Acadiana Gangs (New Orleans, Lafayette: crime, places to live, activity)

[OSM332]

Interesting article related to increase in gangs on the website of a local television channel in Lafayette KLFY TV 10 - Acadiana's Local News, Weather and Sports Leader | Home posted 1/29 (copied below as well). I have lived in Lafayette for 10 years and the dramatic number increase in crime, as well as the inability of the infrastructure to support the population increase has caused me to look for other places to live and to leave a place which had been a pleasant experience until Katrina.


Moderator cut: sorry, links only, possible copyright issues

[SBCmetroguy]

Unfortunately it was bound to happen in due time... Katrina or no Katrina. But what surprises me is that they are saying this all really started after Katrina. This surprises me, though, because while New Orleans has some street gangs, the biggest crime problems in New Orleans are and were individual and drug-related, not gang-related.

[Ronald120]

After you ever read a news article/view news courage about "gang-related activity" that didn't mention the actual names of the alleged gangs???

I mean seriously, not one mention of any names at all.


The only evidence that is provided of this alleged "gang activity" is graffiti of people's nicknames, as if this is some rare occurence that is a guranteed indicator of a gang prescence.

Are you kidding me?

What's even more disappointing to me is that is alleged "gang-activity" is being corroborated by federal agents which suggest to me that this special task-force of federal agents don't have that great of understanding of criminal activity in this region of the state. I suspect that most of the agents assigned to that task-force that reported to KLFY aren't from Louisiana, but rather places where there are heavy gang activity -- they probably seen familiar patterns (graffiti, tatoos, nicknames, heavy drug/crime element) and jumped to this convenient conclusion.

What further bothers me about this news coverage is that it reads to me as a continued smear campaign by people/media in other cities (most notably Lafayette) to s**t on Katrina evacuees. I was in Lafayette about a week after Katrina hit and witnessed first-hand the spread of BS rumors and speculation of people from New Orleans doing this, doing that, "crime has tripled!!", etc. A lot of that turned out to be very untrue, fortunately, but that hasn't completely quited all the misinformation and speculation by those who reside in places that people in New Orleans evacuated to as a convenient attribution of their cities' negative characteristics/problems.

Am I implying that everyone in New Orleans are honest, law-abiding citizens? No.

Am I implying that Katrina evacuees hasn't contributed to any rise of criminial activity in all of the places they've evacuated to? No.


But this constant overexaggeration and misperception heavily gets on my nerves. I'm certain a lot of the speculation that I hear of people from other places is just that -- speculation. Nothing truly concrete to base their fear and apprehension on, just speculative theory. This news article/report is an illustration of that. How in the hell do you have audacity to create this perception that New Orleans brought gangs to Lafayette post-Katrina without even providing the name of even a one gang? Just ONE?? Who are these gangs??? If you're going to inform the people of the Acadiana area of a huge criminal dynamic, at least do the service of informing them with some defined indicators of this supposed "new criminial dynamic" that the public can identify with mod cutto aid them in their awareness as to prevent future crimes. Don't continue to inject fear, panic, and tension into the public based off some nope, offensive to some graffiti.