I’m a firm believer in data-driven policy making, but there’s always a catch: The data must be accurate. Mark Twain’s comment about data (though he didn’t coin it) — “lies, damn lies and statistics” — comes to mind whenever I read glowing media reports about crime trending downward in New Orleans.
For example, local media recently noted that New Orleans’ violent crime rate, which declined significantly in the second half of 2023, continued to decline in the first quarter of this year. Murders dropped 31% compared to the same time last year, and non-fatal shootings fell by 42%. Armed robberies plummeted 52%, and carjackings declined at a similar rate.
That’s good news as far as it goes, but those numbers gloss over two major categories of violent crime: sex crimes and domestic violence cases.
The Times-Picayune’s account did contain one short statement about sex crimes: “Felony rapes ticked down as well, for an 11% decrease.” There was no mention of domestic violence.
According to veteran civil rights attorney Mary Howell and a local researcher who is a rape survivor, there have been issues with NOPD's sex crimes data in recent years. The cops admitted as much on April 2 when NOPD issued updated data showing sex crimes were under-reported to the state and the FBI by more than 30% in both 2021 and 2022.
NOPD’s numbers were corrected because Howell and the researcher reported the discrepancies to police chief Anne Kirkpatrick. To the chief’s credit, she immediately ordered her department to hand count all sex crime reports for those years to get accurate data.
However, the updated numbers address only part of a much larger problem.
“We owe it to survivors to solve more of these crimes,” the researcher told me, noting that NOPD’s clearance rate for has been "less than 10%” since 2019.
That’s far below the roughly 35% national clearance rate between 2010 and 2022, according to the FBI.
“This is a very serious violent crime,” the researcher added, “and we’re not treating it the same way we treat other serious crimes.”
There’s the rub.
Everyone wants murders, shootings and carjackings to decline, but, as Howell puts it, “We cannot talk about violent crime trends in our community if we don’t include in that discussion sex crimes and domestic violence, both of which primarily affect women and children.”
To be clear, I believe many forms of violent crime are declining in New Orleans. I also believe that NOPD, like most other law enforcement agencies, does its best to accurately record and report the incidence of crime to the FBI and the public.
But reporting accurate data is just part of the picture. NOPD’s Special Victims Division is severely under-resourced and understaffed. That’s a main reason why the clearance rate for sex crimes is so low.
The New Orleans City Council and the mayor must make sure that NOPD’s budget adequately funds the Special Victims Division — and holds officers in that unit accountable for a higher clearance rate. That’s actually part of the federal consent decree already in place over NOPD.
And it’s what all survivors of rape and domestic violence deserve.
State lawmakers are trying to obliterate the Louisiana Public Records Law.
