National Guard troops and state police were dispatched to New Orleans today after the mayor appealed for reinforcements, fearing that criminals could be turning it back into America’s deadliest city.
Nearly ten months after Hurricane Katrina forced the city’s evacuation and rendered it murder-free, gang wars and drug conflicts are once again taking over the streets as the criminals return.
“The situation is urgent,” said Kathleen Blanco, the Governor of Louisiana, who sent 100 members of the National Guard, promising that 200 more and 60 state troopers will follow.
So far this year 53 people have been murdered — 36 of them since April 1, including five teenagers who were shot dead in an apparent drug dispute at the weekend.
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This is the first time that the National Guard has been used for law enforcement in America since the immediate aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, when 15,000 troops were sent in to assist the evacuation and protect flooded neighbourhoods. A curfew for juveniles has also been imposed.
“We’ve had enough,” Ray Nagin, the mayor, said today. “This is our line in the sand. We’re saying we’re not going any further.”
The extra manpower will be used to patrol some of the most heavily flood-damaged areas, many of which are still largely abandoned, freeing up the police force — which is still operating 20 per cent below its pre-Katrina strength — to concentrate on crime hotspots elsewhere in the community.
Before Katrina’s impact, on August 29 last year, New Orleans had recorded 202 killings, putting it on course to renew its status as America’s most violent city, with a murder rate ten times the national average.
After the population fled and gangs regrouped elsewhere, cities such as Houston, Texas — which took in 150,000 evacuees — felt the impact. The murder rate there rose 23 per cent last year compared with 2004, which police attributed largely to the influx.
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Meanwhile, New Orleans enjoyed a lull, prompting Mr Nagin to caution that his police force would not be “taking any crap” from returning criminals and that those who tried to return would face a “rude awakening”.
“We’ve got a drug-free, violence-free city now and our intent is to keep it that way,” he said last year, adding that law enforcement personnel were equipped with M16 rifles, attack dogs and “a couple of bazookas they’re saving for special people”.
Oliver Thomas, the president of New Orleans city council, said today: “If we don’t have wind knocking us down, we have shooters knocking us down.”
Before Katrina the total population of Greater New Orleans was 4.8 million. In Orleans parish, which forms the core of the metropolitan area and which suffered some of the worst flooding, only 42 per cent of the pre-Katrina population of 450,000 had returned home by last month, according to the Louisiana Recovery Authority.