a better place reelected Mayor Nagin, any last vestige of caring went out the window.
What caring?
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