Interesting website of the day

Linkedin


What is Linkedin and how to use it.

Nola Crime Mapping - Preparing for tomorrow's march

Well, it's been a busy year in Noladishu. Murders, shootings, and stabbings galore! The red crosses are murders, the yellow exclamation points are shootings or stabbings, the police shields are major crimes, and the houses are break ins. I'm trying something new, too. I'm trying to put descriptions of suspects in neighborhoods with crime trends.


Downtown has been especially dangerous; several shootings on Bourbon and in Treme. One small problem, though. Some of my sources of information are getting tight. I leaned on cops posting on Nola.com's Crime and Safety forum and PANO's message board. I think the NOPD brass is trying to clamp down on disgruntled cops slipping messages out into the community. SHOOT THE MESSENGER! That's their philosophy, especially when the heat is on.

Go to tomorrow's rally and let the politicians know how you feel.

.KMZ File hosted on Rapidshare

BTW- Does anyone know a better way to post files for download than Rapidshare? Please let me know.

Canal Street at night

Just a cool photo I took of Canal Street at night. I've had a few depressing posts recently, so here's a lighter one.

Nola Against Crime

Went to the meeting in the Marigny yesterday. There was quite a turnout. Unfortunately, I couldn't get inside because of the crowd, but the day was not wasted. I believe just showing up was important.

Bumped into a fellow Ben Franklin High School grad. Anytime there's any sort of community action in New Orleans, there's sure to be at least one Ben Franklin grad involved.

I also got a chance to show off my crime mapping. One interesting thing was I took down a police report that, according to the guy I talked to, the NOPD refused to take. Here's what gets me: the criminal has a similar modus operandi to the Helen Hill murderer. This could be the description of the Helen Hill murderer!!! The NOPD didn't take the police report, so it's up to little old me.

Here is exactly as I wrote it down:


4121 Dauphine

6 jan 2007

9:07 AM

Attempted Home Invasion

He was 6'2", slim build, light completion african American, looked like snoop dog, black teardrop tattoo under right eye, red t-shirt, black pants, blue baseball cap

softspoken


"I was looking for Mr. Joe"

Went up Maizant, hung a left or right on Burgundy (went towards CBD)

On foot

(Taken manually at Crime Forum- Sunday)


Please pardon my shorthand. I could lengthen the description, but I wanted to keep it true to source. Very detailed description of the criminal.

I noticed from talking to several people there that there have been several attempted home invasions in the Marigny recently with similar MO's to the Helen Hill murder. Hmm, could there be a connection?

My first concious thought this morning

My alarm goes off. I slap the snooze button and get back under the covers. It was nice and quiet. I slip towards sleep.

POW! POW!

2 shots ring out in Treme.* About 5 seconds later, sirens from the two district police stations near me start up.

I think, hmmm, should I get under the bed in case a bullet comes flying through my window, or should I just say fuck it and keep sleeping.

And that is shows why I named my blog Noladishu...


* Someone was shot on coming out of Club Fabulous (a notoriously shady establishment on the other side of Armstrong Park).


PS- In case you're wondering, I stayed in bed.

2007 Total Crime

I'm going to make my 2007 Crime Map as detailed as possible with data from as many sources as possible. I'm also breaking down crimes into categories.


.KMZ File Hosted on Rapidshare

2007 Murder Totals (-8PM Jan 8th):
Orleans: 10 Murders
Jefferson: 2 Murders

Here's what the City's Public Crime Map looks like. Notice the last time it was updated.

And here's Houston's.

2006 Crime Map

This is about all I can do. I've gone through the archives of a bunch of sources, but there's too many crimes for me to get them all. I've got a nice sample, though.

I'm now concentrating all my efforts on 2007. I'm pumping as many sources as possible and hope to have the best possible crime mapping for 2007.

.KMZ File Hosted on Rapidshare

2007 Murders Map 2

Well, I didn't think I'd be updating this one so soon, but I guess I have to. There are now 8 murders in Orleans Parish on the year, plus one in Jefferson Parish.

Now, the question is what are we going to do about it? This Sunday, there will be a meeting of the Marigny Community Group at 2700 Charters Street starting at 1 PM. Even if you don't live in the Marigny, PLEASE show your support and show up.

Next up will be a march on City Hall next Thursday. Now, I've heard some people already dissing the idea and calling it a waste, but I strongly disagree and here's why:

In the mid-90's, New Orleans was experiencing a crime wave as bad as this city has ever seen. The coup de grace was a horrific murder at the Louisiana Pizza Kitchen. It was the last straw for the citizens of New Orleans. Citizens, both black and white, marched on City Hall. Morial, under severe pressure, gave Pennington Carte Blanche to clean up the NOPD. Officers were given substantial raises. He also instituted CompStat (which I'm trying to replicate in my own improvisational way). Morale amongst the street cops rose. Crime plummeted. Other factors were involved, but the results are undeniable. In 1999, there were only 158 murders. That's fewer than last year with more than double the population.

