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The NOPD investigates a homicide after a 7-year-old girl was shot to death while riding in a car with her mom and sibling in Algiers Sunday, Dec. 26, 2021. (Photo by David Grunfeld, NOLA.com | The Times-Picayune | The New Orleans Advocate)

For the second straight year, New Orleans reported an increased number of killings in 2021, erasing gains in public safety achieved in the past decade and saddling the city with the highest murder toll in 17 years, according to unofficial statistics.

There were 218 slayings, Police Department officials said. Not only was that a 10% increase from the 198 murders reported at the end of last year, it was also the first time since 2007 that the city had recorded more than 200 murders.

010122 New Orleans homicides

Additionally, it was the highest such tally for New Orleans since the 264 murders reported in 2004, the year before Hurricane Katrina altered the course of the region’s history. The spike in local violence seen in 2021 was mirrored by similar increases in cities around the country; Baton Rouge and Jackson, Mississippi, for instance, have both set new records for the number of homicides this year.

In past years, New Orleans leaders have sought to downplay a jump in the annual number of murders if other key violent crime statistics dropped or at least held steady.

But none of those things happened in 2021. Nonfatal shootings were up about 9%, from fewer than 430 in 2020 to more than 465 this year, figures provided by the NOPD show. Carjackings, which tend to victimize residents and visitors more randomly than shootings or homicides, jumped by roughly 21%.

The grim numbers have further distanced New Orleans from a historic 2019, when the city registered 121 murders, the lowest number in almost a half century. That year was also the third consecutive one in which murders fell. 

Since that low-water mark just two years ago, murders have risen by 77%.

The grim stats have also put a damper on some happier news — that crime overall was down in New Orleans in 2021 by 7%. But the drop in overall crime was largely driven by decreases in property offenses such as theft and residential burglary.

And, finally, they’ve reignited a search for answers about why violent crime is continuing to tick up both in New Orleans and across the U.S., where most big cities reported worrisome increases in murder, said locally based crime analyst Jeff Asher.

In general, experts believe the stress inflicted by the coronavirus pandemic and its various waves have been prime reasons for higher levels of violence since last year, especially among people who know each other relatively well. The pandemic has remained disruptive this year.

"It is really clear that the food insecurity, job insecurity, economic insecurity caused by the (various) waves of COVID is certainly having a huge impact in rises in crime," District Attorney Jason Williams said.

Asher added: “There’s no reason to expect much change from last year to this year. Not much has changed.”

Yet there are also local elements that may help explain the numbers in New Orleans, Asher said. Experts have long noted that, shootings, both deadly and nonfatal, often beget more shootings in the city, especially if left unsolved.

Police Superintendent Shaun Ferguson in recent weeks estimated that his investigators had either made an arrest or obtained a warrant to book a suspect in about half of the city’s killings this year. The solve rate for nonfatal shootings was 35%, according to Ferguson’s estimates, which do not amount to an official clearance rate as calculated by the FBI.

Neither of those figures seems to be a meaningful deterrent against the retaliatory-style killings and shootings that frequently fuel the city’s perennial violent-crime problem, said Asher, a consultant for the City Council.

Heartbreaking examples of that phenomenon this year included the shooting death of 12-year-old Todriana Peters at a Lower 9th Ward graduation party in May. Todriana died in a barrage of gunfire aimed at a car she was standing near that had apparently been used in an earlier shooting. Her killing has led to charges against several men, some of whom have already pleaded guilty to peripheral roles, according to authorities.

Another was the deadly quadruple shooting that targeted employees of an environmental nonprofit who were working outside a New Orleans church in October. One of two men slain there was out on bail awaiting trial on attempted-murder charges stemming from a November 2020 double shooting, and he had survived being shot himself a couple of months before that.

Ferguson has defended the work of his investigators, saying the numbers show they remain engaged in the fight to keep violent crime in New Orleans as low as possible. They’re doing that work at an agency whose staffing has lingered around 1,100 sworn officers, far short of its goal of 1,600. The NOPD, he has noted, is just one cog in a complex criminal justice system that hasn’t been able to stage a murder trial since the start of the pandemic.

“Our detectives have been working very diligently to address these … investigations,” Ferguson said early in December. “We have somewhat of a downward trend with (some numbers), but there’s no doubt in my mind that will be picking up very soon.”

Numerous sources at NOPD have also expressed concern that a significant portion of the more than 130 officers who left the department throughout the course of the year, mostly by resignation, had fewer than five years on the job. That limits the pool of future leaders at an aging department and reduces the amount of manpower available to tackle important cases, said the sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because the agency doesn’t plan to have Ferguson address the 2021 crime stats until early in the new year.

Loved ones of those lost on the street this year are praying their hopes for justice don’t fall prey to the larger circumstances that have kept levels of violence here elevated.

Those include 24-year-old Maquisha Burton, who was traveling in a car in Algiers with her daughter Kennedi, 6, on Dec. 26 when someone shot up their car, killing the girl and setting off the latest top-priority murder investigation in the city.

There’s no indication either Burton or Kennedi were the intended targets.

“Why would they do this?” Burton sobbed. “I Just want them to know they took somebody innocent.”


Michelle Hunter and Matt Sledge contributed to this report.


Email Ramon Antonio Vargas at rvargas@theadvocate.com

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