Suspect in 2006 attempted murder a no-show at court

Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 1:54 PM     Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 1:56 PM

Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
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Nelson Benton, 25, the New Orleans man freed of murder charges by a jury last week, failed to appear at court Thursday to answer a newly filed charge of attempted murder.

“Was he served to be here?” Judge Ben Willard asked prosecutors, who said that he hadn’t been subpoenaed.

“Serve him and bring him,” said Willard, who signed a bench warrant for Benton on Tuesday on prosecutors’ specific request.

It was unclear Thursday morning if Benton’s defense team from the murder case was still representing him.

But attorney Perman Glenn III, of Springfield, Mass., who was court-appointed to represent Benton in 2006 as part of the “Hurricane Katrina Backlog Project,” fired off a statement Wednesday about Benton’s new charge.

“The district attorney’s office should stop wasting time and money filing charges against citizens based on flimsy evidence and sloppy police work,” Glenn wrote.

Glenn, who started representing Benton when he was facing the death penalty on a capital murder charge – Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s team last year reduced it to second-degree murder — said his firm is considering filing a federal civil rights violation lawsuit against the New Orleans Police Department and the DA’s office.

“We would seek one million dollars per year that Mr. Benton was unjustly incarcerated and, in addition, a ten million dollar punitive award,” Glenn wrote. Police and prosecutors are “continuing to harass Mr. Benton,” Glenn added. “He is trying to pick up the pieces of his life.”

Benton on Friday night was acquitted of a 2006 murder charge, after spending four years in jail awaiting trial for the killing of 29-year-old Antoinette Mosley in the 7th Ward.

The jury unanimously rejected the state’s case, even after hearing a woman testify that, in an unrelated incident, she believes Benton inadvertently wounded her with gunfire from an assault rifle.

Both cases date back to 2006.

District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office decided to go after Benton on attempted murder, filling a charge Monday at Criminal District Court.

In May 2006, Benton was booked with attempted murder, but never charged. Instead, he was “701-released,” meaning that time ran out for prosecutors to hold him in jail without an indictment.

Benton appeared at the Tulane Avenue courthouse Tuesday and, for a time, was handcuffed and seated in Judge Laurie White’s courtroom — the same place where he had spent a week-long trial before being acquitted Friday night.

White accused prosecutors of misconduct in trying to detain Benton, releasing the suspect and having a prosecutor, Brigid Collins, arrested and deemed in contempt of court.

7th Ward shooting leaves man dead, his brother and father wounded

Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 2:05 PM     Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 2:06 PM

Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
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Gunfire broke out at a 7th Ward intersection in broad daylight Thursday, leaving a 25-year-old man dead and his brother and father wounded, according to New Orleans authorities.

Randy J. Nathan, the father of two young children, died from multiple bullet wounds. Emergency Medical Services paramedics treated his 45-year-old father and 21-year-old brother before rushing them to LSU Interim Public Hospital, where they arrived in critical condition.

According to the New Orleans Police Department, the men rode a red Chevrolet truck past the intersection of A.P. Tureaud Avenue and Abundance Street about 9:45 a.m. when they were sprayed with bullets.

The 21-year-old was driving. Apparently trying to flee the shooter or shooters, he turned onto Abundance and sped about four blocks. He lost control of the truck near the street’s intersection with Paris Avenue, plowed into a light pole and stopped on the neutral ground in front of St. Leo the Great Catholic Church.

Nathan sat dead next to the passenger door by the time the truck stopped, coroner’s chief investigator John Gagliano said. Police said the father managed to jump out of the truck before the wreck. EMS spokesman Jeb Tate said the paramedics summoned to the scene found him at the intersection of A.P. Tureaud and North Broad Street, near where the shooting erupted.

Nathan’s brother, suffering from at least one wound, ran from the wreck about eight-tenths of a mile to the intersection of Trafalgar and North Rendon streets. He collapsed in front of a house before paramedics caught up with him, Young said.

