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Will More Gun Laws Stop This?

Mike

Well-known member
New Orleans Breeds Bold Killers: half of murders occur in daytime
by Laura Maggi, Brendan McCarthy and Brian Thevenot, The Times-Picayune
Saturday January 24, 2009, 9:47 PM
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About half of last year's 179 murders in New Orleans occurred in daylight, with spikes at the lunch and dinner hours, a fact that officials and experts say underscores the brazen nature of the slayings -- and may indicate that many are executions.

Ninety people were murdered between 6 a.m. and 8 p.m., with 19 of them killed between noon and 1 p.m. -- more than any other hour of the day -- and 16 killed between 5 and 6 p.m.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro said the daylight killings speak to a pervasive lack of respect for the justice system.

"They are not concerned about the consequences," he said. "They are not concerned about who might be watching."

That attitude stems from a grim reality: Most killers here do get away with it.
So far, the New Orleans Police Department has made arrests in 59 of the murder cases in 2008, or 33 percent of the total. Prosecutors have accepted 32 of those cases, refused 11 for insufficient evidence and are considering whether to pursue the remainder. None of the cases has yet been tried.

Even if convictions are secured in every case accepted so far -- highly unlikely -- that would mean the city would punish just one in five killers. Police could secure more evidence and make more arrests at any time, but homicide cases generally do not age well, becoming tougher to solve with every day that goes by.

Cannizzaro acknowledges the office he inherited needs to secure far more murder convictions. "Obviously, it is a low number," he said. "We would like to think we can do a better job solving those cases."

Next month, he said he plans to launch a new practice of sending prosecutors to murder scenes to build trust with witnesses and to help police detectives build cases.

Securing testimony from often-terrified witnesses remains the key challenge for the justice system, Cannizzaro said. Many witnesses change their stories or simply refuse to testify by the time the district attorney gets the case, typically about four months after a killing, which Cannizzaro believes is too long.

"They tell us a different story than they tell the police," he said.

Cannizzaro also plans to establish a stronger witness-protection program that would relocate more people to out-of-town safehouses across the state.

Kevin Boshea, a criminal defense attorney who worked as a prosecutor under former District Attorney Harry Connick, said prosecutors must push people to come forward. That requires regular visits to victims and witnesses, he said.

"You don't build trust in a phone call or five-minute visit," he said.

Positive trend seen

In 2008, murders decreased from the 2007 total of 210, but that was a decline from a hideous peak. The city still has a per-capita homicide rate several times higher than that of most cities of comparable size.

Although violence continues at an alarming rate, a downward trend line for killings in the later months of 2008 is reason to believe the homicide rate may continue to fall, said Tulane University criminologist Peter Scharf.

"I think we're heading toward 100 or 120 murders, not 300," he said. "You've had three months in the final five months of the year where we had only 10 homicides. We've never had that before."

The daylight murders, Scharf said, might result from killers trying to catch their targets in vulnerable situations.

"One nasty hypothesis is that these are assassinations," Scharf said of the lunch- and dinner-time slayings. "They're probably not random disputes -- people don't like to fight while eating -- so it's possible killers are simply trying to catch the targets at a point where they're most disarmed."

Scharf believes such executions are rooted in drug trafficking to an even greater degree than is widely believed.

"These are transactions -- and so they occur whenever the opportunity arises," rather than only in the dark of night, he said.

The overall decline in murders, Scharf said, results from a gentrification of the city in the wake of Hurricane Katrina, the stabilization of some flooded neighborhoods and improvement in the city's school system with the proliferation of smaller charter schools under state oversight. Taken together, those factors have produced a positive tipping point in crime trends, he said.

"The gentrification is probably the biggest thing. The people moving in are wealthier than the ones who left," Scharf said. "They're professionals, black and white, with long-term investments in the community."

Stubborn subculture

Two door-sized murder maps are tacked to the wall of NOPD Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo's office. They testify to the traditional policing methods the department uses to track and respond to violence: constant data-mining and the shifting of patrols to the latest hot spots.

Defillo, the head of investigations, acknowledged that much of that work, while necessary, is reactive and has limited potential for creating a sustainable decrease in violence.

"We have to think beyond traditional policing," he said.

Community-outreach programs, more officers walking the streets and increased trust between officers and residents can play a role.

Police Department leaders know that most murder victims are young black men, that guns are used in 92 percent of all slayings and that drugs and retaliation are the motives of most killings.

Of the 179 people murdered last year, only 29 had no state or local criminal record, Defillo said. "That speaks volumes," he said.

Meanwhile, 11 of 59 of the slaying suspects had been previously arrested for murder, he said.

Most of the city's murder victims and perpetrators are stuck in a "subculture" of desperation, Defillo said, in which young men drop out of school, deal drugs and kill each other in the quest for profit.

