How vital is our public security? Take into consideration this fashion. If each road is floodproofed and paved, however you continue to get carjacked — that’s an issue.

The elemental query for our security and the NOPD is that this: How does a pressure of about 850 cops police each day in a metropolis of 380,000 individuals, together with vacationers and guests?

Even when the pressure provides 100 cops per 12 months, it would take no less than 4 years to achieve 1,300 officers — a right-sized police division for a metropolis of our measurement.

What do you do within the meantime?

The New Orleans Coalition performed a survey that discovered that 52% of the individuals in New Orleans really feel secure, whereas 48% don’t really feel secure. In different phrases, solely half town feels secure.

Whoever is elected mayor is accountable for the protection of your complete metropolis.

Our crime statistics are the bottom in years, however there’s a humorous factor about statistics, they go down and so they go up.

Low crime statistics are not any consolation for the 14 individuals killed and lots of injured on Bourbon Avenue on New Yr’s Eve, or for rising variety of households that embody individuals injured or killed by gun violence. 

Over the previous 9 days, we’ve got misplaced 11 individuals.  The daddy, an area chef, choosing up his little one at daycare on Canal Avenue, the lady from Chicago caught within the crossfire between two feuding individuals on Bourbon Avenue, the 42-year-old man on the Mom-in-Legislation Lounge who was killed in what I name “argument by gun.”

We had a lull in gun violence, however now it seems that it’s accelerated once more.

In latest months, public officers rushed to the microphone to take credit score when the crime price dropped. Will they now rush again to the microphone and take blame when the crime price rises?

I made my share of arrests as a New Orleans police officer from drug violations, home violence to armed theft and tried homicide.

As a choose, I sentenced greater than 23 individuals to life sentences for homicide, which meant 23 harmless individuals misplaced their lives to mindless violence.

No matter we wish to obtain in our metropolis could be undermined by the dearth or absence of public security.

The subsequent mayor has to reply that basic query about our security and the NOPD.

The subsequent mayor has to make sure your complete metropolis feels secure.

Arthur L. Hunter, Jr. is an occasional contributor to The Lens who’s stepping up his nonpartisan commentaries for us throughout election season. Hunter is a former New Orleans Police Division officer, retired Orleans Parish Prison District Court docket choose, and – most just lately – a candidate for mayor.

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