Investigators on Thursday did not have a description of any suspects or details about a motive behind the shooting. Young said it was not immediately clear whether the gunfire came from someone standing in the street or driving in a car.

According to Nathan’s fiancee, 27-year-old Makivia Horton, he left behind their 4-year-old son and 3-year-old daughter. She said he was recently baptized into the Baptist faith and had spent the last days of his life at work, fixing cars alongside his father.

The three victims were heading to a car that needed repairing when they were attacked, she said.

“This is so hard,” Horton said, sobbing. “I can’t take it.”

2 New Orleans police officers indicted in 2005 Treme beating death

Published: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 12:14 PM     Updated: Thursday, July 29, 2010, 1:29 PM

Brendan McCarthy, The Times-Picayune
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Two New Orleans police officers face federal charges in the July 2005 death of a Treme man who died from various injuries, including a ruptured spleen, after police dropped him off at Charity Hospital.

Officer Melvin Williams was charged in a federal grand jury indictment with deprivation of rights under the color of law, resulting in the death of Raymond Robair. The charge alleges that Williams beat Robair with a baton, using unreasonable force.

Because Robair died as a result of the alleged beating, if convicted Williams faces a maximum penalty of life imprisonment.

A second count charges Williams and Matthew Dean Moore with obstruction of a federal investigation, saying they wrote false statements in their reports about how Robair was injured, writing up the case as merely a “medical incident” involving a man they encountered on Dumaine Street.

Both officers failed to tell medical personnel at Charity Hospital that Robair had been hit with a police baton by Williams, according to the indictment.

A third count charges Moore with making false statements to a federal agent on March 11 and March 16 of this year. Moore told FBI agents that Williams never harmed Robair, according to the indictment.

The charges against Williams and Moore means that federal prosecutors have now charged 18 New Orleans police officers with civil-rights offenses in recent months. Until now, all of the charges involve violence that took place in the chaotic days after Hurricane Katrina. However, Robair’s death occurred a month before the storm.

The death of the 48-year-old Robair was investigated by the New Orleans Police Department soon after the incident, but the internal investigation cleared both Moore and Williams of wrongdoing before Katrina struck the city in late August. The FBI also began a parallel investigation of the incident in August 2005, but the case faltered over the years, apparently picking up steam in recent months.

While witnesses in the neighborhood said they saw the officers beat Robair, the police report told a different version of events.  In a report, Williams and Moore maintained that they encountered an unknown man sbumgling around at North Robertson and Dumaine streets. The man needed medical attention — he was holding his chest — and the officers put him in a car to take him to the hospital, according to the report. Williams also claimed to have found a clear plastic bag nearby containing smaller baggies of cocaine.

Four days after murder acquittal, New Orleans man is back in court

Published: Tuesday, July 27, 2010, 10:51 PM     Updated: Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 7:02 AM

Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
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Nelson Benton walked out of Orleans Parish Criminal District Court on Friday free of a murder charge that had kept him in jail since the night a woman was shot to death in the 7th Ward on April 16, 2006.

The weeklong trial ended with a jury unanimously rejecting prosecutors’ circumstantial case against Benton that relied solely on the word of police officers.

But District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro isn’t done with Benton, who was back in court Tuesday.

On Monday, the DA’s office filed an attempted murder charge against Benton, 25, reviving a four-year-old allegation that he sprayed gunfire that wounded a bystander on April 9, 2006.

At first handcuffed, Benton on Tuesday was soon released and ordered to return Thursday for an arraignment before Judge Ben Willard.

Hours earlier, though, Judge Laurie White decided that prosecutors hadn’t played fair in summoning Benton to the courthouse, and found Assistant District Attorney Brigid Collins in direct contempt of court. White gave Collins 24 hours in jail and had deputies escort her to the back of her courtroom.

Benton went home on a small bond. Only the prosecutor went to jail.

The new charge against Benton is an old allegation. The allegation came out during the murder trial, even though it was about an incident unrelated to the night Antoinette Mosley, 29, died from two shots to the head from a spray of assault rifle gunfire, as she and her boyfriend rode through the 7th Ward.

