Sharon Varnado left her Little Woods neighborhood in New Orleans East three years ago, and she hasn't looked back.?
The sound of gunshots had grown familiar; so too, had reports of carjackings. And when burglars broke into a neighbor's house two blocks down, police took hours to respond?to the call for help, as had been their norm for nonviolent crimes in that area.?
In short, her sliver of the East looked nothing like it did when she moved in nearly 50 years ago. Now, she lives in a gated community in Slidell.
"It's totally different," Varnado said. "Don't get me wrong. Crime is everywhere. But I feel more at ease... like I might could go out of my house at night."?
An analysis of crime trends shows that carjackings and fatal shootings in the East have skyrocketed since 2018, causing concern for Varnado and other former and current residents, and complicating the East's prospects for economic development. Armed robberies there have also routinely outpaced the rest of the city, though they appear to be trending downward; residential break-ins, meanwhile, dropped recently to match the city's average after a 2014 peak.?
Fatal shootings, carjackings, armed robberies occur in New Orleans East at a higher rate per 10,000 than elsewhere in the city. Burglaries, after years of being more prevalent in the East, are now occurring at roughly the same rate as the rest of the city.
Meanwhile, residents say the understaffed New Orleans Police Department's slow response to calls for service in the East has emboldened the area's criminals. Indeed, an analysis of 911 calls by The Times-Picayune | New Orleans Advocate shows it takes NOPD twice as long to respond to emergency calls there than it does in the rest of the city.
For nonemergencies — such as non-life-threatening crimes that have already occurred — residents of the East wait almost three times as long as the rest of the city waits.
Crime-weary residents also blame an influx of lower-income residents to the area after Hurricane Katrina, and what residents describe as a?half-hearted effort by city leaders to address the East's problems.?
The embattled NOPD, meanwhile, has said its struggle to find new officers has impacted all of its districts. The 7th District, which polices all of New Orleans East, faces special challenges because of its size, as a small crew of officers must cover a large area, Superintendent Shaun Ferguson acknowledged at a recent public hearing.?
City officials have offered no shortage of solutions to try and fill the gap: everything from empowering other city agencies to make arrests for small-time offenses, to tapping civilian counselors to respond to mental health calls, to carving up the 7th District so that officers have a smaller area to manage, an idea that hasn't yet gained traction.?
Pockets of crime?
To be sure, the East doesn't have a monopoly on crime in New Orleans. Even as there are neighborhoods where residents feel unsafe, there are posh subdivisions that ring man-made lakes and that are protected by private security.?
If police and journalists were more specific when describing crimes, "people will understand that the crimes that we do have and the excessive homicides that we do have are occurring in certain neighborhoods, just like in other sections of New Orleans," said Mtumishi St. Julien, a resident of the well-to-do Lake Bullard subdivision.?
Sharon Varnado, photographed Saturday, Nov. 20, 2021, at Goretti Playground in New Orleans East.
It's true that in an area as large as New Orleans East, not all neighborhoods are experiencing similar crime rates. In any given year, at least a third of the area's carjackings?occur in Little Woods. That neighborhood also typically accounts for between 30% and 40% of the fatal shootings in the East, with Pines Village making up another 15%.
There's a similar concentration around Little Woods when it comes to armed robberies and burglaries.
"I feel very safe living in the East, and I don't think the data really reflects the quality of life here," said City Council member Cyndi Nguyen, who represents the East and the Lower 9th Ward.?Nguyen's father was the victim of a carjacking in 2019.
But regardless of what's happening at the block level, an analysis that accounts for population size shows that the East — when considered as a single area — has an outsized share of the city's carjackings and fatal shootings.
In this year alone, there have been roughly 13 carjackings for every 10,000 people. That's more than double the rate in the rest of the city, which saw about 5 incidents per 10,000 people, NOPD data show.
The rate of carjackings in the East has more than tripled since 2018, when only four carjackings per 10,000 people occurred.?
Search on for suspects in shooting of Judge Robin Pittman's mother: 'They started ... just shooting'
The mother of Criminal District Court Judge Robin Pittman was shot and critically wounded while driving through a New Orleans East neighborhoo…
For serious crimes?other than carjackings, the disparities between the East and the rest of the city are not as glaring. So far this year, there have been about five fatal shootings for every 10,000 people, which is down from a 2020 peak of more than six. The rest of the city saw fewer than four fatal shootings for every 10,000 residents.?
