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This weekend there were six deadly shootings in New Orleans over a 24-hour period. Police officials expressed frustration at their inability to stop the bloodshed.
Part of the problem may be that police have lost track of many paroled felons who disappeared in the chaos after Katrina. Louisiana has just reopened some of the parole and probation offices that were closed by the storm. It now faces the challenge of tracking down missing parolees, many of whom seem to have fled to Texas.
Larry Schooler of member station KUT in Austin, reports.
LARRY SCHOOLAR reporting:
Few Texans can appreciate Hurricane Katrina's impact better than Harold Hurtt(ph). He's the chief of the Houston Police Department. HPD officers have worked a lot of overtime to protect a city that added tens of thousands of new residents almost overnight, including felons.
Mr. HAROLD HURTT (Chief of Police, Houston, Texas): Initially, we had a very difficult time. We didn't know who we had here, because due to the flooding and the challenges in Louisiana, we weren't unable to get information.
SCHOOLAR: That flow of information has improved over the past several months, but in that time Houston's murder rate jumped 33 percent. Chief Hurtt classifies about one out of every five of Houston's murders from Hurricane Katrina through June as Katrina-related. That means either the victim, the suspect or both had recently moved to Houston from Louisiana.
Texas Attorney General Greg Abbott has seen enough. Abbott's office is pushing the Louisiana Department of Corrections to issue warrants on all felons believed to have moved after the hurricane who haven't checked in with their parole officer. Abbott is particularly interested in violent offenders, says his spokesman, Jerry Strickland(ph).
Mr. JERRY STRICKLAND (Spokesman, Texas Attorney General's Office): These individuals have already proven themselves to be violent offenders who have offended, spent time in prison, and now have said, hey, I'm going to leave and I'm going to do so undetected and use this tragedy as a way to do so. And these individuals need to be monitored. That's why they're on parole.
SCHOOLAR: At the Louisiana Department of Corrections, Pam Laborde(ph) says her office is working with Texas authorities to issue warrants for missing Louisiana felons, but it's not easy.
Ms. PAM LABORDE (Louisiana Department of Corrections): We would like to have the pre-Katrina manpower that we had, you know, in trying to locate and run down these cases. But that's simply not the case at this point either.
SCHOOLAR: Of the New Orleans area Corrections Department employees who monitor people on parole and probation, half have left the department since the hurricane.
Even with sufficient manpower, Laborde says it's unrealistic for Texas authorities to expect their crime rates will plummet if Louisiana rounds up felons who have violated their parole.
Ms. LABORDE: You can have a criminal record, but just because you have a criminal record doesn't mean you're under the supervision of the Department of Corrections. And we can only be responsible for the people under the supervision of the Department of Corrections.
SCHOOLAR: That means Texas authorities will still have to watch for Louisianans with criminal histories who have finished serving their parole. While Houston police have been reimbursed for some hurricane-related overtime, Chief Harold Hurtt says no one has given his department more officers or more resources to patrol the larger population. And at this point, the Louisiana Department of Corrections doesn't have enough staff to meet its own needs at home, much less the needs of Texas.
For NPR News, I'm Larry Schoolar, in Austin.
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