In an effort to show that Benton had an assault rifle, prosecutors put Sheila Nelson on the stand last week to testify that she believes it was Nelson who phoned her after she was wounded to say he was sorry she had been shot.

Now, Cannizzaro wants to bring back the attempted murder case. It dates back to May 3, 2006, when police booked Benton with aggravated battery and attempted murder and accused him of having fired an assault rifle the day that Nelson was wounded.

After 60 days, though, Benton wasn’t charged and he was “701-released,” shorthand for cases in which suspects are freed only because the DA’s office hasn’t made a charging decision within a legal time limit.

The DA’s office, then run by Eddie Jordan, failed to charge Benton within the 60-day legal deadline.

Benton didn’t leave jail, though. He had already been arrested the night of April 16, 2006, after he approached an officer in the 7th Ward neighborhood to ask if it was safe to come out after the shooting that left Mosley dead and her boyfriend, Jermaine Washington, wounded.

On Tuesday, Benton showed up at court to find only prosecutors aware that he had a new charge.

The “alias capias” — or courthouse warrant — issued in Benton’s name hadn’t been signed by any judge, White found.

When Collins saw Benton leaving court, she told a deputy that he was wanted by the court, according to a witness. It was a fact, since once a charge is filed in court, the clerk’s office issues such a summons.

“It’s the ultimate rubber stamp,” a veteran trial lawyer said, of the warrant process once a charge is filed.

White, however, was faced with an unsigned — meaning invalid — warrant on the same defendant she watched a jury free from a murder charge. She blamed Collins, who is assigned to White’s Section A.

But within two hours, White had released Collins and suspended the 24-hour sentence. Cannizzaro’s office is appealing the contempt finding to the 4th Circuit Court of Appeal.

Slidell man arrested after domestic dispute hits the road

Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 5:00 AM

Jeff Adelson, The Times-Picayune
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A Slidell man allegedly chased his wife through their neighborhood in his truck, beat her so seriously that she left a bloody trail behind her and then forced her on a drive to eastern New Orleans before she was able to hit him with a wrench and escape, authorities said Tuesday.

Slidell police arrested Darren Wallace, who has a lengthy police record, Monday and booked him with second-degree kidnapping and aggravated criminal damage, Capt. Kevin Swann said.

The incident began on Bela Sera Drive on Saturday, when neighbors reported that Wallace and his wife were chasing each other around the neighborhood in their vehicles, Swann said. Neighbors reported that Wallace eventually blocked his wife’s vehicle in before striking it with his pickup, he said.

Both Wallace and his wife then left their vehicles and began fighting, Swann said. Witnesses said it appeared Wallace was the aggressor in the fight, he said.

Slidell police did not provide Wallace’s age.

The scene they left behind was covered in blood, and Wallace’s wife’s belongings were strewn across the roadway.

Wallace then forced his wife into his truck and fled the scene before police arrived, Swann said.

As they drove on Interstate 10 toward New Orleans, Wallace’s wife managed to call 911 and told the dispatcher she was being held against her will, Swann said. New Orleans police were sent out to try and find the vehicle as the woman began hitting her husband with a wrench in an attempt to get him to stop the truck, he said.

Wallace eventually drove to his aunt’s house in eastern New Orleans, left the truck and got a ride to a hospital, Swann said. His wife fled from the pickup and flagged down a motorist who gave her a ride back to her home in Slidell, where police were waiting to talk with her, he said.

Slidell police found Wallace’s truck at the intersection of Kingswood Drive and Ridgefield Drive in New Orleans, Swann said. The truck, which was splattered with blood, was towed back to Slidell, he said.

Wallace was found in the Slidell area Monday and arrested. He gave a full confession to investigators, Swann said.

He has previous arrests on charges including aggravated battery, burglary of an inhabited dwelling, battery on a law enforcement officer, robbery and theft, according to Slidell police.

