Now there’s a “draft” plan to have the National Guard in New Orleans. The idea is to call up about 1,000 Guard troops to, er, do something to attack a violent crime problem in Louisiana’s “urban centers.”
Our Republican governor is supportive of the idea.
I haven’t heard New Orleans’ Democratic mayor weigh in on whether a Trump-ordered National Guard presence is needed or wanted. Maybe Trump or someone on his team has reached out to the mayor. Or certainly they’d reach out to New Orleans Police Superintendent Anne Kirkpatrick. That would make sense, right?
Wrong.
“No one has called me,” Kirkpatrick told me during a recent WBOK Good Morning Show interview. “No one.”
The chief has been learning about the Louisiana National Guard plan, as most of us do, through the media.
That’s a darn shame.
That’s unprofessional.
And it’s not right.
All the chief can do is listen to, read and watch the news until she gets a call, an email, a text. Perhaps her National Guard update is coming via ground delivery. Or maybe a pigeon has lost its way.
The reason the president is sending troops to different cities allegedly is because crime is soooo bad when Democrats are in charge.
There are cities led by Republicans and non-Democrats that have worse crime. Consider Baton Rouge and Shreveport, where the mayors are Republican. But let’s stick with Trump’s Democratic theme.
Kirkpatrick didn’t say a thing about how New Orleans’ crime compares to other Louisiana cities. But I will.
New Orleans, the city where the number of murders fell so much in 2024 that the number is the lowest since the 1970s. New Orleans, where there have been crime declines in almost every category. New Orleans, where the number of murders in 2025 is so low that the city might finish the year as the least deadly on record.
There are various crime stats to show that New Orleans isn’t as bad as Trump says it is.
Take ReoLink, a company that makes security cameras. It ranked Louisiana cities based on the violent crime rate per 100,000 residents and came up with a Top Ten list. Is New Orleans on the list? Yes. But Marksville, Monroe, Alexandria and Opelousas rank higher than the Crescent City does.
ReoLink ranked Marksville, a city of about 5,000 in Avoyelles Parish, the worst in Louisiana. The city has been called “the most dangerous city in Louisiana.”
Monroe is right behind Marksville. It’s likely that 1 in 48 people in that Ouachita Parish community will be a violent crime victim, statistics show.
Alexandria, a city of about 47,000, is next. Opelousas is just ahead of New Orleans .
Can New Orleans do better? Sure.
The Marksville, Monroe, Alexandria and Opelousas mayors and police chiefs might be interested in getting some federal government help. West Monroe, Bogalusa, Jennings, Baton Rouge and Bossier City round out the ReoLink Top Ten list.
I’m sure those mayors have the same general thinking as does the New Orleans police chief.
“I do not want to be taken over. I don’t want a takeover,” she told me. “But I think they’re coming regardless.”
The bottom line, the chief said, is “National Guard, if you come, I am going to work with you. We’re going to make it work. Because the end game, no matter what your politics are, is that no one wants to be a victim of crime.”
She said a lot of people were concerned about Troop Nola arriving in the city, but “we’ve made it work.”
What would really help is money and resources she can direct to further reduce violent crime and prevent crime.
“First and foremost, I would restore the agency in terms of staffing levels where we could rebuild every one of our specialty assignments, such as more traffic officers, officers who did undercover narcotics work … , the chief said. “If those resources were given to me, then it would be a matter of restoring and expanding our resources and dealing with upstream issues that create opportunities for people to engage in crime to begin with.”
Seems Gov. Jeff Landry holds the key to what might be happening, or not.