New statistics show a crime wave is intensifying in a city already beset by the uncertainties of a flagging recovery from Hurricane Katrina.

WWLTV.com

Despite an infusion of money and manpower into the justice system, the murder rate is growing and armed robbers are preying on Hispanic day laborers flush with cash from rebuilding jobs, the Police Department says.

The city, which led the nation in murders per capita in 2006, is on track to retain its title, according to data presented Thursday for April through June.

The report shows a 14 percent increase in murders and 44 percent leap in armed robberies for the first half of 2007 compared to the same period in 2006.

"It's obviously not good," said police Superintendent Warren Riley.

Crime has gotten so out of hand that Louisiana National Guard troops continue to patrol city streets and the U.S. Justice Department has taken on a bigger role in fighting street crime that had largely been left to the city before Katrina.

Riley said the increase of armed robberies correlates to a spate of muggings of Hispanic workers, many of them undocumented, in the city's devastated eastern section. Much of the area, flooded by Katrina on Aug. 29, 2005, remains a wasteland and is difficult to patrol. Riley said the workers are easy prey because they often don't have bank accounts and carry large amounts of cash. A team of officers has been working on catching the robbers, Riley said.

Katrina's damage to jails, court buildings, police facilities and a shortage of police officers have been blamed in the past as catalysts for the rise in crime. In January, a march on City Hall by as many as 5,000 people demanded action to stem a new-year murder wave. Police responded by putting more officers on the street and setting up checkpoints at high-crime hours.

But Peter Scharf, a criminologist with the University of New Orleans, said Katrina-based arguments are harder to make now that the city has had so much time to repair damage and received so much support.

"The hurricane theories, morphing of drug groups, or that the NOPD is in a trailer, really don't make sense," Scharf said. "You look at the leadership in this city to the leadership in cities that have been reasonably successful, and it's night and day."

Recently, Mayor Ray Nagin reignited complaints about his leadership when he said news of the killing of two brothers, while sad, "keeps the New Orleans brand out there." The mayor later said the comment was aimed at keeping the city's plight before the nation, but it drew complaints from business and civic groups.

(Copyright 2007 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)