FBI under investigation over test cheating

Published: Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 8:28 AM     Updated: Wednesday, July 28, 2010, 8:30 AM

The Associated Press
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The Justice Department is investigating whether hundreds of FBI agents cheated on a test of new rules allowing the bureau to conduct surveillance and open cases without evidence that a crime has been committed.

In some instances, agents took the open-book test together, violating rules that they take it alone. Others finished the lengthy exam unusually quickly, current and former officials said.

In Columbia, S.C., agents printed the test in advance to use as a study guide, according to a letter to the inspector general from the FBI Agents Association that summarized the investigation. The inspector general investigation also was confirmed by current and former officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of the case.

“There are similar stories for practically every office, demonstrating the pervasive confusion and miscommunication that existed,” Konrad Motyka, the association’s president, wrote May 13 in the letter obtained by The Associated Press.

Depending on the outcome of the investigation, agents could be disciplined or even fired.

FBI Director Robert Mueller was scheduled to testify Wednesday before Congress, where the new guidelines and the cheating scandal were expected to come up.

The inquiry threatens to be another black eye for the FBI as it tightens controls after years of collecting phone records and e-mails without court approval. The brewing scandal has already upended management at one of the nation’s largest field offices.

The FBI had no comment on the investigation late Tuesday.

Motyka’s letter urges the inspector general to focus instead on what he called the “systemic failure” of administering the test without consistent rules.

FBI agents should not be punished “because of a failure to effectively communicate the rules,” he wrote.

Such testing is unusual. FBI agents are required to take online training courses to stay current on bureau policies, but pass-fail tests are rare. In 2008, however, when the FBI received more leeway than ever in conducting surveillance and opening investigations, it assured Congress that it would train and test its agents to make sure they knew the rules.

The Domestic Investigations and Operation Guidelines allowed the FBI, for the first time, to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without evidence of a crime. Agents were also allowed to consider race when opening early inquiries. For instance, the FBI could look into whether the terrorist group Lashkar-e Taiba had taken hold in a city if it had a large Pakistani-American presence.

The new rules gave agents more flexibility to identify and prevent terrorist attacks. They also raised concerns that the FBI would use its new powers to monitor religious organizations or single out certain races.

The FBI has a checkered past when it comes to conducting surveillance. From the late 1950s though the early 1970s, the bureau opened hundreds of thousands of files on Americans and domestic groups, including anti-war organizations, civil rights groups and women’s movements. After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, the bureau collected U.S. phone and computer records without court orders.

Lawmakers and civil liberties groups were concerned that the new rules would allow racial profiling and other abuses. The FBI assured them they would not.

“We share the concern and have devoted considerable time and effort to educating our employees regarding how race and ethnicity can — and cannot — be used,” FBI counsel Valerie Caproni told Congress in December 2008.

But problems with the training and testing programs surfaced quickly. Last year, Assistant Director Joseph Persichini, the head of the FBI’s Washington field office that investigates congressional wrongdoing and other crime in the nation’s capital, retired amid a review of test-taking in his office.

Persichini took the test alongside two of his most senior managers and one of the bureau attorneys in charge of making sure the exam was administered properly, current and former officials said. The two agents who took the test with him have been moved to headquarters while the investigation continues.

At the time, the inquiry appeared limited to the Washington field office. But investigators have broadened their inquiry to cover the entire FBI. Among other things, they are focusing on agents who took the test particularly quickly, officials said.

New Orleans police burdened with three more homicide cases

Published: Saturday, July 24, 2010, 4:58 PM     Updated: Saturday, July 24, 2010, 10:44 PM

Ramon Antonio Vargas, The Times-Picayune
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New Orleans police were investigating three homicide cases, two of them new, on Saturday.

One victim died late Friday at the hospital almost a month after being shot in Central City. A second man died in a shooting incident at an eastern New Orleans house party early Saturday that left three other people wounded. Then, about six hours later, officers discovered the burned corpse of an adult man they believe was murdered.