"It's all they know," Defillo said. "They resolve conflict through violence."

Brian Thevenot can be reached at [email protected] or 504.826.3482. Brendan McCarthy can be reached at [email protected] or 504.826.3301. Laura Maggi can be reached at [email protected] or 504.826.3316.


The who, what, when, where, how and why of the 179 homicides in New Orleans last year.

See more in Crime Page: Orleans
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
I think the answer is trigger locks, registration, and limiting legal purchases to 1 / customer/ month. That would make New Orleans free of gun violence.
 

Sandhusker

Well-known member
Mahoney-Pursley Ranch said:
Sandhusker said:
I think the answer is trigger locks, registration, and limiting legal purchases to 1 / customer/ month. That would make New Orleans free of gun violence.



Your dreamin. These types don't buy legal weapons. BRUHAHAHA

That was kind of my point. Those are some of the solutions of our liberal friends. They really know how to address the problem.
 

Tam

Well-known member
Larrry said:
It is so simple the solution is that we pass a law that criminals must turn in their guns. Problem solved

Better yet tell them they can't get their New Obama stimulus welfare check until the crime rate drops to zero. :wink:
 

VanC

Well-known member
Sandhusker said:
I think the answer is trigger locks, registration, and limiting legal purchases to 1 / customer/ month. That would make New Orleans free of gun violence.

I propose we take it a step further, Sandy. Why not take all the guns away from law abiding citizens and give them all to criminals? That seems to be the direction we're heading in anyway. Why not quit beating around the bush and just do it?

Now I realize with the economy the way it is, we don't want to put the people who manufacture and sell guns out of work. Well, I've already thought of that. The manufacturers can keep making guns and selling them to licensed gun dealers. Convicted criminals would be issued vouchers, we'll call them "gun stamps", to be used towards the purchase of these guns. There would, of course, need to be background checks to make sure that the buyers were indeed convicted criminals. Any gun dealer caught selling to a law abiding citizen would face severe penalties.

Now everybody's happy. No one is out of a job. The guns have been taken from law abiding citizens (they're mostly toothless, redneck conservatives anyway) and given to the criminals, who wouldn't be criminals to begin with if it weren't for evil rich people having more stuff than they do. No more illegal gun trade and, better yet, we have another government program to provide jobs for people that need money but don't really want to work.

Of course, I suppose the law abiding citizens might end up a little miffed, but someone has to make a sacrifice. What better people to make it than the law abiding citizens? They're used to it. Besides, who says law abiding citizens should have more rights than convicted criminals? What's fair about that?
 

Tam

Well-known member
Just heard on the news that there is a riot going on in a Prison in Florida, resulting in gun shots and knifings. Seven have been transfered to a hospital. So explain to me how do you control gun violence in the whole country when the guards of a prison can't even control it in a confined prison? :?
 

andybob

Well-known member
Of the 42 knife murders in England last year, 22 were in London, and all teenagers, this is more than the total number of gun deaths in the whole country in any year prior to the ban on handguns. The incidences of gun related crimes is on the increase, the police forgot to collect the illegal weapons!
 

Broke Cowboy

Well-known member
VanC said:
Sandhusker said:
I think the answer is trigger locks, registration, and limiting legal purchases to 1 / customer/ month. That would make New Orleans free of gun violence.

I propose we take it a step further, Sandy. Why not take all the guns away from law abiding citizens and give them all to criminals? That seems to be the direction we're heading in anyway. Why not quit beating around the bush and just do it?

Now I realize with the economy the way it is, we don't want to put the people who manufacture and sell guns out of work. Well, I've already thought of that. The manufacturers can keep making guns and selling them to licensed gun dealers. Convicted criminals would be issued vouchers, we'll call them "gun stamps", to be used towards the purchase of these guns. There would, of course, need to be background checks to make sure that the buyers were indeed convicted criminals. Any gun dealer caught selling to a law abiding citizen would face severe penalties.

Now everybody's happy. No one is out of a job. The guns have been taken from law abiding citizens (they're mostly toothless, redneck conservatives anyway) and given to the criminals, who wouldn't be criminals to begin with if it weren't for evil rich people having more stuff than they do. No more illegal gun trade and, better yet, we have another government program to provide jobs for people that need money but don't really want to work.

Of course, I suppose the law abiding citizens might end up a little miffed, but someone has to make a sacrifice. What better people to make it than the law abiding citizens? They're used to it. Besides, who says law abiding citizens should have more rights than convicted criminals? What's fair about that?

Canada and the UK are already there.

And do not forget - if you do the self defence "thing" - you are likely to still go to jail for a long time.

Police and new laws are the answer to all crime and crinimal activity - didn't you know that?

BC
 
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