blight and demolition

Troubled nonprofit’s properties attract Irish Channel’s continued concerns

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The Irish Channel Neighborhood Association is continuing its efforts to clean up properties owned by a troubled nonprofit by taking members’ concerns about crime and neglect to the mayor’s office. In July, a home in the 2300 block of Laurel Street owned by Galilee Housing Initiative was the target of a drive-by shooting, the second such incident there, said Irish Channel board member Adolph Lopez at the association’s monthly meeting Thursday night. The neighborhood then compiled a record of all the police calls associated with the address over the past 17 months and compiled it into a letter, and sent it to City Councilwoman Stacy Head for review, Lopez said. Head then read the letter into the record during the city’s budget hearing on blight issues, said board member Ed McGinnis. The next step, he said, should be either an audit of Galilee by the city or an investigation into criminal activity at the property by the district attorney’s office with an eye toward seizing it, McGinnis said.

Aline

Bicyclist robbed at gunpoint at Aline and Laurel

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A woman on a bicycle was punched in the face and robbed of her purse at gunpoint shortly after midnight Tuesday, police said. The woman was at the corner of Aline and Laurel streets at 12:44 a.m. when she was cut off by a grey or silver four-door vehicle, according to an email from New Orleans Police Department Maj. Bruce Little. A man got out of the back seat with a black semiautomatic handgun, punched her in the face, took her purse, then raced away eastward on Laurel. Anyone with information should call Second District detectives at 658-6020 or Crime Stoppers at
822-1111.