Tulane study puts Orleans murder rate as highest in nation

NEW ORLEANS – A new study by Tulane University demographer Mark VanLandingham puts New Orleans’ per capita murder rate at 96 per 100,000 people last year the highest in the nation.
There have been various other estimates of the per-capita murder rate, based on various population estimates in the city after Hurricane Katrina. VanLandingham’s method takes into account the large change in New Orleans’ population over the course of the year. That method takes into account the far lower population of the city in the early months of the year.
In his study, VanLandingham used a group of the most widely accepted population estimates to estimate a month-by-month breakdown of the number of people in the city.
New Orleans Police Department spokesman Sgt. Joe Narcisse said police officials look at the murder rate but question whether any true rate can be established. “The change in our population makes it hard to quantify with any degree of certainty,” he said.
Narcisse added that holding the title of the country’s most murderous city damages New Orleans’ reputation. “It hurts the city, and it hurts us all, when we look at murder rates with those per capita numbers,” he said.
Police Superintendent Warren Riley has previously said migrant workers living and working in the city are not being counted in such estimates. He has estimated the number of people in the city as high as 275,000. He has cautioned that the city could get an “awful reputation” based on miscalculations in population.
Peter Scharf, a criminologist at the University of New Orleans, said VanLandingham’s method makes the most sense.
“What the police have done is use year-end stats and year-end population to push the rate down,” Scharf said. “This study makes the rate more precise.”
Scharf said New Orleans’ rate far exceeds that of other large cities. However, he sees a more worrisome sign in the study. “Now matter how your parse it, we are murder city, murder capital,” he said. “But forget it, let’s move on. The second issue is that we have an ascending murder rate. It’s going up. That’s more worrisome.”