+- Waukegan Talk (http://wauktalk.com/forum)
+-- Forum: Politics (http://wauktalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=13)
+--- Forum: Politics (http://wauktalk.com/forum/forumdisplay.php?fid=7)
+--- Thread: Compstat and New Orleans (/showthread.php?tid=978)
Compstat and New Orleans - ClassicalLib17 - 05-22-2010
The proof is in the pudding and Compstat is very effective. Like I said before, our current chief of police did his master's thesis on Compstat, and the only thing holding us back are the warm and fuzzy creatures that run our city. Take the time to research Compstat and call your alderman and mayor and urge them to do likewise. We are never going to fix this community until we make crime and community disrespect, job#1. By the way, I spoke to a Mundelein Deputy Chief and they employ it to a certain degree; why can't we?
Nicole Gelinas
Whoâs Resurrecting New Orleans?
Mitch Landrieu sees a problem that city government can fix.
Mitch Landrieu, who takes office as New Orleansâs first elected post-Katrina mayor in May, is already proving to be a radicalâin a good way. âThe city of New Orleans is not safe,â he said in February. âWhen New Orleans is best known for crime, something is drastically wrong. That has to change.â
Landrieuâs calm assertion may not sound like much to someone living in a city used to competent policing. But itâs a revolution for New Orleans. The cityâs long-held tolerance of poisonous violence was rooted in some combination of the following beliefs, not all of them in harmony with one another. First, crime isnât that high; itâs a national media exaggeration, notwithstanding a per-capita murder rate thatâs eight times New Yorkâs figure. Second, crime is high, but the criminal-justice system canât do anything about it; crime is a by-product of illiteracy and poverty. Third, crime is high, but you shouldnât worry; if youâre not dealing drugs, you probably wonât end up dead.
But Katrina washed away these old attitudes. After the massive hurricane hit nearly five years ago, New Orleanians decamped to other cities and saw that these governments adequately protected public safety. When they returned, they decided that they were working too hard fixing up their houses and neighborhoods to let their city slip back into the old ways. New residents, too, demand some basic protections from the city in which they have invested so much. Thereâs a strange new sense of self-sufficient competence infusing New Orleans, and citizens are trying to hold their government to the same standard.
To meet these new expectations, Landrieu says that heâll hire a top-notch police chief. Heâs taking advice from NYPD commissioner Ray Kelly and former LAPD chief William Bratton on this front. Achieving progress on crime will also require imperviousness to opportunistic critics. New Orleansâs police and prosecutors must apply techniques such as stop-and-frisks and automatic prison sentences for illegal-weapons possession. Adopted elsewhere, these tactics have cut violence. But theyâve also attracted national race-baiters.
Landrieu, though, can keep the public on his side. Most black citizens voted for himâgiving him a landslide victoryâpartly because theyâre fed up with crime and partly because they remember the legacy of his father, Moon Landrieu, who, as mayor in the seventies, led white political support for desegregation.
The younger Landrieu can do even more for civil rights. If he cuts murder and robbery rates, heâll save the lives of hundreds of black people over his term in office and open up economic opportunity to tens of thousands more.
Nicole Gelinas, a City Journal contributing editor and the Searle Freedom Trust Fellow at the Manhattan Institute, is a Chartered Financial Analyst and the author of After the Fall.
EMAIL ARTICLE | PRINTER-FRIENDLY | RESPOND TO ARTICLE