By Chris Miller | WWL | June 7, 2022
How can NOPD deal with surging violence and wanton disregard for the law like many in New Orleans witnessed Sunday? It will likely take a lot of creative thinking.
New Orleans Metropolitan Crime Commission President Rafael Goyeneche says there is no short-term fix, and what we saw on Sunday is going to become more frequent. But he says that doesn’t mean the NOPD is helpless.
“What’s going to have to happen is the police department is going to have to create a specialized task force to be able to be deployed for issues like this that start to pop up,” Goyeneche said. “That’s where I think intelligence-driven policing, strategic policing, are going to be so important.”
But he also says NOPD will have to determine its priorities and dedicate resources accordingly.
“Everything that they choose to do means that there’s something a little bit less that they’re going to be able to do,” he explained. “The politically popular thing to say, we’ve heard the mayor say: ‘we just have to do more with less.’ Well they can’t do more with less. They’re going to do less with less.”