The flowers of mourning are wilting outside the pizza kitchen turned murder scene. The candles in tribute to three restaurant workers slain on the Sunday after Thanksgiving no longer flicker. And the poster urging citizens to call the mayor’s office – “Say the word death and hang up” – has been taken down from the entrance.
Still, a gloom hangs over the eatery, a pall that spreads over the French Quarter where bartenders and waiters remember their murdered friends and vow that the deaths will not be in vain.
Fifteen murders in the 10 days after Thanksgiving have set the Big Easy on edge. Even in the homicide capital of America, where a day rarely passes without killing, this bloodshed is too much to bear.
“It got to the heart of all of us,” said Melvin Jones, who runs a bed and breakfast in the French Quarter. “They were like us, people who worked and socialized in the French Quarter. It’s just devastating because it shows how violence is becoming us. We knew we had to stand up and say ‘no more'” after the triple murder.
Now, as more than 80,000 fans begin arriving from Florida for Thursday’s Sugar Bowl football game, New Orleans finds itself in the midst of a crime crackdown.
More than 400 officers from around Louisiana have been deployed. The understaffed, corruption-laden police force is being reorganized. And the governor has thought aloud about setting National Guard troops on street corners.
Residents and merchants have revolted with demonstrations, vigils and marches on City Hall to demand more money for crime-fighting.
At stake is the city’s lifeblood: tourism.
In the next 100 days, New Orleans will be host to the Sugar Bowl, the Super Bowl, Mardi Gras and college basketball’s Final Four tournament.
Tourism officials estimate the events are worth a whopping $5 billion to the city’s economy, which thrives off 11 million visitors a year.
Fans of the University of Florida and Florida State University – rivals whose teams are competing in the Sugar Bowl – will be protected by city patrols on foot, horses and bicycles. New Orleans promoters vow that their city will not become another Miami, which saw a 20 percent drop in tourism a few years ago after a string of carjackings and murders of foreign visitors.
New Orleans’ image is already suffering, not only from the rash of murders, but also from an accident this month in which a freighter slammed into the Riverwalk shopping mall and injured dozens of shoppers.
“God forbid that anything serious happens to one of those tourists from Florida,” said Tom Hohan, who handles publicity for a New Orleans economic and development agency. “We hate to think of the repercussions throughout the country.”
Said Lt. Marlon Defillo, a New Orleans police spokesman: “We are going to do everything we can to make sure that people from Florida are not victims of crime. And I do mean everything.”
The slayings at the French Market’s Louisiana Pizza Kitchen on Dec. 1 galvanized locals who for decades had silently tolerated murder as if it were an uncontrollable plague.
Four pizza workers were herded into the kitchen’s freezer and shot numerous times in the head. Then the assailants took $2,000 from the cash register. A single survivor accused a newly hired dishwasher, and he, as well as three other suspects, are in custody.
The homicides came a few days after an executive was abducted in the same area on Thanksgiving eve, then robbed and killed. A downtown parking lot attendant who parked the woman’s car every working day was charged in that slaying.
As the murder toll mounted this month, residents took to the streets. The pizza kitchen turned into a rallying point and became a macabre shrine for the venting of frustrations and anger. Merchants wore black armbands in their memory while marching on City Hall.
“It’s public safety, stupid,” read a popular sign.
Crude banners hung from the quaint Victorian architecture: “Warning, tourists: The French Quarter is a High Crime Area.”
“Never before had citizens cried out like that,” said Terry Ebert, who runs the New Orleans Police Foundation, a business-financed group that has spent more than $700,000 to bolster the city’s beleaguered police. “There became a sense of urgency that the city was not going to tolerate this level of violence ever again.”
City officials have taken notice. They have pledged another $9 million for policing next year, increasing the law enforcement budget to $94 million. By mid-December they agreed to raise utility fees to provide another $4 million to hire more officers, administer better training and increase patrols. The City Council is expected to approve an additional $10 million in January for policing.
“Something good seems to be coming out of a terrible negative,” said Treanor Marks, manager of the pizza kitchen. “But think how many people had to die before this happened.”
New Orleans has a murder rate more than twice as high as Miami, five times that of New York City, twice that of South Africa, and eight times the national average. In 1994, 421 people were murdered; 364 murders were posted last year; and 343 people were murdered in 1996 as of Saturday.
The high murder rate can be traced to a volatile combination of conditions that makes New Orleans alluring, but also dangerous.
Since the swashbuckling days of French pioneers, New Orleans boasted of its high tolerance for sin. Even today, tourists can walk around the French Quarter with booze in a paper cup in hand. Beer is sold at drive-throughs – 24 hours a day.
And it doesn’t have to be Mardi Gras for police to look the other way at displays of hedonism that would result in incarceration in most of America.
In areas surrounding the merriment of the French Quarter, poor housing projects are infested with crack dealers for whom murder is part of their trade.
For years, though, the police force has been unwilling or unable to deal with murders. Many cases went unsolved and even today there are 49,000 outstanding warrants for criminals.
Since arriving from Washington, D.C., in 1994, police superintendent Richard Pennington has been on a mission to clean up and professionalize the department.
In the last three years, 50 officers have been arrested in connection with crimes such as murder, rape, drug trafficking and bribery. More than 250 officers have been forced from the department by Pennington: Half of them were fired.
Pennington vows to hire at least 200 more officers in the next year, bringing staffing to nearly 1,600.
Still, some crime-weary residents are skeptical. Surveys show the murder rate here is high among repeat criminals.
“I don’t see how just adding more police will solve the problem,” said Michelle Dumas, whose doll shop on Royal Street is fortified with metal bars.
Officials are claiming tourists have little to worry about. Most of the crime against them is minor, they say. Few tourists are murdered, although in one case last year a visitor was killed during a holdup.
And two years ago, when Florida also played Florida State in the Sugar Bowl, a tourist from Boston was killed when a reveler fired a bullet in the air to celebrate. The bullet struck the woman in the skull.
Still, city surveys show that few tourists mention New Orleans’ murder rate as a concern.
“It’s not even on the radar screen,” said Tim Ryan, a University of New Orleans professor who does surveys for the convention industry.
For the most part, fans from Florida seem oblivious to the rash of murders here. Lynn Spinella, who heads a Florida State booster club in Broward County, knows of no one who has canceled a trip to New Orleans because of crime fears.
And Florida student president Brian Burgoon, a third-year law student, says the fun of New Orleans outweighs its dangers.
“When I’m in New Orleans I don’t think I’m going to get murdered,” said Burgoon, who will be making his sixth visit to the city this week.
When compared to Tempe, Ariz., where Florida played for but lost the national championship last year, New Orleans is more fascinating, Burgoon says.
“You can go to a bar at 5 in the morning and start your day, or finish your day. New Orleans is just a hundred times more fun.”
