re: What was New Orleans like in 1994?

I remember walking down Decatur street late that year, and a buinessman had a jaw-dropping window sign with a running tally of NOLA murders (410) versus a similar sized city, Boston murders (25).

For someone like me, who worked & played in the French Quarter 6 days/wk, it was sobering. I had been pretty dismissive of the danger up until then as a 26y/o.

It was so bad that even the police (Antoinette Frank) were killing people.

I was in high school at the time. I remember it being really bad, but mostly confined to certain neighborhoods/areas. The city was much bigger back then.

The NOPD is bad now, but that was the era of NOPD officers Antoinette Frank and Len Davis. Frank had her partner shot in the head…3 times…while robbing a Chinese restaurant and executing two siblings who worked there, while Davis was busted by the feds for “murder for hire”. That should give you an idea what the city was like then.

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What was New Orleans like in 1994?

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If you want to look good you would need:

A sharp Girbaud shirt, Polo socks, Girbaud shorts and a pair of Reeboks.

I started at the Orleans Parish DAs office in October of 1993. We had so much on the docket it was ridiculous. I got to see things in my 2.5 years there that were eye opening and quickly destroyed any idealism that I thought I had.

It was bad enough that you had a high murder rate, but fully one quarter of the murders could have been "prevented" if we could have kept people in jail. But when the community was less than cooperative....and living in fear of both the cops and criminals you had a problem. When you had cops running a criminal empire(Len Davis) and cops killing other cops ( Antoinette Franks...I hate her with every fiber in my body) you had a major problem. Then factor in that you had out of town entities trying to get in to take advantage of the drug trade you had a problem. Then you had little to no coordination between different LE groups. NOPD did not like talking to JP even when JP had solid tips and St Bernard was totally ignored...usually even though the guys from the Parish were ex NOPD guys. Connick would plead with Barthelemy and later Marc Morial to work with Harry Lee and Mike Yenni and in St Bernard, Jack Stephens, but politics would get in the way.

On top of that you had the Levee Board cops who would screw things up. I had at least 3 cases in 6 mos where I had to let major criminals off the hook because Levee Board f'd up.

My first big case was the Bennie Thompson murders where his ex wife, kid and two others were killed in a house on a Sunday morning on Morrison near Crowder. That was drug related, and personal at the same time and there was so much of it that we could almost prove but would get stymied by NOPD higher ups and it turns out. Feds.

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What was New Orleans like in 1994?

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was able to ride my bike to to the open air market in the 10th ward for the best dope. Most cops literally refused to ride through there.

It was 1994 when Eric Boyd was like the 10th child killed with a stray bullet walking through the playground. That in incident marked the beginning of the end of the St Thomas projects. They were completely demolished in the next 3-4 years said for a few buildings for historic preservation.

The brilliant plan to demo the project so quickly called to have the residents relocate to the St Bernard Projects in the 7th ward and then you drug gangs living in the same complex vying for the same territory.

It was a shithole. Which apparently were trying to repeat.

Murder capital of the world!!!

They was no social media back then to play all the scare tactics that you see today.

I was 1-2 years old. I got nothing.