Grassroots ‘journalists’ take on the killing fields of New Orleans

For a time in post-​Katrina New Orleans there was a lull in the killing. The few res­i­dents able to return lived in a small strip of the city they called the “Sliver by the River,” an area that was flooded only lightly, and was the first to have elec­tric­ity turned on.

But 2006 saw New Orleans return to worse vio­lence than ever, as gang mem­bers, find­ing their evac­u­a­tion host cities inhos­pitable, moved back into the still-​dark and storm-​damaged areas worst-​hit by Kat­rina. Mur­ders began to crank up by the spring, and in June, five teens were gunned down in a drug assas­si­na­tion, the first in a long sum­mer of blood­shed that earned Cen­tral City the nick­name of the “Tri­an­gle of Death.”

In the largely spared Uptown and Marigny-​Bywater areas of New Orleans res­i­dents crit­i­cized police and the dis­trict attorney’s office for inac­tion in the face of the swelling vio­lence. Accu­sa­tions grew that the New Orleans Police Depart­ment was cov­er­ing up the sit­u­a­tion by under-​reporting crime, a long-​time charge against the depart­ment in a city des­per­ate for tourism dol­lars. And the charges rang true as the NOPD stonewalled the Pulitzer-​winning Times-​Picayune as it attempted to gain access to police reports. Fur­ther, the Times-​Picayune itself was a tar­get of crit­i­cism, for its pol­icy of redact­ing the race of sus­pects in crime reports.

A num­ber of neigh­bor­hoods – par­tic­u­larly the hip, bohemian Marigny-​Bywater area – began pub­lish­ing their own weekly crime reports, based on res­i­dent reports that were never filed by police. These reports went out on inter­net mail­ing lists, and on com­mu­nity forums and blogs. 

To a great extent, vio­lence against nor­mal res­i­dents was lim­ited to armed rob­beries and mug­gings; the mur­ders were largely con­tained within the never-​ending drug turf wars. But a wave of slay­ings at the end of the year – begin­ning with the Dec. 28 mur­der of Hot 8 Brass Band drum­mer and music teacher Din­erral Shavers and end­ing with the Jan 4, 2007 home-​invasion shoot­ing of film­maker and Kat­rina aid activist Helen Hill — was the last straw. Hill was the final vic­tim in a spree of six mur­ders within a sin­gle 24-​hour period.

The fol­low­ing week saw a firestorm of com­mu­nity activism with every tool avail­able, espe­cially on the pub­lic forums and blogs of NOLA​.com, which had become the shared voice of the com­mu­nity dur­ing Kat­rina. Res­i­dents used this venue to orga­nize “Silence is Vio­lence,” a group that has become a per­ma­nent watch­dog over crime-​fighting efforts in New Orleans. Exactly one week after Hill’s death, thou­sands of marchers car­ried pic­tures of Shavers and Hill and other vic­tims of the post-​Katrina mur­ders in one of the largest protests in the city within recent memory.

While Mayor Ray Nagin and Police Chief War­ren Riley took their share of the heat, it was Dis­trict Attor­ney Eddie Jor­dan who was des­tined to fall. His office’s pros­e­cu­tions of mur­der sus­pects was minis­cule … crim­i­nals, in fact, joked about “mis­de­meanor mur­ders,” and the NOPD, fed up with see­ing sus­pects back on the streets, agreed with that assess­ment. Faced with the unre­lent­ing protests of Silence is Vio­lence and other res­i­dents, voiced mainly via the inter­net — and pres­sured by a grow­ing num­ber of politi­cians and other pub­lic fig­ures fac­ing col­lat­eral dam­age — Jor­dan resigned Oct. 30, 2007.

As New Orleans nears the fourth anniver­sary of Hur­ri­cane Kat­rina, it is still suf­fer­ing one of the high­est homice rates in the coun­try. Silence Is Vio­lence is still on watch.

Tagged as: citizen journalism, Community journalism, grassroots, homicide, New Orleans, NOPD