Investigators on Saturday did not release details about motives or suspects in any of the cases, which pushed the city’s homicide toll this year to at least 116.

Police learned about the first death late Friday night when doctors at LSU Interim Public Hospital pronounced 25-year-old Raymond Marrero dead. According to coroner’s office chief investigator John Gagliano, Marrero was shot June 27 near the corner of South Rocheblave Street and Washington Avenue.

New Orleans paramedics took Marrero to the hospital for emergency surgery. Justin Edwards, 22, also was struck by bullets in the incident. He was taken to an emergency room by a bystander but died soon afterward, police said.

About 12:30 a.m. Saturday, officers responded to the house party shooting in the 4300 block of Dale Street. Henry Adams, 33, died before paramedics arrived to treat him, Gagliano said.

Emergency Medical Services workers rushed two men, ages 19 and 29, to the LSU hospital, and Officer Hilal Williams, a Police Department spokeswoman, said a bystander drove a 22-year-old woman to the hospital. Doctors on Saturday listed all three in stable condition.

Detectives discovered the third death about 6:30 a.m. after 911 operators received a call reporting the charred body of what appeared to be an adult Asian man was lying among trees and shrubbery off the 9000 block of Dwyer Road.

Gagliano said the coroner’s office had not determined the man’s identity on Saturday. The office would not know whether the man was killed before someone set fire to him until after pathologists performed an autopsy, he said.

However, Williams said police are treating the death as a homicide.

Defense attorney argues that Orleans DA brought ‘bad prosecution’ in 2006 homicide

Published: Friday, July 23, 2010, 5:16 PM     Updated: Friday, July 23, 2010, 7:29 PM

Gwen Filosa, The Times-Picayune
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Closing arguments began Friday in the trial of Nelson Benton, 25, who is charged with a 2006 murder and attempted murder, in which the victims were sprayed with assault rifle gunfire.

Prosecutors Blair Berthelot and Brigid Collins have mostly circumstantial evidence to pin the crime on Benton, who police arrested on the scene after he approached an officer asking if it was safe to come out.

Police put Benton in a police car and about one hour later, returned to the alleyway to find the murder weapon underneath a house near the spot where a 29-year-old woman had been shot twice in the head and her boyfriend wounded.

“He thought if he pretended to be the victim he could get away with murdering Antoinette Mosely and attempting to murder Jermaine Washington,” Bertholot told the jurors at Criminal District Court. “He is hiding directly across the street with the same weapon used to kill Antoinette and try to kill Jermaine. I ask you to remember that — reason and common sense.”

Defense attorney Jason Williams declared the case against Benton a careless, dirty attempt by law enforcement to clear another homicide in New Orleans by arresting the first young black male found near the crime scene.

“The scruffy, brown boy was no longer a victim, he became the perp,” said Williams. “If I’m not wearing a suit and I’m walking down the street, I’m a perp!” 

The trial was halted at about 3:15 p.m., so that one of the jurors could make a work meeting he had scheduled at City Hall.

During the trial, the jury has heard that the vehicle Mosley and Washington were riding in contained wads of cash and bags of marijuana, and that Washington had just been released from federal prison for crack cocaine dealing.

Much of the week-long trial has been about anything but who killed Mosley, as she and her boyfriend, Washington, drove home from working at a nearby grocery store.

Defense attorney Jason Williams sent out a press release Wednesday night accusing District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro’s office of “coercing” a 19-year-old man with a criminal record to lie on the stand that he has seen Benton tote an assault rifle in the neighborhood.

Judge Laurie White presided over hearings held outside the jury’s presence about the allegations surrounding Keith Nelson, who appeared in court wearing orange jail-issued clothing to say that a prosecutor offered to drop his cocaine possession charges if he accused Benton of having held the same type of rifle used in the 2006 murder.

Nothing in the court record, however, shows that Nelson ever got any deals with the DA’s office. He pleaded guilty to crack cocaine possession in 2008 and has picked up similar new charges since.