That's why it's wrong to say it isn't fixable. IT'S BEEN DONE ONCE BEFORE. WE CAN DO IT AGAIN. APATHY TOWARDS CRIME WILL KILL THIS CITY AS SURELY AS THE THUGS RUNNING AROUND WITH AK'S.

City Council Bans Outbursts

Some civility and a little less shouting is a welcome change. The reaction on Mama D's face when she's asked, "well, do you think your outbursts have been disruptive?" is PRICELESS. In case you forgot what a charming presence she is, she's the one that drove Shelly Midura to tears.

2007 Murders Map

In case you haven't heard, there have been 6 murders in 2004 thus far and it's only January 4th.

I put together another Google map from news reports. This one has a color overlay of neighborhoods. There's a problem, though. When going through the news reports, I came up with 7 murders. I'm think the report at Josephine is either "just" a shooting (no murder) or is related to the murder 3 blocks away on LaSalle. Anyone know for sure? I don't want to scream conspiracy, but did people just sort of miss one?

Shortly after 12:30 a.m., officers responded to calls of shots being fired in the 2100 block of Josephine Street. They found an unidentified man lying in an alleyway with a handgun nearby. He’d been shot several times and was pronounced dead at the scene.


UPDATE: Yep, it's 7 murders on the year. At this rate, approximately 1 out of every 300 New Orleanians will be murdered by the end of the year. Wow, that really drives it home. 1 out of every 300. It's almost impossible for the killing to continue at that rate for an entire year, but it shows you how bad the crime has gotten. Oh yeah, and don't forget that the summer months are always the most violent.

New Orleans, Repeating Old Mistakes

MSNBC Article

The often quoted definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

At the end of the article, they talk about how people are rebuilding on the lowest lying areas of the city without raising their homes and "just praying it doesn't happen again."

Wonderful.

Nola Crime Mapping - Update 1

(Left, Crime Overview)

I'm working up a complete, independent set of crime statistics for the New Orleans area. I think I got almost every major crime from August 2006 to the end of the year. I got a few before that, but there's just so many, it's hard to keep up. I'm already starting on 2007, so I'll keep that up from the get go.

Google Earth File Hosted on Rapidshare.com

If you have Google Earth, you can download the above file to have a complete description of every major crime. The plain red crosses are major crimes. The crosses with the red circles behind them are murders. The houses yellow and white houses are residence robberies. The yellow post it notes are reports of criminal activity posted on NolaAgainstCrime.com. It's really an amazing tool.

Below are zoomed in screenshots of the most dangerous areas of New Orleans (Orleans and Jefferson Parish):


(Central City - Click to Enlarge)


(6th Ward {aka- Treme} and 7th Ward)


(Jefferson City - Jefferson Parish)


(Kenner - Jefferson Parish)


(West Bank)


Here's some of what I've learned thus far:
* Different crimes happen in different areas. Muggings tend to occur in the Quarter, CBD, and near Broadway (Uptown). Residence robberies tended to occur Uptown and Mid-City. Murders tended to occur in Central City, Treme, 7th Ward, Kenner, and the West Bank. Jefferson City was extremely violent, which surprised the hell out of me.
* The most dangerous street in New Orleans is Clara Street between Washington and downtown.
* There's usually a cluster of murders at the beginning of each month. I've been told by others that this is generally accredited to payday.
* Holidays are extremely dangerous (look no further than 3 murders on New Year's Eve).
* "Jack frost is the best policeman" bears some truth. Crime was almost non-existent during the past few cold snaps (or at least the more severe ones).
* The safe areas of the city include Metairie, most of Uptown and the Garden District, Algiers Point, and Lakeview. There are a lot of other areas that aren't as dangerous as you think, but I wouldn't term them as "safe."

Lost? Not sure about what neighborhood is what? Check this link out to learn about the neighborhoods of New Orleans, including their borders.

----------------------------

This is a continuous effort. I hope to make this a regular contribution. If you want to help out, let me know. The more people we have working on this, the better.

NY Times Slideshow

New Orleans Public Housing from the perspective of an architect.

Interesting and well put together, though I don't necessarily agree with everything he says.

First post of 2007

How do you know your new QB sucks?

You lose every game he starts.

His name is Aaron Brooks.