New Orleans shootings come amid fraught year for crime in city

Greg Toppo | USATODAY

Show Caption Hide Caption Over a dozen injured in New Orleans playground shooting At least 16 people were hospitalized when shots rang out a New Orleans playground. Police say the crowd was gathered for what looked to be an impromptu shooting of a music video.

The night began as it often does in the Big Easy, with lively parties stretching from block to block in the city's Upper Ninth Ward. It ended in a neighborhood park where the gunshots drowned out the music, sent 17 people, including a 10-year-old, to the hospital and launched police on a citywide manhunt for the perpetrators.

Hundreds of people witnessed the shooting late Sunday in Bunny Friend Park, but Mayor Mitch Landrieu said he's frustrated that few have come forward to identify who committed an act he likened to "domestic terrorism."

"At the end of the day it's really hard to police against a bunch of guys who decide to pull out guns and settle disputes with 300 people between them," Landrieu said Monday.

The shots broke out late Sunday as a group of as many as 500 gathered to film an impromptu music video. The crowd was apparently drawn by notifications on social media. Police Superintendent Michael Harrison said police did not know how many shooters there were.

Given the number of people at the park Sunday evening, Landrieu said, it is "pretty clear that people know who they are."

“We are coming after you," Landrieu said, speaking of the shooters. "We are going to bring every resource to bear to make sure that we find you and that we put you behind bars."

Landrieu and others have said most of the victims were discharged from the hospital, though at least four remained hospitalized, including two in critical condition. One of the victims may never walk again, Landrieu tweeted on Monday.

Witnesses said the gathering at the playground followed the annual second line parade by the Nine Times Social & Pleasure Club, which took place a block or two from the shooting scene.

Second line parades are "the descendants of the New Orleans' famous jazz funerals and, apart from a casket, mourners and a cemetery visit, they carry many of the same traditions with them as they march down the streets," according to FrenchQuarter.com, There are dozens of second line parades scheduled throughout the year here, usually on Sunday afternoons, according to the website. They range in size, level of organization and traditions. Each parade includes a brass band and street dancing by members wearing brightly colored suits and accessories.

Members of the Nine Times Social & Pleasure Club said the party at the playground wasn’t their event — and that they weren’t even aware of it.

"I was back in Baton Rouge by the time I heard about the shooting," Raymond Williams, 52, one of Nine Times’ founding members, told The (New Orleans) Times-Picayune. "It hurt me to think people might connect our event to what happened in Bunny Friend. Our events have always been very peaceful. It's a family-oriented parade."

The shootings have put an exclamation point on a persistent crime problem that, a decade after Hurricane Katrina, bedevils the city.

City officials recently touted an encouraging drop in New Orleans’ murder rate — Landrieu in January said the number of murders citywide had reached a 43-year low in 2014, at 150, the lowest since 1971. It was the third consecutive year in which murders had declined, city officials said; 2014 saw the city’s lowest murder rate in over a decade, with 39.6 victims per 100,000 people. The Times-Picayune reported on Sunday that so far this year, the city's murder rate stood at 138. The latest was the fatal shooting of a 37-year-old man on Nov. 14.

On Monday, Landrieu and Harrison also announced police arrested 21-year-old Euric Cain, the suspect in a Nov. 20 shooting.

Cain is charged with shooting Tulane University medical resident Peter Gold, 25, after Gold stopped to help a woman who Cain appeared to be dragging down the street. The shooting, caught on video, showed the suspect shot Gold in the stomach once and appeared to try shooting him again, at point-blank range, in the head. The gun apparently jammed, police said, and Cain fled in an SUV that they found on Monday.

Gold on Monday remained hospitalized in guarded condition, Tulane officials said. Cain is charged with attempted first-degree murder, second-degree kidnapping and armed robbery.

The fear of rising crime came to a head last summer when three gunmen stormed an upscale restaurant last August, forcing diners to drop to the floor and hand over cash and cellphones. Then it happened again in September, in two more nearby restaurants.

The Washington Post dubbed the incidents "stagecoach" robberies. Peter Scharf, a Louisiana State University criminologist, said the cases showed it was "open season on criminal opportunity." He said post-Katrina gentrification of the city has resulted in crime migrating to “softened targets” in parts of town with more obvious wealth. “Would you rather take on an armed dope dealer who is obviously armed, or some gentrified souls who are probably not armed and probably have more money?”

The Post noted that the city has nearly 400 fewer police officers than it did before Hurricane Katrina hit in 2005, and that recruiting is difficult. City officials are hamstrung by tighter local and federal budgets and a 2013 federal ruling that ordered major department reforms.

Landrieu has budgeted $10.5 million to hire 150 officers next year, but police spokesman Tyler Gamble told The Post that the city didn't hire any sworn officers between 2010 and 2012, a period in which police were leaving the city at the rate of about 150 a year. By the time the federal decree was in place, he said, recruitment “was like starting from scratch.”

Contributing: WWL-TV, New Orleans. Follow Greg Toppo on Twitter: @gtoppo