By Kaitlin Rust | WVUE | January 18, 2022
NEW ORLEANS (WVUE) – Police investigate another armed carjacking Uptown on Freret near Carrollton, an area of the city that saw five carjackings over the weekend.
He’s been trying to keep his mind off of it, saying it angers him. He’s still shaken up from having what he describes as a TEC-9 shoved in his face. That’s why this carjacking victim would like to remain anonymous.
NOPD says it happened around 11:17 p.m. Monday night. The victim tells me he was getting out of his car, a 2009 white Chevy Traverse, when a man shoved a gun in his face, demanding the keys, and that he step out of the car while not looking at him.
The victim shrugged and said that’s just how it goes now.
“Just this Saturday, we had eight carjackings, five of which occurred Uptown in the Second District,” Superintendent Shaun Ferguson said Monday. “We’ve identified three individuals and arrested three individuals in three of these, and we definitely believe we’re going to have more arrests to come with that.”
Ferguson said there has been an unusual uptick in carjackings over the last couple of months.
Neighbors Uptown told me they are disturbed with more than seven this year so far in their area. City-data shows last year there were only three at this point.
“Knowledge is power in all of this,” Rafael Goyeneche with the Metropolitan Crime Commission said.
The Metropolitan Crime Commission has begun a public weekly crime bulletin, showing you the year-to-date changes in the major categories of violent crime in Orleans Parish since 2019, including maps to show you when and where violent crime is happening this year, so far.
“You have to know that you have a problem before you can diagnose and fix it,” Goyeneche said. “I think having this type of information available to the public and the policymakers, like the politicians, is critically important to document the extent of the problem and start to craft solutions.”
The MCC’s numbers paint a terrible picture. 36 carjackings since the start of the year compared to 14 this same time last year and just three in 2019.
“This is something that the public was ready for because we just announced it yesterday and the response has been overwhelming to this,” Goyeneche said. “It shows that the public wants to know and they want something done about it. The timing is perfect because we have a new Council and they’ve already called a special series of crime meetings.”