Residential break-ins in the East have been on par with the rest of the city for at least the past two years. And while the East's armed robberies spiked in 2018 before falling dramatically in 2019 and 2020, a person is still more likely to get robbed there than they are in other parts of the city.?
Driving factors
Experts say the high crime rates could owe to any number of factors.?
"A lot of it is kids trying to figure out who they are. And trying to get economic opportunities, but also trying to figure out their masculinity," said Michael Barton, an LSU associate professor of sociology and criminology.
Carjackers, in particular, can be driven by a desire to improve their financial situations, or simply by rage, he said.
But others say the area's anemic police presence has sparked a rise in criminal activity.?
"Because there is so much land to be policed, there were never enough officers to begin with," said Anthony Jackson, the president of the 7th District's Police Community Advisory Board. The East contains two-thirds of the city's land mass, though a great deal of it is undeveloped swampland and wilderness.?
Nguyen, who lost her bid for reelection to former council member Oliver Thomas last month, has urged NOPD to consider assigning more officers to the 7th District. She's also raised the idea of dividing the district into smaller pieces.?
New Orleans City Councilmember Cyndi Nguyen will face five contenders in a District E race that has showcased the need for economic developmen…
Ferguson, the police chief, said at a November hearing that the Industrial Canal complicates that idea, because officers tasked with patrolling both sides of the canal would be delayed in responding to calls for service. He also said the NOPD has added more recruits to the district in recent years.?
The force has struggled to mount a timely response, even with the 7th District intact.?
The median response time for emergency calls from the East is about 16 minutes, compared to eight minutes elsewhere in the city, an analysis of response data shows.?
For nonemergencies, residents wait about an hour for an officer to respond — almost three times longer than the rest of the city.?
Demographic shifts blamed?
Some residents suspect the East's shifting demographics have influenced its crime trends. Today, the area's 27,500 households?earn a median income of $33,000 per year, well below the city's $41,000 average. In 2003, the reverse was true: The East had a slightly higher median income than that of the rest of the city, $32,772 compared to $27,133.?
Put another way, the median income in the East hasn't changed in nearly two decades, while in the rest of the city, it's up by more than half.
Of the area's nine main neighborhoods, five contain mostly renters, according to Census estimates compiled by the Data Center. In 2000, only three such neighborhoods were dominated by rentals.?
Herbert Jackson can easily recall the New Orleans East he left behind for the military 25 years ago.?
And after the city's largest public housing projects were converted to mixed-income apartments after Katrina, participation swelled in the Housing Authority of New Orleans' Section 8 program, which grants low-income residents vouchers to live in homes of their choice. Those holding vouchers often ended up in the East, residents point out.?
"We have the most subsidized housing out here, in the apartments," said Dawn Hebert, the president of the East New Orleans Neighborhood Advisory Commission, a coalition of eastern New Orleans neighborhoods.?
"It's unfortunate, because it's bringing our median income down when developers want to come to our community... and we do believe it contributes to the crime rate."
While poverty can be a factor, residential turnover is perhaps an even larger driver, said Barton, the LSU criminologist. "When you have a strong sense of community, and people living in an area for longer, they are less likely to commit crimes in that area," he said.?
The debate over whether poverty equals criminality, and the not-in-my-backyard sentiments that it tends to inspire, has been raging in New Orleans East since at least the late 1980s, when HANO and the federal government increased the number of subsidized rentals. Many poorer residents moved eastward, according to a 1991 Times-Picayune article.?
No easy solutions
Jackson, the police community board president, said police should forge better connections with the East's youngest residents to deter them from crime.?
Security personnel and other civilians should be allowed to make small-time arrests so that police don't have to, he said.
The city has already begun moving in the latter direction, with the council pondering an ordinance would empower some city employees to exercise police powers in NOPD's absence.?
The council has also laid the groundwork for mental health professionals to eventually respond to calls for service from people experiencing mental health crises, tapping a task force this summer to study how best to accomplish that. Of the 70 new crime cameras installed across the city this year to help police stop and solve crimes, 22 were mounted in the East.?
Varnado, who lost her 47-year-old son, Shawn Brock, in January after he was shot near Crowder Boulevard and Interstate 10, said all of that is only valuable if it leads to a better police response.?
"I started feeling like, 'Y'all don't care about the East anymore?' Things are happening, but it's like, 'We will get to them when we get to them.'"?
Staff writer Jeff Adelson contributed to this story.?This story is part of an occasional series chronicling efforts to bring new investment to New Orleans East.?
