Thousands march to protest New Orleans murders
Source: Reuters
By Russell McCulley NEW ORLEANS, Jan 11 (Reuters) - Several thousand people marched to New Orleans' city hall on Thursday to protest a wave of murders that has gripped the city and put in danger its halting recovery from Hurricane Katrina. They angrily urged local officials to do more to stop crime and to speed up the pace of rebuilding the city that was 80 percent flooded when Katrina struck on Aug. 29, 2005. "We have come to lodge our complaint," Reverend J.C. Raphael told the crowd. "We have come to declare that a city that could not be drowned in the floods of a storm will not be drowned in the blood of its citizens." Large sections of New Orleans remain damaged and mostly deserted 16 months after the storm. Tourism, the lifeblood of the local economy, is down and less than half of the city's pre-storm population of 480,000 has returned after fleeing Katrina. New Orleans had one of the nation's highest murder rates before Katrina and still does. In 2006, 161 people were killed, giving the city a murder rate more than four times the national average, according to FBI statistics. There have been 8 murders since Jan. 1., with the recent killings of a local musician and a female documentary film-maker in particular sparking anger. Several speakers at the rally expressed concern that the violence will discourage both visitors and residents from returning to New Orleans. Nakita Shavers, the younger sister of musician Dinerral Shavers, who was gunned down in his car two weeks ago, choked back tears as she called on citizens to "stop the violence." "I'm attending college right now, and my intention is to come back and become a prominent politician for this city," she said. "But the sad part is, if the violence keeps up the way that it is, I won't have a city to come back to." Mayor Ray Nagin and police chief Warren Riley said this week police would use traffic checkpoints, crime cameras and beefed up street patrols to try to bring order to the city. They attended Thursday's rally, but only listened as many of the speakers criticized them for inaction. Nagin later told reporters he would put all his efforts into stopping the bloodshed. "My pledge to the citizens of New Orleans from this day forward is that everything that I do, going forward as your mayor, will be totally and solely focused on making sure that murders become a thing of the past in our city," he said.
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