Nelson’s mother testified that after she had been wounded by gunfire in an unrelated incident before the Mosley homicide, she believes it was Benton who phoned her to tell her he was sorry she had been shot.

Prosecutors hoped to show that Benton has a history of violence. The jury can’t hear that Benton in 2006 had just been released from prison for an armed robbery conviction.

Without scientific evidence or eyewitnesses linking Benton to the murder, Williams had a field day accusing police and prosecutors of framing his client, who he depicted as merely a passer-by dodging the 20 gunshots that night.

“This scruffy kid had a story to tell that could very easily had never been told,” Williams told the jury in his closing argument. “It’s a very short story in New Orleans: He was walking down the street and heard shots and got down, like anybody would. He ducked down in an alley. He saw a man and a badge and cried out for help.”

Williams, who unsuccessfully ran for district attorney in 2008, delivered an emotional argument in which he told jurors that he was court-appointed to represent Benton.

Prosecutors, he said, were just trying to rack up one more conviction.

“He isn’t a number to me,” Williams said, of his client. “He could be my son! He could be me!” 

Williams said that someone may go to jail when this trial is over, but that it should be someone wearing a police badge -drawing a prosecutor’s objection, which Judge White sustained.

Four arrested in undercover operation at Fat City bar

Published: Friday, July 23, 2010, 6:40 PM     Updated: Friday, July 23, 2010, 10:34 PM

Michelle Hunter, The Times-Picayune
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Four employees at a Fat City strip club have booked on charges ranging from prostitution to hustling cocaine, making the establishment the next target in Jefferson Parish’s campaign to reclaim Metairie’s wayward entertainment district.

Dan Tornabene, 41, manager of Illusions Gentlemen’s Club, 3551 18th St., Metairie, was taken into custody Thursday along with bar employees Anastasia Brown, 22, of New Orleans, Hannah Palmer, 29, of Ruston and Arlisha Dedeaux, 23, of Metairie, according Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office arrest reports.

Two other men, Steven LaCroix, 38, of Shreveport and Jason Wilson, 29, of New Orleans, were booked on drug-related charges when investigators with the department’s vice squad and narcotics division conducted an undercover operation and served a search warrant at the strip club just after 1:30 a.m.

Authorities also booked the employees with a slew of parish and state violations related to alcoholic beverage outlet permits. Jefferson Parish used similar violations to revoke the license of another Fat City bar in April, an effort spearheaded by Councilwoman Cynthia Lee-Sheng. She said Friday that she intends to introduce a resolution to consider the revocation of Illusions’ permit at the Aug. 18 Parish Council meeting.

Illusions employees Dedeaux and Palmer are accused of selling cocaine to undercover Sheriff’s Office investigators on the night of the sting. LaCroix took part in Palmer’s transaction, according to arrest reports. Dedeaux and Brown also allegedly offered to have sex with the undercover deputies in exchange for $50.

All three women are accused of violating state and parish laws pertaining to “b-drinking or b-girl drinking.” The laws identify b-girls or b-drinkers as people employed or allowed to ask patrons to buy them drinks. The practice is illegal.

Tornabene was arrested as the manager on duty while all of the acts occurred. When taken into custody, investigators found a bag of white powder that later tested positive for cocaine in his pants pocket, the arrest report said.

No one answered telephone calls made to Illusions on Friday.

Earlier this year, Sheng resurrected the parish’s Alcoholic Beverage Outlet Committee in a charge to clean up Fat City and address the problems that authorities say stem from nuisance bars and strips clubs. The group reviewed and revoked the liquor license of its first target, the Forum Club, 3208 N. Arnoult Road, in April after a series of arrests for underage drinking.

Sheng said the parish now has 60 days to bring the holder of Illusions’ liquor license before the committee for a review. The committee will then make a recommendation to the council on whether to revoke, suspend or leave the license in place.

“There’s going to be opposition to what we’re trying to do in Fat City, but a lot of good businesses want this to happen,” she said.

