I can't believe he said that.

We all know our mayor has a distorted view of reality, he seems to have brought Police Chief Warren Riley under control of his Reality Distortion Field. According to the Times Picayune;

Riley repeatedly criticized the study as being a money-maker for CQ Press, which examined statistics for six major types of crime in nearly 400 cities and found that, with more than 19,000 incidents of crime last year, New Orleans ranked number one, ahead of Camden, New Jersey, and Detroit, Mich.

"In the 1870s, New Orleans was considered one of the most violent cities in the country," Riley said. "Is it the water in the Mississippi? I don't know what it is...We know right now that crime is down in this city."

I wonder if the 1870 quote is correct. I wonder if he meant 1970 or if it was a misquote. If it is right Riley has reached a new apogee in historical unconsciousness and comparing apples and mangos. For the record New Orleans had a population of 191,418 in 1870, about 50% lower than it is now. I don't think the FBI was gathering crime statistics back then.

It's interesting to look at how our former Chief responded to a similar report on Atlanta in 2004. According to an L. A. times report;

Chief Richard Pennington, releasing an audit of police practices Friday, warned that Atlanta is the most dangerous city in America and criticized his department for routinely underreporting crime.

Pennington said he was shocked to find that Atlanta residents consider traffic a more serious problem than crime.

In addition, according to the report, police work is often shoddy. One Atlanta resident interviewed said she once placed 14 calls to the 911 system to report a burglary and that it took police 68 minutes to arrive.

The denial of the current administration is so obvious and predictable the the authors of the CQ Press "City Crime Rankings" issues a separate Note on New Orleans. It addresses indirectly the population shell game Nagin and Riley have ben playing.

Because of the year-to-year differences in New Orleans’s population, City Crime
Rankings reports the city’s crime numbers and rates for 2007 but does not compare those rates to 2006 or 2003. Finally, it should be noted that New Orleans would have the highest city crime comparison score even if the 2007 Census Bureau population estimates were the basis for the scoring.

I'm sure Nagin has some super secret numbers from Greg Rigmar, indicating that crime in New Orleans is in fact lower than it has been at any time in the past, especially 1870.

What is more troubling than the numbers is the apparent lack of concern on the part of the Chief.
He apparently thinks all that is needed a little adjustment.

Riley said that NOPD will "assist the judge with additional investigators" and will "tweak a little bit and just move forward" when it comes to any problems with bringing cases from arrest to conviction.

"The problem in the past is keeping them in jail," said Riley. "Identifying them and capturing them isn't the problem."

Chief, we need more than a little "tweaking".

How can he be so clueless? If he has no idea how to address the crime problem perhaps he should step aside and make room for someone who does have some ideas. Clearly more of the same isn't working.