Uptown New Orleans has seen a surge in property crimes over the last week, police said Wednesday, including the Second District’s first home-invasion burglary of the year, a one-day spree of house break-ins in Carrollton and a dozen vehicle break-ins around the city.
On Friday evening, seven men were inside an apartment in the 8400 block of Palmetto Street playing pool when three men with guns burst in. The gunmen took a firearm from one of the pool players and cash from all of them, which on payday could have been as much as $1,000, said Sgt. Marc Amos, who is in charge of property crimes in the Second District.
At Wednesday’s Second District meeting, district commander Capt. Darryl Albert was particularly interested in the fact that the intruders seemed to know which of the victims to take the gun from, and that they were able to get inside a complex that should have been secure. Amos replied that they almost certainly had help from inside.
By comparison, by mid September of last year, the Second District had seen seven home invasions, Albert noted. Amos said that those incidents had targeted the elderly, that the district had investigated them aggressively and made arrests in most, and the problem seemed to have dried up for several months.
On Monday, the central Carrollton area was hit with a rash of house break-ins on Lowerline, Broadway and Short. Last week, the 4500 block of Pitt Street saw two break-ins at neighboring homes. The burglars are taking the usual assortment of items, Amos said: jewelry, laptop computers and TVs.
Officers are already going door-to-door in the Carrollton area talking to residents about crime prevention and Crimestoppers. Albert assigned them to the area around Pitt Street next.
Last week also saw 11 vehicles broken into, with laptops, GPS devices, and even handguns being stolen, often from unlocked vehicles. Most vehicle burglaries are prompted by valuables being left in plain view from outside, and, just as last week, Albert urged residents to take better precautions with their parked cars.
“We have a plethora of people leaving their cars unlocked and loaded,” Amos said.
Despite the 45 property crimes last week, the number of direct attacks on people stayed relatively the same. Police handled a few robberies, including one woman whose iPhone was stolen out of her hand while she walked, a trend Albert said is picking up citywide.
The Hollygrove neighborhood may be the site of a new feud, police said, as one young man was shot by a group of others with an AK-47 on Friday as he walked through the neighborhood. The victim was from the other side of Hollygrove, police said, and he received a phone call afterward telling him he was shot because he was walking in “their” area.