Tornabene, of 4109 Severn Ave., Metairie, was booked at the Jefferson Parish Correctional Center in Gretna with possession and distribution of coca leaf derivatives, three counts of prohibited act in an business with an alcohol permit, two counts of illegal acts in a business with an alcohol permit and three counts of b-drinking.

He also was booked with these violations of the parish code: three counts of violating an alcohol permit, two counts of permitting prostitution in a business with an alcohol permit and b-girl drinking. He was released Thursday on a $20,000 bond.

Brown, of 1824 Hendee St., New Orleans, was booked with prostitution, b-drinking, resisting an officer and illegal acts in a business with an alcohol permit. Her parish violations include prostitution in an business with an alcohol permit and b-girl drinking.

Palmer and LaCroix were booked with distribution of coca leaf derivatives, Palmer was also booked with b-drinking, b-girl drinking and state and local violations of prohibited acts in a business with an alcohol permit.

Wilson, of 1809 Joann Place, New Orleans, was booked with possession of marijuana.

Dedeaux, of 2909 Lake Villa Drive, Metairie, was booked with distribution of coca leaf derivatives, possession of alprazolam, possession of marijuana, prostitution, b-drinking, b-girl drinking, prostitution in a business with an alcohol permit, violating an alcohol permit and two counts of prohibited acts in a business with an alcohol permit.

New Orleans murder rate remains highest in the nation

Published: Monday, May 24, 2010, 10:05 PM     Updated: Tuesday, May 25, 2010, 10:46 AM

Brendan McCarthy, The Times-Picayune

Michael DeMocker, The Times-Picayune archiveThe number of violent crimes reported to the New Orleans Police Department in 2009 fell about 9 percent, while the number of murders remained relatively flat at 174. This homicide scene on D’Hemecourt Street was photographed May 19.Despite some declines in violent crime, New Orleans continues to have the highest murder rate in the nation, according to an FBI report released Monday.

The FBI’s uniform crime report, which culls data from law enforcement agencies across the country, shows that violent crime and property crime in the nation, as well as in New Orleans, dropped last year when compared with 2008.

The number of violent crimes reported to the New Orleans Police Department in 2009 fell about 9 percent, while the number of murders remained relatively flat at 174. The city also experienced reductions in all the property crime categories.

Still, New Orleans is far deadlier than other cities.

Violent, property crime statistics in 2008 vs. 2009
Using the recently revised U.S. census population estimate of 336,425, the city had a per-capita murder rate of about 52 per 100,000 people in 2009. That’s down from the two previous years, where rates ranged from 57 to 71 per 100,000 people, depending on which population estimates were used.

A shifting populace has made crime rates difficult to nail down, but even using the most generous estimates, New Orleans has ranked among the nation’s most murderous cities for several years.

Richmond, Calif., a city of nearly 103,000 that sits north of Oakland, has the second-highest per-capita rate at 46 murders per 100,000 residents. Next are St. Louis and Detroit, both of which have a per-capita rate of about 40. Baltimore is fifth on the list with 37.

Baton Rouge, with a rate of 34 murders per 100,000 people, has the sixth-highest rate in the country.

New Orleans Police Superintendent Ronal Serpas, just weeks into his new position, said the department is about to “open up” and allow the public to see how crime is counted. Last week he allowed citizens for the first time ever into weekly district and department-wide Comstat meetings, where supervisors discussed reported crime and recent trends.

Serpas also noted that numerous victimization surveys show that a large number of crimes, roughly half, go unreported.

“Our mission is to find out about more crime, not less crime,” Serpas said. “The more accurate your information is about crime … the better you can prepare a response, the better you can prepare the community for what your full needs are. We are specifically asking the community to tell us about all the crime. Every police chief in America would rather report a 100 percent increase in crimes if they knew every single one was counted finally.”

Though the FBI discourages the media and others from ranking cities by crime rates, the annual report is most comprehensive listing of reported crimes in cities across the country.

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