The Automatik

From NOLA Against Crime.com—

Death Rattle © Allison Harvard

June 3, 2007: “The New Orleans Police Department was investigating two murders Sunday.”

June 4, 2007: “Police said a man was shot to death by his wife Monday evening in the Central City neighborhood, the fourth slaying in New Orleans in three days and the second Monday, police said.”

June 5, 2007: “A man was shot to death Tuesday night in the Central City neighborhood, New Orleans police said.”

June 9, 2007: “New Orleans police were investigating two shooting deaths Saturday night, one in the 7th Ward and one in the 8th Ward.”

June 11, 2007: “A local man and neighbor, Robin Malta, was found dead in his home Monday afternoon. NOPD are presently treating this as a homicide while they continue their investigation. New Orleans police were looking into the shooting death of a 19-year-old male Monday.”

June 17, 2007: “Two people were fatally shot Sunday evening in separate incidents, one just blocks from the scene of a quintuple killing a year before, and one on Esplanade Avenue in the 7th Ward, New Orleans police said. Another was found dead with gunshot wound to head in lower 9th Ward Sunday morning at 4am.”

June 22, 2007: “A 22-year-old man was fatally shot early this morning in eastern New Orleans, police said.”

It’s okay if you skimmed through the above details. I understand if reading such grisly headlines makes your eyes blurry. However, if you weren’t counting, please note that there are ten murders listed above, murders that occurred within a twenty-day span of time. That’s roughly one murder for every alternate day.

Does it make you think differently about all of this if I mention that I knew one of these victims? He was the long-time partner of one of my closest friends and the father of their child—a daughter—who is just shy of one year old.

From the same website—

“So far, prosecutors have successfully prosecuted just one of the 162 homicides committed last year, convicting a man of killing his lover. A second trial, also a more easily prosecuted domestic killing, ended in an acquittal….more than 80 percent of the 162 murder victims last year were black men. More than half of all victims were black men younger than 30, and 29 percent were teenagers. In comparison, 10 white men were killed last year, along with four Hispanic men and three Asian men.”

“The federal government is in the midst of an unprecedented intervention into the local criminal justice system here, adding more than 40 agents and prosecutors to regain some basic daily operations lost to Hurricane Katrina nearly two years ago. The effort comes as the city’s violent crime increased 107% the first quarter of this year over the same time in 2006, according to the New Orleans Police Department. Superintendent Warren Riley said the increase is not an accurate measure but merely reflects the return of thousands of residents who had abandoned the city because of Katrina. Riley pointed out that crime is slightly down when compared with the last quarter of 2006.”

“Three new murders last week [June 16] brought the homicide rate to 91 this year-versus last year’s figure of 56 by the end of June. In other words, New Orleans is well on its way to becoming the murder capital of America, and UNO Criminologist Dr. Peter Scharf said the impact will be felt across the metro economy. ‘The whole region is going to suffer economically because tourists aren’t going to come here,’ said Scharf. ‘The murders are destroying the tourist trade.’

In recent months, the population of New Orleans has jumped, yet Scharf said that should not effect (sic) the murder rate. ‘Even if you control for population, you’re the absolute highest anywhere in the country. ‘Without fixing the crime problem, he maintained, ‘We have, as Anderson Cooper said, a pending economic implosion.’ ”

Forget the destruction of the tourist trade; the murders are destroying the citizens.

The city of New Orleans is dying with every murder, with every witness too scared to come forward, with every dropped charge, and every person who leaves, doesn’t go back home, or who closes their business because they can’t afford to keep it open. It would likely have been easier to deal with the end of a city had it not been dragged out for so many grueling years, forcing residents (and former residents) to endure its torturous decline.

Murder is defined as “the crime of unlawfully and unjustifiably killing another under circumstances defined by statute (as with premeditation)” especially “such a crime committed purposely, knowingly, and recklessly with extreme indifference to human life or during the course of a serious felony (as robbery or rape).” (emphasis mine, from Laywers.com).

I’d like to suggest that the grotesquely inadequate government of New Orleans be charged with this most heinous of crimes, because it is their extreme indifference that’s killing the city.

Edited on June 29, 2007: The Times-Picayune and the Confederate Motor Company websites have articles about Chris Roberts, one of the victims listed above.

Robbery, murder leaves hole in the community

Death is so mysterious