Nawlins PD

Writing in City Journal, Nicole Gelinas examines changes in the New Orleans Police Department. An excerpt:

In one sense, the report is good news: Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked for it as one of his first actions on taking office last May. He understands that unless he fixes the police department, he can’t achieve his goal of reducing violent crime. “The city of New Orleans is not safe,” Landrieu said days after his election. “When New Orleans is best known for crime, something is drastically wrong.” This statement may seem obligatory in a city recently called the nation’s “most murderous” by its own newspaper, the Times-Picayune. Last year, New Orleans suffered 175 murders in a city of 365,000, giving it a per-capita rate of 48 per 100,000 residents, four times that of midsize cities like Boston or Nashville, and seven times New York’s rate.