The Slow Suicide Of New Orleans
By
Pilgrim
on February 11, 2007 at 06:27 am
13 Comments
I’ve started writing a regular piece for Jeff Blanco at the Louisina Conservative blog. This is an excerpt from my first column there:
People are murdered in New Orleans at an alarming rate and what’s even more alarming are these juicy statistics: Number of murders in 2006 – 162. (bear in mind that New Orleans has about half of its former population right now.) Number of those solved – 68. 17 of the subjects identified in these murders are dead themselves, victims of their own criminal folly. 4 others still remain at large. That means that out of 162 murders, 73 remain unsolved. 22 of the cases cleared by arrest in 2006 have yet to be charged by New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan.
Here’s a real kick in the head: So far in 2007 there have been 20 murders. Of that twenty, only FIVE (5) have been solved, and three of those because the killers themselves were killed by others of their ilk – no great loss there. Only two have been cleared by an arrest.
And then there’s this gem from the “can you top this?” file:
Another factor is the prevailing culture of New Orleans, one that has by and large replaced the culture of old, of which I’ll cite an example. Yesterday a 17 year old named Clarence Johnson got into a fight with another 17 year old boy and lost. Clarence went home and told his mother, 44 year old Vanessa Johnson. Did she empathize with him or scold him as parents have for thousands of years? No.
She gave him a handgun and told him to get revenge. He did. He went out, found the other boy, and killed him. A fine example of humanity, don’t you think? When police interviewed and subsequently arrested the mother (the boy is still at large as I write this), they found cocaine and a picture of the boy posing with money, drugs, and guns. It was hanging on her wall. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell picture, is it?
Read the whole thing at http://louisianaconservative.com/.
It’s sad but we’re eye witnesses to the rapid decline of a great city. The barbarians are at the gate.
People are murdered in New Orleans at an alarming rate and what’s even more alarming are these juicy statistics: Number of murders in 2006 – 162. (bear in mind that New Orleans has about half of its former population right now.) Number of those solved – 68. 17 of the subjects identified in these murders are dead themselves, victims of their own criminal folly. 4 others still remain at large. That means that out of 162 murders, 73 remain unsolved. 22 of the cases cleared by arrest in 2006 have yet to be charged by New Orleans District Attorney Eddie Jordan.
Here’s a real kick in the head: So far in 2007 there have been 20 murders. Of that twenty, only FIVE (5) have been solved, and three of those because the killers themselves were killed by others of their ilk – no great loss there. Only two have been cleared by an arrest.
And then there’s this gem from the “can you top this?” file:
Another factor is the prevailing culture of New Orleans, one that has by and large replaced the culture of old, of which I’ll cite an example. Yesterday a 17 year old named Clarence Johnson got into a fight with another 17 year old boy and lost. Clarence went home and told his mother, 44 year old Vanessa Johnson. Did she empathize with him or scold him as parents have for thousands of years? No.
She gave him a handgun and told him to get revenge. He did. He went out, found the other boy, and killed him. A fine example of humanity, don’t you think? When police interviewed and subsequently arrested the mother (the boy is still at large as I write this), they found cocaine and a picture of the boy posing with money, drugs, and guns. It was hanging on her wall. Not exactly a Norman Rockwell picture, is it?
Read the whole thing at http://louisianaconservative.com/.
It’s sad but we’re eye witnesses to the rapid decline of a great city. The barbarians are at the gate.
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